Having an Old Friend for Dinner

We all know that I love a bit of urban fantasy fiction. A bit of vampires, werewolves, witches and necromancers, shapeshifters, elves, fairies and zombies. Please note the use of the word 'fiction'.

This brings me nicely (or gruesomely) onto THE bizarre story of last week. The man in Florida who was shot dead whilst eating another man's face off..... Rudy Eugene, for some strange reason, pulled Ronald Poppo out of the shade, beat him up and was in the process of eating the last remaining 25% of the 65yr old's face when police got to him. After failing to stop munching, the police finally shot him.

Then we had the story of Canadian police looking for Luka Rocco Magnotta a 29 yr old self confessed bi-sexual porn actor who has done lots of posting. This included posting body parts to Canada's Conservative Party Headquarters, posting a video, imaginatively titled '1 lunatic, 1 ice pick' where he actually filmed the murder and posting some random blogs on how to kill folk and get away with it. Charming eh?

Then..... We had the story of the man in New Jersey who was intent on self-harming, well himself obviously. When the police broke in to his house to prevent him doing any damage to himself, he ended up throwing his intestines at them. Definitely a bad day at the office I'd say.

Want more? In Baltimore, Maryland, student Alexander Kinyua was arrested for killing and eating the brains and heart of his flat mate, Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie. The motive is still unknown.

This ultimately leads to the whole 'zombie apocalypse' headlines appearing in the news followed very closely by the jokes, fake/comedy twitter accounts and hash-tags. I could blame the whole social media thing and say that it has effectively wiped out the traditional period of mourning and shock at something really tragic happening. Everything happens so much faster today than even 10 years ago. It could also be said that anonymity on the likes of twitter and Facebook can add to even darker and more bad taste jokes being aired.

It was only when reading through this blog, that I realised I am totally guilty of the same thing. I can't help it, it's my main defence mechanism in dealing with things that are too horrible to contemplate, especially when they are true and real. I've relayed 4 gruesome stories and thrown in a bit of ironic humour. After all these cannibal jokes are in bad taste (10 points if you got the really awful joke there).

Surely this cant be the future of entertainment? Trolling the news for items of bad taste in which to joke about makes us the zombies, we become immune to humanity and feed on the pain of others. The way I see it is gallows humour is one thing but looking for unfortunate or tragic events to poke fun at isn't humour at all. I admit comedy is about knowing where that line is and dancing across it every so often, but it is a very hard thing to do without offending someone, somewhere.

But for now, there is no zombie apocalypse. Just some disturbed people out there with no one in a position to help them or care for them and no safety net for mentally ill outpatients, unfortunately this could mean that a whole load more people get killed while the world works out what to do with those who are mentally unstable.

In the meantime though, I recommend that you read 'World War Z' and 'Feed' just for some ideas on how to survive.......just in case the CDC are wrong.