You Might Be a Zombie . . . (31 page)

But don’t worry, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics only around thirty people are kil ed by elevators each year. In the United States alone.

3. THE TOXIC WOMAN

The legend

A sick woman arrives at a hospital, and when the nurses withdraw blood it is so toxic that it begins making everyone around her sick too. Realizing they’re dealing with the human embodiment of the creature from
Alien
, the nurses flee for their lives.

The truth

On the evening of February 19, 1994, Gloria Ramirez was admitted to a California emergency room, suffering from an advanced form of cancer.

When a nurse drew Gloria’s blood, she detected a foul odor, so foul that hospital staff started gagging and even col apsing around her. Eventual y, as many as twenty-three people were affected. The ER was evacuated and a decontamination unit brought in.

She died just forty minutes after arriving at the hospital, and her autopsy was performed by men in ful hazmat moon suits. Despite one of the most extensive forensic investigations in history, it’s still not known what exactly turned this woman’s blood toxic. Granted, the experts on the case have refused to take off their hazmat suits since that day and are now quarantined on a small island surrounded by barbed wire, but those are probably just the usual precautions.

2. SOMETHING OFF ABOUT THAT PICTURE

The legend

A young man is dropping off groceries at the house of an eccentric old lady when he notices an old photo that makes the hair on his arms stand on end.

The photo’s normal enough—a young boy in his Sunday best—but something just seems off. “Isn’t that beautiful?” the old lady says, trying to stuff a cat into the dishwasher. “You can hardly tell he’s dead.”

The truth

While most folks today are too squeamish to take more than a glance into the casket during a funeral, as recently as the early twentieth century someone dying meant it was time to break out the camera for a family photo, a practice known as memorial photography.

And, while it all sounds like the setup for some terrifying practical joke on the photographer, there was actually a somewhat reasonable explanation.

Back then, taking pictures was expensive enough that it was a once-in-a-lifetime (er, or shortly thereafter) thing for most and required people to sit perfectly still for a couple of minutes. And if there’s one thing dead people are good at, it’s sitting still .

Eventual y, the practice of memorial photography went out of style, maybe because picture taking became more affordable and didn’t have to be reserved for special occasions such as death. Or possibly everyone just sat up all at once and said, “Wait, what the hel are we doing?”

1. BURIED ALIVE

The legend

Some poor schmuck is committed to his eternal resting place, even though he’s not quite ready to take that final dirt nap. Scratch marks are later found on the coffin lid along with other desperate signs of escape.

The truth

This not only happened, but back in the day it happened with alarming regularity. In the late nineteenth century, will iam Tebb tried to compile all the instances of premature burial from medical sources of the day. He collected 219 cases of near-premature burial, 149 cases of actual premature burial, and a dozen cases where dissection or embalming had begun on a not-yet-deceased body.

This was an era before doctors such as the esteemed Dr. Gregory House gained the ability to solve any ailment within forty-two minutes (see page 205 for just how far away they were). If you showed up presumed dead, the good doctor probably leaned over your face, screamed, “Wake up!” a few times, and then buried you.

The concern over being buried alive was so real back then that the hot-ticket item for the wealthy was the “safety coffin,” which all owed those inside to signal to the outside world (usual y by ringing a bel or raising a flag) should they awake six feet under. Though answering that bel sounds like a good way to get ambushed by a zombie if you ask us.

And if you think you’re safe, you should talk to Carlos Camejo, who got into a car accident and woke up in the middle of his autopsy. In 2007. We might suggest adding a line to your will that states you’re to be buried with a gas-powered auger in your casket.

Some historians have compared Lincoln’s tone of voice to “a howler monkey with its balls trapped in a sewing machine.”

WASHINGTON
. Jackson. Roosevelt. The tal one. Other Roosevelt. And so on. These are the men who poured the foundation for the ass-kicking spacescraper that is the United States of America. Together, they built this country with nothing but their bare hands, a fistful of stars, and an undisclosed number of dead Indians. During their presidencies, each was lauded and beloved by a majority of the nation’s people.

Here’s why those same beloved presidents would lose to Walter Mondale today.

5. ABRAHAM “HAMMY” LINCOLN

How beloved was he?

After naming a town after him and putting his face on two kinds of money, we apologized for the insufficient tribute by carving his face into a mountain.

Then we built a body for the head and put it in a giant stone temple on prime real estate in the nation’s capital. Even this was insufficient for the mighty Lincoln, so we named a log and town car after him. And thus was he sated.

Why today’s media would destroy him

Even if he wasn’t hideous under all that face camouflage, his voice sounded like SpongeBob’s. all his transcendent, three-hour, world-changing speeches were delivered in a piercing falsetto contemporaries described as “shril , squeaking, piping, unpleasant.” Not to mention his “flesh, wrinkled and dry” or his “doughnut complexion.” At the time, the ability to talk like a teakettle probably helped Lincoln’s unamplified voice reach the nosebleeds. Nowadays, an annoying sound can easily torpedo a presidential campaign. If you don’t believe it, just ask Howard Dean how he’s been doing lately.

