Isaac Marion's Blog, page 10
December 1, 2011
New WARM BODIES story!
Have you missed the sweet sound of R's voice? Have you wondered how he feels about the holiday season? Is he a post-apocalyptic Santa or Scrooge? Did he cut back on his murder rates in the spirit of Christmas?
I wrote a short story for City Arts magazine about R's first winter as a walking corpse. It's significantly less heartwarming than most holiday specials.
Pick up a City Arts mag if you're in Seattle or read it online here:
http://www.cityartsonline.com/issues/seattle/2011/12/boarded-window
Merry Christmas, friends. Enjoy your memories.
I wrote a short story for City Arts magazine about R's first winter as a walking corpse. It's significantly less heartwarming than most holiday specials.
Pick up a City Arts mag if you're in Seattle or read it online here:
http://www.cityartsonline.com/issues/seattle/2011/12/boarded-window
Merry Christmas, friends. Enjoy your memories.
November 5, 2011
Official Statement
Regarding that rather um...familiar-looking "poster" for the Warm Bodies movie you may have seen floating around the Internet recently: that is NOT an official promo image and is DEFINITELY not the official movie poster. It wasn't even meant to be seen in the U.S. So tell your local gossip blogger to relax, and stay tuned.
October 31, 2011
Halloween Rerun
Since I'm too busy/lazy/uninspired/tired/stressed/arthritic to write a new post about Halloween, here's a rerun of last year's Halloween special for your spooky amusement.
Factual Facts About Halloween
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A good costume idea
Halloween is that special time of year when parents dress their children as classic representations of evil and send them out to demand sugary taxes from their neighbors on threat of violence. But what a lot of kids don't realize is that there is more to Halloween than just eating so much candy that you throw up and lie huddled in bed all night twitching and cursing God. Halloween is also an important cultural holiday for zombies, vampires, Spidermans, and other manifestations of our collective consciousness' darkest dreams.
Although witches and demons have been part of our culture for centuries, and skeletons have been around since the early Paleozoic Era, Halloween is a relatively modern invention. After observing the successful creation of the African-American holiday Kwanzaa in 1966, an unnamed zombie proposed a similar celebration for his own people as a way to promote species awareness and acceptance, and also to make hunting easier by flooding the streets with costumed decoys. No one expected the holiday to catch on outside the undead community, but the '60s were a time of profound social upheaval, and since the youth culture had already begun to embrace monsters—who possessed an undeniable charisma and sinister cool that humans couldn't help but envy and want to imitate—Halloween quickly exploded into one of the world's most popular holidays.
Another good costume idea
Halloween is celebrated in all English-speaking countries and most Pashtu-speaking tribal lands, but the traditions associated with it vary from place to place. In my own city,Seattle, Halloween looks very different than it does in, say,London. The basic spirit is the same; our kids still go Trick-or-Treating and dress up as aborted goat fetuses and schizophrenic hallucinations, but because of Seattle's frequent, heavy rainfall, we must make some adjustments. Since October is our wet season, the streets are usually not navigable by land, so on the morning of the 31st every family has a "Creepy Craft Party" where we help the kids build canoes out of paper and popsicle sticks. We then load the little rascals into their boats and set them adrift in the floodwaters, where the violent currents whip them through the streets until they eventually run aground on a random neighbor's porch. From there, the Trick-or-Treating resumes more or less traditionally. The neighbors take the waterlogged tykes inside, dry them off, and perform any necessary CPR. The eager kids are then treated to an extravagant feast of generic bulk candy and put to bed in the garage if the neighbors have one, or under the sink if they don't. The next morning, the neighbors look up their little guests' barcode tattoos on www.kidcode.gov, find the parents' addresses, and return the children home only slightly worse for wear. That is, of course, if they weren't drowned or eaten by river vampires the night before.
A good couple's costume
All this may sound like an anxious night for the kids' parents, but playing the odds—even with such morbidly high stakes!—is just part of the Halloween experience in Seattle. With over eight hundred casinos—more per square mile than libraries, schools, and coffee shops combined!—Seattle is known around the world as a gambling city, and the question of whether or not the children will make it home from Trick-or-Treating is the subject of much extravagant wagering. In 2009, an estimated forty million dollars changed hands via Halloween betting. Traditionally, parents will always bet against their own kid, so that if he or she does end up being eaten by river vampires, the parents will at least have their winnings as consolation.
Losing a child is always a hard thing, but the thrill of the risk—along with the fun of friendly competition between neighbors—is what that keeps Halloween interesting for Seattle's adults, most of whom can no longer enjoy candy due to suppurating stomach ulcers. Some may call our holiday traditions inappropriate or even irresponsible, but after all, it's Halloween. If you want warmth, good times, and your children to be alive, you can go celebrate Christmas.
Factual Facts About Halloween
[image error]
A good costume idea
Halloween is that special time of year when parents dress their children as classic representations of evil and send them out to demand sugary taxes from their neighbors on threat of violence. But what a lot of kids don't realize is that there is more to Halloween than just eating so much candy that you throw up and lie huddled in bed all night twitching and cursing God. Halloween is also an important cultural holiday for zombies, vampires, Spidermans, and other manifestations of our collective consciousness' darkest dreams.
Although witches and demons have been part of our culture for centuries, and skeletons have been around since the early Paleozoic Era, Halloween is a relatively modern invention. After observing the successful creation of the African-American holiday Kwanzaa in 1966, an unnamed zombie proposed a similar celebration for his own people as a way to promote species awareness and acceptance, and also to make hunting easier by flooding the streets with costumed decoys. No one expected the holiday to catch on outside the undead community, but the '60s were a time of profound social upheaval, and since the youth culture had already begun to embrace monsters—who possessed an undeniable charisma and sinister cool that humans couldn't help but envy and want to imitate—Halloween quickly exploded into one of the world's most popular holidays.
