Of course it was a joke, I know a few Linux distros, and this include Arch, which I consider a very good alternative to Zenwalk.
However, you just gave me 2 examples of things that we will never adopt from Arch Linux:
1) Dependencies integrated into packages have proven to be a very bad idea, even if DEB and RPM based systems have to live with it now : it's still a bad design in term of package maintenance.
2) Building packages with an automated script is an awful idea! Building packages is for distro developers and Linux specialists : allowing newbies to do it is the best way to break everything. Recently I saw many badly built packages that needed to be redesigned : all built with some obscure auto-scripting system, unmaintainable, unreadable. I'm thinking about forbidding usage of such build systems in Zenwalk. Users use packages created by packagers, or they have to learn Linux enough to write buildscripts by themselves.
Cheers
JP