Cotard's Syndrome and the Swirling Black Void

K. and I had a wonderful evening at a reception for a new exhibit at the Museum of Jurassic Technology last night. In case anyone is wondering, I think this relationship is definitely serious. It has erased all memories of previous relationships.

By the way, since some of you have asked, I’d like to post some pertinent scientific information about Cotard’s Syndrome. It is a condition – a mental illness – in which a person believes she has died and become a walking corpse. The delusion is often so persistent, she believes she can smell her own flesh rotting, that she can feel worms crawling through her skin, that she is putrefying, and that she has lost her blood and organs and is merely a shadow in this earthly existence.

I feel it would be remiss at this point to not share some details about a certain participant in my study (for the sake of the blog we will call her Mathilde). When I asked her about sensations relating to the “swirling black void,” she responded:

I’m drawn to it, even though it wants to destroy me. But I feel invincible. My flesh is rotting, I know it. I have no organs. I am obsessed with my own skeleton and the knowledge that it is stepping out of my skin, like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. This is the part of me that is eternal, and I feel an invincibility knowing that it is going to be released. Life is the shroud and Death the unveiling. I find myself drawn to decay, and rot. What is it that keeps me moving, even though I am dead? It is the void.

As you will note, this mental delusion is quite serious, not only for the victim, but for anyone who crosses the victim’s path and becomes emotionally entangled with the victim.

Lives have been ruined by far simpler things.

Geophagy in the Non-Living Community

To answer a question posted in the comments section of the previous entry: yes, I was once acquainted with a young woman who indulged in the practice of dirt-eating.

Dirt-eating in the rural south and among the Tzombi population is a complex phenomenon and worthy of an entire paper of its own. The literature presents us with a number of conflicting testimonies about the “mud eaters”: it is sometimes difficult to separate racist propaganda and cultural bias/misunderstanding from disinterested observation; what we do know is that the earliest known reference to the “mud eaters” is in the aforementioned Kish stele.

The next mention comes from the diary of Agnolo di Tura in his 1347 A.D. plague remembrance. There is also an abundance of documentation regarding dirt eating among slaves in the rural south in the United States; because many American slaves came from various related regions through whatever circuitous route, it seems probable that the dirt eating which persists in the rural south was spread by this means. Whether dirt eating is a legitimate practice among the Tzombi population remains to be seen.

Of course, there are also members of the Living Community who still consume dirt, even in modern times. Here, from the White Dirt website:

Some people have actually been known to consume White Dirt regularly and not only like the taste but crave it. It has been said that the taste of white dirt is akin to the fresh way that the ground smells when it's real dry and a little sprinkle of rain falls. Dirt-eating is an ancient tradition that is practiced all over the world and although the demise of the practice has been predicted for many years, it still persists, particularly in rural areas of the South.

Aside from psychopathology (see aforementioned Soil Pica link), there are also possible medical reasons for dirt-eating. One may simply be that, though the need for eating has ceased, the habit continues, and dirt requires no digestion. In some African cultures, dirt eating is practiced among pregnant women, and medical studies have shown that it helps in producing antibodies. Since the post-deceased body is essentially a new life-form with a known susceptibility to certain viruses, it’s entirely possible that dirt-eating functions as a means towards increasing resistance.

Brahmagupta and the Void

A small setback today: another letter to the Center for the Study of the Living Deceased has been returned, unopened. How they can simply ignore my research is beyond human understanding. Adding insult to injury, the Sheriff’s Department rejected my request to conduct a seminar for the officers on Tzombi tolerance (this, despite their so-called public relations campaign to promote tolerance in the greater Los Angeles area).

Doubters and racists can turn a blind eye and pretend that the Tzombi race never existed. Meanwhile I am gathering a mountain of evidence which will soon be impossible to ignore.

I cite as an example the account of Sir Arthur Crawley, writing his Lives of the Mathematicians in the early 1800’s, who brings to light a few facts about the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta which might otherwise have been lost to the ages.

Brahmagupta’s major contribution to mathematics was in treating zero as a number in its own right, and in establishing a set of rules for working with negative numbers. Sir Crawley describes a near-fatal rodent attack which had Brahmagupta laid up for a number of days, presumed dead. He writes:

Upon recovery, Brahmagupta refused all nourishment and devoted
the lion’s share of his time in contemplation of the “cow’s udder,”
the large crater near his home town of Ujjain, which exerted a peculiar
fascination on him.

A rare order form—rare because of the scarcity of paper at the time but presumably necessary due to its unusual nature—details Brahmagupta’s request for a “black bowl, the lip of which is a zero and which, when set upright, represents a fortune, and which when set downright, represents a debt.” The bowl has never been discovered and is presumed destroyed, but several artists’ renditions have been created. I regret that I have been unable to secure the permission to use these images on this blog; however I have attempted with my own hand (a hand not untried in illustration) to render them:

1) Fortune (in Positive Numbers):



2) Debt (in Negative Numbers):



3) A View from Above:



Not surpringly, six months after the date of the order slip, Brahmagupta completed his Brahmasphutasiddhinta, or “The Opening of the Universe.”

Cultivating a Social Life

Though it may seem like I spend all of my time working, I’ve actually been cultivating an active social life. What good is dwelling on the pain of past relationships? I’m certainly not so thin-skinned and pathetic as to be rattled by faux-commenters who might be trying to exploit a perceived weakness.

In FACT, I’m in a new relationship with a lovely co-worker named K. She’s so full of life, so very charming and good at her job. I feel like a whole new man, in case any of you were wondering. So you can stop with the taunting e-mails now. I am rubber and you are glue and anything you write to me simply goes one ear and out the other.

