Touched by the brainless, shuffling, rotting reanimated zombie hand of love

Science rocks. Unless you bought 900 acres of Nagasaki farmland in 1943 and were hoping to flip that shit. But let’s assume that this is not the case.

Science rocks. And today on Science and You we’re going to be looking at Dicrocoelium Dendriticum, a tiny microscopic organism that, much like seasoned veteran cult filmmaker George Romero, speaks English poorly, weighs very little, has trouble getting a date, and creates zombies.

Dicrocoelium Dendriticum (Which we will call, for the purpose of brevity, “Dinky”) lays its eggs up inside the ugly bits of a cow. The problem is that it’s a fast and furious world inside a cow and there’s one way out and it’s pretty much the way you would expect. Not long after Dinky eggs emerge from Bessie’s Fire door, a species of snails gobbles them up and hosts the tiny parasite inside it. Please remember this last part when ordering all willy-nilly off the French Menu this weekend.

Like most heterosexual male bulls and a statistically significant number of 15 year old young men from Macomb, Illinois, Dinky wants to get back into a cow. And like most female snails in the wild have discovered, when you need a helping hand, a snail is not the place to look. So Dinky forces the snail to throw it up, along with a healthy dose of ant-attracting yummy phlegm. Ants come along, eat Dinky and that’s where the odd begins to happen.

Ants that eat Dinky find themselves partially zombified. The ant acts perfectly normal during the day but at night, when other ants are sleeping or making the ant with two backs, Dinky ants crawl along slowly, hypnotized, until they find a tall stalk of grass. Then, with their best “please eat me, cow” pose, they hang from the top of the stalk of grass, waiting for nature to take its course. If they aren’t eaten tonight, they just wake back up and do it again tomorrow.

Dinky is interesting because, as I discovered in my “Defiling the dead” class at Miskatonic University, if you inject a human corpse with a RNA bath solution containing Dicrocoelium Dendriticum and a series of other ingredients (one being Diet Dr. Pepper, which tastes much more like regular Dr. Pepper, as a quick aside) you can reanimate the dead. It’s actually a pretty easy operation, but you have to inject the solution directly into the spinal column leading to the brain and, therefore, need a honking big needle.

Here’s the thing. Dead people are like the unending, infinitely sustainable resource of planet earth. There were so many deceased folk to choose from, I had trouble figuring out where to start. So I tried to think like an American and I resurrected someone about whom there is soon to be released an almost assuredly Oscar winning biopic. Upon scanning through IMDB I decided to steal the body of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the State of California, assassinated on November 27th, 1978, almost exactly 30 years ago. In doing this I created a historical first in that the result is the only currently animated homosexual male in America with no idea who Madonna is.

I document here, for posterity, my conversation with the acrid, corrupt, mephitic (thank you thesaurus.com), zombified corpse of famed civil rights icon Harvey Milk.

Me: Harvey. Harv. You ok?

Harvey: Wow. That is, hands down, the worst party I have ever been to. Honestly. And I know Belushi.

Me: Ok, I have some good news and some bad news.

Harvey: Hit me.

Me: Bad news. You were shot to death almost just about 30 years ago today and the guy who shot you claimed it was because he ate too many Twinkies and only served a few years in jail.

Harvey: Well, bad trip. And weird, but not the dumbest thing that’s ever happened. Good News?

Me: That massive brushed gold plated needle hanging out of your nearly severed head matches your bracelet almost perfectly.

Harvey: Sweet. I can work this.

Me: So, I didn’t mean to just dig you up but I figured you’d be someone I could talk to.

Harvey: I’m in, brother, you know it. But I haven’t eaten in 30 years. (Harvey began opening and closing the drawers in the beat up Day’s Inn mid-priced suite I had reanimated him in. )

Me: all right, this might be seen by some as bad news as well, depending on your sense of humor, but the recommended diet for a newly created zombie such as yourself is human brains.

Harvey: Yeah, that’s not going to do it for me. Why don’t we just order up a couple of Kahlua and Creams and let things happen the way they happen.

Me: Excellent. (I dial down to room service, keeping Harvey in sight out of the corner of my eye in the mirror. Hanging out with Zombies gives you this feeling that your brain is absolutely huge and completely accessible)

Harvey: Ooh. And some ladyfingers. I love those. So, fill me in, doc. What’s happening in California these days? How’s Belushi?

Me: Um. Ok, well, for a while we had completely equal marriage in California. Over 18,000 couples were legally and happily married. Many of them started adoption proceedings. It was nice.

Harvey: Groovy.

Me: But then 700,000 signatures were entered into a petition that created a ballot initiative called Proposition 8 that amended the California constitution to prevent Gay people from being treated as equals as far as marriage was concerned. The amendment passed.

Harvey: ok. Ungroovy. But expected.

Me: They spent over 35 million dollars passing that amendment.

Harvey: ok, now who do you mean by “They”?

Me: I don’t know, Harvey. It’s the same they as it always is, isn’t it? I remember how young I was when you were killed. Some of my older friends told me “They got Harvey” and I remember wondering what they meant. It didn’t sink in until later that you were dead.

Harvey: And in a state of the art, silk lined casket, by the way. Comfy. (Harvey eyed the room as though under blacklight. He made a move to fold the sheet over a stain that I hoped was only semen)

Me: Sorry. They say that marriage is a religious thing and that allowing gay people to marry violates their religion. That marriage is a religious institution.

Harvey: Well, that’s untrue. People have been getting married since long before Christianity happened. Characters from the oldest pieces of literature we have were married, and it had nothing to do with religion. Beowulf’s parents were married. American Marriage certificates say marriage but have no mention of God.

Me: And they say that letting gay people marry is redefining marriage.

