Fishtown Local: Attack of the zombies | Opinion | gloucestertimes.com – Gloucester Daily Times

Attention, attention! This is not a movie! This is real life . . . or what remains of it.

You remember all those old movies where the zombies, the pods, the aliens have descended from . . . wherever . . .and have taken over the brains of the unsuspecting humans on their way to conquering the earth? We are saved by the herocoming forth to battle the wayward, slavering minions of already mind-dead citizens intent on eating others brains, or at leasttaking over the world. By the end of the movie, he or she has opened the eyes of whomever they can save and turned the tide of the invasion to save the planet.

Gulp. Well its here but this time, the zombies might be altogether unstoppable. They look exactly as we do and walk, talk and wiggle exactly as we do, but zombies often have looked like us, just with drool. And they are everywhere!

You come around a corner in your car and there he is! Standing right in the middle of the road, oblivious, gazing down in their zombie trance at their cell phone, usually an iPhone or an Android. Aha! That should be enough of a telltale alone: An Android?!

I knew it! Droids and Iphoneys, roaming the streets, gazing helplessly into their machines of dominance, in a trance. The Crystal Ball Gaze, as some call it. They cant look away. They have given up their brains and their will to survive. People walking and Crystal Ball Gazing,three abreast in the street, out past the center line, oblivious of the traffic. The Gaze unfortunately reduces their survival instincts to basically a mosquito level just flitting away, waiting to be swatted. Their backs are turned to the danger of the speeds and tendencies of Gloucester drivers. Just like when their mommies had to grab them by the collar to keep them out of harms way. Their brains formerly fully formed and self-protecting, have turned to mush.

On a recentmorning, this writer came around a blind corner to a smallish car sitting on a two-lane road in the left lane!, no less the driver was stopped, gazing away at his crystal ball. But so was his passenger, both of them so there was no one to grab him by the collar. Almost rear-ended them. Its a street, I yelled, as I edged around them get off the phone. Naturally, they couldnt hear a thing with all the windows rolled up tight. When I looked back, they were still sitting there they had no plans to move. Another attack of the zombies that almost got me (and themselves). Not what Mr. Darwin would call survival of the fittest.

And its spreading. You cant go into a restaurant without seeing a majority of the customers glued to their screens, ignoring their fellow diners and even their meals after they arrive. Been on a sidewalk in a city lately? The zombies have taken over even more minds in the bigger cities. In NYC, absolutely everyone is trapped by their phone. No surprise they lead the nation in pedestrian deaths. And even here, you see zombies at Gloucesters only two traffic lights they immediately reach for their phones to make sure they havent missed any messages maybe zombie instructions from the great zombie leader? I hear complaints of some married couples that their mates must check their crystal ball before sleep at night and then hurriedly first thing upon waking in the morning. Of course how else can they report to their phone? And, of course, we are training the next zombie generation of children to do the same.

So, real world or virtual world? In virtual world, you can check the weather in Instanbul or Cleveland instantly. But out in the real world, people cant remember phone numbers or add or read a map or remember Mickey Mantles number (7). In a drink ticket line at a sailing event last week, the cashiers phone ran out of juice. Twotickets were $12 and I gave her a $20 bill. She couldnt do the subtraction in her head. She had been zombie-ized! Finally, she looked helplessly at me and held out $7. I shook my head and said $8. She was desperate to get her phone back, she said.

But is Crystal Ball Zombie Brain also behind people not getting COVID-19 shots, blinded by their online telephonic masters to be ruled and misinformed by the Zuckerberg forces over the hordes of the already mash-brained Iphoneys? One can only wonder how we will all survive. Hoorah for my flip phone! Hoorah for the real world. Now get off that phone!

Gloucester resident Gordon Baird is an actor and musician, co-founder of Musician magazine and producer of The Chicken Shack community access TV show.

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Fishtown Local: Attack of the zombies | Opinion | gloucestertimes.com - Gloucester Daily Times