Thanks for also trying it out, Brian.

I feel there's little more I can do. I guess the multiprocessing module could be documented a bit better that join() ought to be called before the pool is deleted? Currently, the docs merely say:

"Wait for the worker processes to exit. One must call close() or terminate() before using join()." (http://docs.python.org/library/multiprocessing.html#multiprocessing.pool.multiprocessing.Pool.join)

Something along the following lines could be added:

"You must call join() when you no longer need the pool; otherwise, zombie processes may keep running."

I'm happy to provide a patch, if needed.