Harvey: Marriage is being redefined all the time. In this country alone, marriage has gone from possession to personhood to partnership. Consanguineous marriages are the norm all over the world, with polygamy, polyandry, group marriage, secular marriage, all forms of marriage in all sorts of cultures.

Me: They say that homosexual relationships are unnatural.

Harvey: Unnatural? All the animal species we observe engage in heterosexual and homosexual behavior. Some of them are monogamous, but not many. Hell, look at spiders, nasty fucking things. Natural and unnatural is a crappy argument. Eating your partner’s head after sex is natural. (Harvey leaned over to look in the mirror)

Me: Well. Hm. They say that it will cause marriage to collapse.

Harvey: Jesus. Look at my head. (Harvey was staring in the mirror at his pus filled head, large flaps of skin falling down over one eye from decay) Do I put anything on this?

Me: I don’t think it’s going to do much good.

Harvey: Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I have to look like an asshole.

Me: I hear you

Harvey: Besides (back on point) We know what the top ten or so things are that cause marriages to collapse in this country. Time, Money, Children and Childcare, Sex, Jealousy, Work, Household maintenance, Arguing methodology, Extended family, and emotional distance. If we really cared about marriage we’d put the money into newlywed programs that helped create time management skills and fiscal competence, we’d fund childcare facilities, create adult partner sex education and connectivity classes, organize group therapeutic programs to address jealousy and anger issues, offer work-life programs in small communities, teach home economics, household maintenance and mediation skills, help young couples to tell their parents to go fuck themselves and slap everyone until they learned how to cry. How do gay people factor into this unless we get to do the slapping?

Me: Why don’t they understand all this?

Harvey: this is you with the “they” again?

Me: Well, it’s pissing me off.

Harvey: Naw. Don’t fall into that trap. It’s not an us versus they issue. Or even an us versus them issue. This is just fighting bad ideas. Don’t turn it into fighting people.

Me: I think that’s big of you, but what do you say to people who think you shouldn’t be allowed to have the same rights just because you’re gay.

Harvey: I don’t say anything to them, brotherman. I say we fight the bad ideas with good ones. A hundred years ago, being openly gay would get you hung from a tree. Gay people didn’t come this far by fighting with people all day long. Not with insults and name calling. We got here a different way.

Me: Fabulously?

Harvey: Actually, yes. Gay people got everything we have in the most fabulous way possible. By standing next to people and not taking ourselves too seriously. By listening better. By being better friends than anyone ever thought possible. What does it mean now in movies to be someone’s gay best friend? It means the person who doesn’t judge. The person who loves you. The person you call at 3 am because you need to talk to someone and there’s one person who will wake up and talk to you and only half mean it when they yell at you.

Me: Is this going to be in your movie?

Harvey: A movie? About me?

Me: Yeah, with Sean Penn.

Harvey: ooh, the kid on Little House on the Prairie?

Me: Yes (I said declaratively, upon looking through his wikipedia page. Sean Penn was in freaking Little House on the Prairie. How does he not just get constant, never ending shit for that? Why the cover up?)

Harvey: I liked him. Look, gay people got where we are through love. We fought hard for it. We’re not going to give it up now just for the right to hate the people who don’t want us to succeed. We’re going to fight this the way we always have.

Me: fabulously.

Harvey: Ugh. You really need to step it up when you say that word. When you say it, it just lays there. Do you think calamine would help this any? (Harvey now held out part of his arm, below the elbow, which had apparently fallen off during the conversation)

Me: It’s really not a skin condition. More of a… Like a thing that happens when you try to defrost a chicken in the sink and you leave it out for 30 years or so too long. With the water running.

Harvey: This is sucking a little bit now. (as he tried to reattach the appendage)

Me: (perking up after the knock at the door) Oh. Here are those Kahlua and Creams. That’ll make you feel better.

Harvey: Oh yeah. That’ll take the edge off of falling apart in a Day’s Inn Bathroom.

Me: How do you do it? How do you stay so centered?

Harvey: I see the whole road, you know. It goes far back that way (he waved his unattached forearm in the direction of the bathroom) and for ahead this way (As he pointed with the appendage towards the armoire that held the small, old fashioned television.) We have to stay on the road we built. We can’t walk it any other way. (At this, Harvey took a big swig of his Kahlua and Cream, causing a spigot of Creamy Liquid to come spraying from an apparent hole in his gut. He looked at the mess on the floor.) I should probably clean that up, then.

Me: Meh. You can barely tell

Harvey: (He paused for a moment, as if to finish the thought with a flair.) I really probably could use some brains now.

That day spent with Harvey was the first day, in a way, of the rest of my life. In the way that most days that come before at least one other day before you die are. I closed the door behind me, thinking about everything that Harvey had said. The cute young bellhop rushed past me with a plate of ladyfingers.

Bellhop: I forgot. Sorry.

Me: No worries. He’s in there. And hey. ( I thought about the road and what it looked like today. I suddenly felt a little better. I handed the Bellhop all the cash I had in my pocket, about 120 dollars). I bet he could use, you know…A little head…

I winked at him and walked away.

Written by Jim Marcus

Jim Marcus is a singer/songwriter, director, photographer, writer, performance artist and social activist. And really, that list doesn’t even touch the surface of all the things he’s done or is doing.

A founding member of the seminal Industrial band Die Warzau, Jim Marcus has worked with artists in all genres, from Bjork to Revenge, Steel Pulse, Pansy Division, Machines of Loving Grace, George Clinton, KMFDM, Gravity Kills, Pigface, Little Louis, and more. Die Warzau’s latest release, Vinyl88. Not the Best of DW, will melt your face and is available wherever you buy or steal your music.