With other PS contributors currently detained by wage labor, children, and meaningful human relations, allow me to post a Halloween countdown. First, I’ve praised comedian and The Simpsons writer Dana Gould’s podcast before here. Gould’s a Halloween and classic horror movie junkie and so naturally released a Halloween special featuring Ed Wood writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, with amusing discussion of Bela Lugosi, haunted houses, and pumpkinry. Second, one of the greatest comedy characters – maybe the greatest – of our day is the Tim & Eric & John C. Reilly venture: Dr Steve Brule. Dig Dr Steve BrooOooOoolll.

Let’s format this thing and see how far it goes. This is live and improvised (until I edit and publish). OK, it was never live.

3. David McNally cut his teeth in the electric mid-70s of the Canadian radical left and has maintained his activist commitment while becoming an increasingly renowned academic and intellectual. His latest book just out in paperback is called Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires and Global Capitalism. In a short, sharp commentary he talks zombies and rebellion here.

Nothing better encapsulates [The Walking Dead's] grim survivalism than the decision of its core group (in the season three premiere) to take refuge in a prison – the West Georgia Correctional Facility, no less.

“Perfect,” the group’s leader (ex-cop) Rick Grimes intones on seeing the site. Perfection seems to have taken a few bruises when it’s defined as being trapped in a relic of a hardcore, racist penitentiary under siege from crazed zombies.

4. Grindcore band Pig Destroyer released a new video a couple days ago. What should we say about zombie diplomats in suits arming apes. Don’t ask a post-colonial scholar. Or do.

5. When I taught English 101 in the charming wasteland of Edmonton (a city economically juiced by the mega-death project of the Alberta tar sands), department standards dictated I teach one novel from the 19th century (a good thing). I went with Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein (the 2nd edition if my horrible memory serves). Well, given the worst storm in New York’s history – with the devastation ongoing – suck up your sexy hurricane costume and find a moment for this brilliant Frankenstein-opening piece on climate and Hurricane Sandy by US science professor Chris Williams. After a quote from Shelley’s Frankenstein and two intro paragraphs, here’s Williams’ third.

Alluding, therefore, to Mary Shelley’s great work of gothic horror through the appellation of Frankenstorm for the confluence of Hurricane Sandy and a cold front is, in many ways, quite apt. Particularly as Shelley herself offered a symbolic criticism of the inner dynamics of capitalism and class society in Frankenstein, captured in the quote above, as the conflicted Victor recounts his tale and the uncontrollable forces that he has unleashed as a result of his compulsion to continue with his project, despite the warning signs that are proliferating around him.

6. If you add two more sixes as digits consecutively in an uninterrupted typographical sequence, that shit gets Satanic. So eat electoral politics.

7. I grew up without color TV mostly and without cable ever. I have slanted memories of watching Vincent Price on Canadian television in our unfinished basement. Try this on as a 6-year-old Mennonite on a concrete basement floor in the early 80s.

8. Seriously, shit was great. Retro psychadelic children’s television is nothing but good.

9. Most people are too involved with yoga and horseshit to understand how good heavy metal has become in 2012.

10. I’m now being eaten alive by dinner zombies but may live again to properly complete this post.