06.29.05
Attack of the zombie dogs
Tabloid headline of the year so far:
Boffins create zombie dogs
The story itself is discovered to be something almost medically useful. That’s why I’m saying forget the story; concentrate on that magical headline.
After all, the boffins talk about repairing damaged tissues, suspended animation, no brain damage, saving lives. All the sort of things that boffins want to intimate make them upstanding members of society. In the meantime, they’re in their gothic revival laboratories* itching to put high voltages through dead canines to create zombie dogs.
* I do despair of university vice-chancellors. In the face of struggling science departments across the UK, the clear answer is architectural. New build science departments usually look more or less like top of the range Portakabins. Try vaulting arches instead. Great cavernous laboratories. Faux-wood panelled corridors. Spires! Crypts! Great bubbling systems of glass pipework trailing across the campus. Van Der Graf generators buzzing in every candlelit lecture hall. That’s what the kids want, particularly as the Rowling-reading generation heads towards university. Capes concealing unheard of metal implements. Professorships in Things That Should Not Be. Blood-curdling screams. Zombie dogs should be just the beginning.