Q. You ask questions about zombies at the end of your "Zombieland" review. If we set aside the George Romero playbook, which states that "they're us" and which makes associations between zombies and American consumer culture, the military complex and technological addictions, the general purpose of zombies is simply to give audiences a glimpse of what happens to the body after death. In the United States particularly, natural processes of death and decay are hidden away as taboo, or at best, are sanitized to the point where, for the average person, there is a pretty large and troubling knowledge gap when it comes to the subject. Zombies let us see "what happens" behind the scenes of the ultimate disappearing act. They naturally look bad because they are in the process of rotting, which is the whole idea. I suppose if they could come back after being embalmed, it might make them appear a bit more up to code, but I'm unclear as to whether that's allowed or not. As for obtaining food vs. avoiding being blasted, well, zombies are nothing more than instinctual eating machines. Did Bruce the shark try to avoid gulping down the oxygen tank as it was attempting to eat Roy Scheider? Same principle. Some creatures simply don't care as long as there are munchies in the vicinity. But this only begs the question: WHY do zombies only want to eat living human flesh? I think it might be a status issue amongst monsters. Kenton Sem, Bethlehem, Pa. A. You make good sense, Pennsylvania Zombieologist. Since the living eat the dead, why shouldn't the dead turn the tables?