Another good costume idea
Halloween is celebrated in all English-speaking countries and most Pashtu-speaking tribal lands, but the traditions associated with it vary from place to place. In my own city,Seattle, Halloween looks very different than it does in, say,London. The basic spirit is the same; our kids still go Trick-or-Treating and dress up as aborted goat fetuses and schizophrenic hallucinations, but because of Seattle's frequent, heavy rainfall, we must make some adjustments. Since October is our wet season, the streets are usually not navigable by land, so on the morning of the 31st every family has a "Creepy Craft Party" where we help the kids build canoes out of paper and popsicle sticks. We then load the little rascals into their boats and set them adrift in the floodwaters, where the violent currents whip them through the streets until they eventually run aground on a random neighbor's porch. From there, the Trick-or-Treating resumes more or less traditionally. The neighbors take the waterlogged tykes inside, dry them off, and perform any necessary CPR. The eager kids are then treated to an extravagant feast of generic bulk candy and put to bed in the garage if the neighbors have one, or under the sink if they don't. The next morning, the neighbors look up their little guests' barcode tattoos on www.kidcode.gov, find the parents' addresses, and return the children home only slightly worse for wear. That is, of course, if they weren't drowned or eaten by river vampires the night before.
A good couple's costume
All this may sound like an anxious night for the kids' parents, but playing the odds—even with such morbidly high stakes!—is just part of the Halloween experience in Seattle. With over eight hundred casinos—more per square mile than libraries, schools, and coffee shops combined!—Seattle is known around the world as a gambling city, and the question of whether or not the children will make it home from Trick-or-Treating is the subject of much extravagant wagering. In 2009, an estimated forty million dollars changed hands via Halloween betting. Traditionally, parents will always bet against their own kid, so that if he or she does end up being eaten by river vampires, the parents will at least have their winnings as consolation.
Losing a child is always a hard thing, but the thrill of the risk—along with the fun of friendly competition between neighbors—is what that keeps Halloween interesting for Seattle's adults, most of whom can no longer enjoy candy due to suppurating stomach ulcers. Some may call our holiday traditions inappropriate or even irresponsible, but after all, it's Halloween. If you want warmth, good times, and your children to be alive, you can go celebrate Christmas.
October 25, 2011
New Story - "PIXEL"
This story owes its origin to a whimsical tweet by Analeigh Tipton, who has whimsy to spare so I didn't mind stealing some.
October 23, 2011
Warm Bodies fan art
Fan art has been trickling toward me over the last couple years. I find it adorable and wanted to share a couple with you. Some are amazing, some are amusing. You decide.
R has kind of a Connor Oberst thing going on here.
Never thought I'd see R become an anime hero. Zombie fist ultimate strike! Kiyaaaa!
I like this because Julie looks like Gadget from Rescue Rangers, who was my first cartoon crush.
My sometimes collaborator Sarah Musi made this one.
An overtalented artist who continues to slum it with me in zombie town.
R has kind of a Connor Oberst thing going on here.
Never thought I'd see R become an anime hero. Zombie fist ultimate strike! Kiyaaaa!
I like this because Julie looks like Gadget from Rescue Rangers, who was my first cartoon crush.
My sometimes collaborator Sarah Musi made this one.
An overtalented artist who continues to slum it with me in zombie town.
October 20, 2011
Dog Person
I met this girl, she told me she was a dog person. I was like, "That's awesome! I love dogs!" But when I took her to a government laboratory, they found no canine DNA in her at all. Women are liars.
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September 25, 2011
Trapped in a car guy, speak up
Several years ago, someone emailed me or commented on this blog with an idea for a story. He proposed I write something about people who get trapped in a car and have to live there for a long time. I scoffed at the idea at the time, pointing out its many impracticalities, but it unexpectedly came back to me later in a more abstract form and I did indeed write a story based on it. It's going to be in my upcoming short story book, and I want to credit the person who sent me the idea. So whoever that was, if you're still out there and still listening, speak up and you'll be immortalized in the small print of a book very few people will ever read.
September 22, 2011
Meet Baleen
Anyone curious about the RV-livin' author lifestyle? I made a slightly drunken introduction for Baleen, my beautiful home on wheels.
September 13, 2011
New story
Had a unpleasant night last night. Wrote an unpleasant story this morning. Enjoy.
August 15, 2011
Reading about myself
Things I learned about myself from this article in The Daily:
1. I am "attractive in an emo sort of way."
2. I am "bewildering."
3. I am "half an aperture stop away from something like obliviousness."
4. I am a hipster cliche.
Can't argue with any of that. Read this article if you have an interest.
http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/08/14/081411-arts-isaac-marion-1-4/
Also, I'm thinking about calling my short story book:
WIDE-EYED, MAPLESS
Reactions?
1. I am "attractive in an emo sort of way."
2. I am "bewildering."
3. I am "half an aperture stop away from something like obliviousness."
4. I am a hipster cliche.
Can't argue with any of that. Read this article if you have an interest.
http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/08/14/081411-arts-isaac-marion-1-4/
Also, I'm thinking about calling my short story book:
WIDE-EYED, MAPLESS
Reactions?
![[image error]](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_n00FrQHpVk0/TLtBo_Ws72I/AAAAAAAAA3Q/shVzDEIcCXU/s1600/schizoart2.jpg){kind=link}
![[image error]](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zpnSZb1OY9U/TqB8xJdHwhI/AAAAAAAAA8o/YD-AA-ahMpQ/s1600/dog.jpg){kind=link}