Another Entry in The Zombie Files

“Man Ate Roommate,” the HuffPo headline declared.

I shouldn’t have clicked on it. I should have left it for someone else to discover, because then I knew I’d have to add it to our Zombie Files.

But I did click on it, and lo, here is the gruesome story for all of you like-minded people. At least, I assume you’re like-minded. You just clicked on this story, after all. Shame on you, deviants.

Tell me, Style Quirkers, has humanity always been inclined to snack on itself, or is this upsurge in apparent cannibalism just due to more frequent reporting?

The other day, we had a man eating another man’s face under an overpass. Now we have a fellow dining on his roommate’s heart and brain. I trust he enjoyed them with fava beans and a nice chianti.

Supposedly, the eater’s family found the devoured’s head and hands under a blanket in the basement – I assume stashed away for late-night snacking. When the police arrived, they found more body parts, and then the accused directed them to a trash container where he hid the rest of the body.

Guys, I think we’re all thinking the same thing.

Zombies.

“Oh, come on,” I can hear you saying. “Zombies just mindlessly devour people. They don’t plan ahead and they certainly don’t save food for later.”

Sure they don’t – at least, not in the movies and TV shows that hurl zombies at us on an almost weekly basis. The zombies in there might be fast or slow, and some of them are just mutants or infected and not actually dead people…but they’re TV zombies. They’re caricatures. Real-life villains are never as entertaining and bumbling as Dr. Evil. Why should real-life zombies be as slow and mindless as their silver screen counterparts?

Forget fast zombies. I’m more worried about smart zombies. I don’t want my endtime invaders to be able to plan things.

I admit I’m extremely concerned about all this – and not just because this news coincides with some weird virus being discovered in the tropics (that’s another entry, I’m sure). The bottom line is people are eating each other. I’ve mostly had good roommates – there’s been a couple I wouldn’t have minded setting on fire, but no matter how angry (or happy) they made me, I was never moved to, you know, consume them. But it’s 2012, the end of the world might be nearing on December 21, and who knows, maybe soon enough, your neighbor’s fleshy under-arm will start to look particularly tempting.

Be afraid, folks. Be very afraid.