Zombies and the Adolescent Imagination

I was recently cited in an article in Sociological Review entitled “Zombies and the Adolescent Imagination.” I reprint a portion here for the benefit of some of our readers (you know who you are):

The zombie film, as a pop-culture artifact, reveals a great deal about the interior lives of male adolescents. If we look to De Walters’ study of marginalized male adolescents, (“The Lost Boys,” Journal of Pediatrics, Mar. 1971) we find abundant comments relating to sexual confusion and feelings of being unlovable or unloved. Often these comments take a turn towards subjects’ claiming to feel “disgusting” or “gross.” Yet these same adolescents claim an insatiable sexual drive, and therefore their nascent sexuality takes the form of a shambling, blind beast, which must “eat brains” no matter what the cost. The fact that zombies eat brains rather than genitals indicates that what these boys really crave is an emotional connection with a romantic partner, while simultaneously feeling unworthy of such a connection, because of their “gross,” mutating bodies. That these same boys obsessively fear a future in which they become mindless working-class drones highlights their abhorrence of and attraction to the zombie figure.

Another Disappointment

A bit of disappointing news today:

Dear Mr. Weiss –

Thank you for your inquiry regarding the Dorothy Chandler Lecture Series. At this time, we are no longer accepting applications to participate in the series. I am enclosing your proposal for “On the Evolution of Tzombi Culture in late 20th Century Los Angeles and Surrounding Counties” and the supporting materials that you submitted.

Good luck.

Sincerely,
M. Dresser
Assistant to Angela Frond

I believe I made reference in an earlier entry to the costs of pursuing truths which, for whatever reason, the Academic community would rather not hear. The letter above is an example of the professional cost, but there is a personal cost as well. I bring this up not because I feel sorry for myself, nor because I wish to apologize for past behavior, but because I wish to demonstrate my devotion to the Tzombi race, whose plight is larger than my relationship problems.

A certain individual has been posting personal e-mails in the comments section from a relationship which, for reasons which are unrelated to this blog, ended some years ago. Because this individual has a history of mental illness (Cotard's Syndrome) and is, I believe, reaching out for help, I do not want to cut off contact.

As these e-mails have no bearing whatsoever on this blog, please disregard them.

Tar Pits

Another excursion! Yesterday, I spent the afternoon at the George Page Museum, otherwise known as The La Brea Tar Pits. Such glorious remnants of a time we were not present for! Dedicated archaeologists spend every day excavating bones from the sticky pits of tar – mice, birds, saber-toothed tigers, dire wolves and mammoths. I spoke with one of the docents to find out if any human remains had been recovered from the tar – in particular, remains that suggested a post-deceased existence – but the docent referred me to the desk manager, who referred me to the security guard, who suggested I might take a turn in the gift shop. In any case, I now have a wonderful little keychain that reads STUCK ON FOSSILS! I think J. will get a kick out of it. My spirits are high.

Further Troubles with the Management

I made a brief excursion to Bakersfield over the three-day weekend. When I returned, I found that my office had not been cleaned. This is the sixth week in a row that a cleaning crew has skipped over my snug office. While I'm an exceptionally neat worker, I often engage in archive research/retrieval that results in a great deal of dust.

Following my eighth letter to the Property Management Company, I received this e-mail response:

Mr. Weiss:
We don’t clean your office, as per orders of the owener [sic].
The Management.
P.S. Stop writing.

I wrote back asking if there were someone to whom I could direct my frustration, and I received the following:

Hey Zombi [sic] guy:
Like I said, orders of the owener [sic]. What, a little dirt bothers a creep like you?
The Management
P.S. What part of STOP WRITING didn't you under-stand?

Needless to say, I have contacted a lawyer who feels I have the beginnings of a proper discrimination case.

Virus R428: A Three-Case Report

In my fervor I forgot to post the promised article. Here is the abstract:

Virus R428: A Three-Case Report

ABSTRACT: Seven years after the identification of R428 in victims suffering from Post-Mortem Mobility Syndrome its status as virus still remains in question. The presence of R428 in Pre-Decease individuals remains hypothetical. Detection of auto-immune response to R428 in Post-Decease individuals remains controversial, as the sample size is extremely small.

In the present study we examine the ways in which the structure, behavior, and possible function of R428 differ from that of a typical virus. In structure it resembles a virus save for its three polypeptide chains; in behavior it appears to bond with immunoglobulins but is not immobilized by them; in function, its presence is accompanied by a high presence of junk DNA “bundles”, which have been created by the process of agglutination.

Refusing a Marginalized Status

For those of you who haven’t been following the rather heated discourse in the comments section of previous posts, I would like to highlight a portion of an article which is in dispute. The article (Virus R428: A Three-Case Report) was published in the December issue of the Hippokratika and was later retracted, with the implication that the study was discredited because of tainted samples.

Those of us in Academe, however, know of the pressure which can be applied when one’s studies do not comply with established (some might say ossified) beliefs.

I count my marginalized status as a badge of honor; it is representative of the marginalized status of those I study. I do not complain that the CSLD at CCS chose to deny me access to the department DESPITE the fact that I am certain they are using my research (submitted as part of my application) to apply for grant money. The resistance of the Academic community in general to a worldview which would place the Tzombi at the center of world events -- their rightful place – is only indicative of the pressing need for systemic changes in modes of teaching. Their method has been to pathologize tzombism by claiming it is caused by a virus. If true, a virus is responsible for some of the crowning achievements of civilization.

They cannot, and will not, marginalize us! The truth will come out!