4. JAMES “WHERE’D ’E GO?” MADISON

How beloved was he?

Madison wrote most of the Constitution, the first ten amendments, a third of
The Federalist Papers
, and an early outline of
The Da Vinci Code
. The man had the foresight to invent the concept of checks and balances, and the bal s to immediately discard them by presiding over the Louisiana Purchase as secretary of state.

You know Madison Square Garden? Guess who it’s named after. Yes, for two hundred years the father of the Constitution has graced every Knicks home game, Kings of Leon encore, and WrestleMania with a sense of ancient and noble wisdom.

Why today’s media would destroy him

Because he was tiny. Not just small, pixieish. At five foot four, he was the shortest man to ever hold the office, a full seven inches shorter than the presidential average, and historians are divided on whether his weight ever made it into the triple digits. Legend has it that he gave speeches from a podium made out of an old shoe box and was sworn in on a deck of cards with a cross drawn on it. He was a tiny little man is our point.

In a media landscape where someone’s gender (Hillary “No Balls” Clinton) or embarrassing flop sweat (Richard “Slimer” Nixon) can be a political death sentence, itty-bitty Madison would have been eaten alive by the likes of Rush Limbaugh (quite literal y if Limbaugh mistook him for a Keebler elf). If you don’t think size matters, chew on this statistic: Up to and including the election of Barack Obama, the tal er of the two candidates for president has won the election 88 percent of the time. Those are betting odds, friends. It seems voters just don’t cotton to a presidential candidate they can squat press.

3. GROVER “OLD NONCONSECUTIVELY” CLEVELAND

How beloved was he?

Enough to win the popular vote three times and get elected twice, nonconsecutively. That means we dumped Grover, went out with another president for a while, then came crawling back, just like he said we would in his campaign speeches and in all those sobbing voice-mail messages.

Why today’s media would destroy him

He pulled a Woody all en while in office. Cleveland married a woman twenty-eight years younger than him, whom he had helped raise from infancy, in the White House itself. While the fourth estate would have a field day with that today, that kind of thing didn’t faze the sexual progressives of the 1880s, because Cleveland remained popular despite a campaign by his opponents calling out an il egitimate he’d sired while a lawyer in New York. Their unofficial slogan “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?” was deftly countered by Cleveland’s own “Gone to the White House. Kiss my ass!”Ilegitimate children? Baby wife? Man, that’s what today’s media would refer to as, “Oh my God, this is so juicy I think I’m having a heart attack.”

2. FRANKLIN “KING OF AMERICA” ROOSEVELT

How beloved was he?

FDR got us out of the Depression and into World War I, saving the country and inventing an entire film genre in one fel swoop. He was spawned from the ancestral loins of Teddy Roosevelt, a man who climbed the Matterhorn on his honeymoon, lost vision in one eye while boxing in the White House, and gave an hour-long speech about the fact that he had just been shot before walking onstage. Just having Roosevelt blood in your body without your veins exploding was considered pretty impressive.

All of this made him so beloved, he got elected four times. By the fourth time, it’s unclear why they even bothered holding an election.

Why today’s media would destroy him

Roosevelt suffered from polio, one of the most dangerous diseases of his time, and eventual y died in office. If you have to be told why that wouldn’t fly these days, you clearly missed the shit storm the media kicked up in 2008 about John McCain’s age. And we might not have elected Obama if he hadn’t

promised to quit smoking. With each election, the candidate’s medical records undergo more scrutiny. You think Roosevelt would have gotten away with polio, when John “Has Chunks of People Like You in His Stool” McCain can’t get away with being over seventy?

Not to mention the inevitably leaked fact that Roosevelt’s mother made him wear a dress until he was five.

1. JOHN “F’ED YOUR GIRLFRIEND” KENNEDY

How beloved was he?

Kennedy dealt with the Cuban missile crisis, started the Peace Corps, and won a Pulitzer Prize all while being stunningly handsome.

To put it in perspective: Kennedy was probably the most beloved president of the past thirty years. Does anyone remember where they were when they heard he got shot?

Why today’s media would destroy him

He had sex with someone other than his wife while president. If you’l recal , the same thing almost ended Clinton’s presidency, and all he did was play target practice with an intern in a blue dress. Furthermore, his most cited affair was with Marilyn Monroe, a huge movie star at the time. That’s like if Clinton had boned Julia Roberts. And even though rumors did swirl about JFK having affairs with other notable ladies of the era, he was never once questioned about it by the media or, for that matter, in a court of law. America sort of just said, “Boys will be boys.” Perhaps we’re more will ing to accept a handsome man boning one beautiful woman than a chubby Southern guy rubbing one out on whoever happens to wander into his office. But Kennedy boned a different beautiful woman almost every day he was in office. Even if he gave O’Reil y sloppy seconds, there’s no way Fox would let him get away with that shit.