Category: Death + Humor

Categories
Death + Humor Death + the Law

From Bea-yond the Grave

Bea Arthur Continues Her Activism in Death
Maria Elena Fernandez, LATimesBlogs (April 22, 2010)

Due to a special stipulation in her will, deceased comedic actress Bea Arthur is speaking out against animal cruelty.

As part of their McCruelty campaign, PETA is using images of Ms. Arthur, a.k.a. Maude, Dorothy, et. al. in new ads appearing in the Chicago Tribune.

I’m Rolling Over in My Grave!Just like many non-profits, PETA offers a “planned giving” option. According to PlannedGiving.com, “a planned gift is any major gift, made in lifetime or at death as part of a donor’s overall financial and/or estate planning.”

The world of planned giving is an area of estate planning and charity and philanthropic work that is sometimes overshadowed by the more splashy details of a will involving heirs and final disposition preferences. There are various organizations out there in the planned giving universe such as the stuffy-sounding Partnership for Philanthropic Planning. But in exploring a bit out on the web, we discover the lighter side of the biz.

The planned giving marketers have failures as well. The number one tip given by PlannedGiving.net is to “Stop telling your prospect you’re waiting for him to die.” The fix? Tell ’em it’s all about immortality. That’s what the Ayn Rand Institute seems to be trying to do with their Atlantis Legacy Program. One Atlantis donor put it this way: “I like the idea of my money continuing to fight for Ayn Rand’s ideas into the indefinite future, even after I’m gone. In a way, it’s a form of immortality: to be funding, beyond my lifetime, a world-changing institution.”

And so, we come full circle. In the immortal words of Bea Arthur, “Now this goes to the grave with you – I hate cheesecake!” (This was copied from ThinkExist.com, a dubious quotations site with little attributable documentation, and despite my official librarian duty to cite my sources, I’m gonna let this one slide.)

Categories
Death + Humor Death + Popular Culture Death + the Law

How Dead Bodies are Supposed to be Repatriated

How Do You Repatriate A Body from the UK?
BBC News (April 7, 2010)

In response to last week’s incident at Liverpool John Lennon Airport wherein two women tried to take a dead man’s body on the plane because he “…was sleeping…” the BBC has helpfully explained the proper dead body repatriation procedure. I wrote about this case in all its Weekend at Bernie’s glory here.

There isn’t much more to say about this situation other than it is a bad idea to just show up at an airport with a dead body. A really bad idea.

The BBC helpfully asks and answers its own question:

But what is the proper procedure if the unthinkable happens and the body of a loved one needs to be transported from the UK? The most important step is to consult a doctor to confirm the person is deceased and provide a death certificate. This fulfils the need for the death to be registered in the country where the person passed away, which is a legal requirement.

So there you go. Make sure and get a note from the local doctor. Somethings never change.

Categories
Death + Humor Death + Popular Culture Death + the Law

Weekend at Bernie’s at Liverpool John Lennon Airport

Women Try to Take Body on Plane at Liverpool Airport
BBC News (April 6, 2010)

Two Women Arrested with Dead Relative at Airport
Pair told staff at Liverpool John Lennon airport that 91-year-old dead relative was sleeping
James Meikle, The Guardian (April 6, 2010)

Straight out of the Dead Body Stories You Can’t Make Up (DBSYCMU) file comes this gem. Two women tried to board a dead relative, sunglasses-clad and propped in a wheelchair, onto a plane at Liverpool John Lennon Airport. According to The Guardian, the women told anyone who asked that the man was sleeping.

Now, anyone with a keen sense of history will automatically recognize the uncanny similarities between this news item and the HILARIOUS 1980’s film Weekend at Bernie’s. And since the interweb is always there when you need it, even Weekend at Bernie’s has its own Wikipedia page. Again, DBSYCMU.

For those who don’t remember the movie, it goes a little like this: Bernie Lomax is a crooked CEO who invites two unsuspecting employees (Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman) to his beach house to have them killed by mobsters because McCarthy and Silverman are snooping around the company’s finances. Bernie is double crossed by the mob, ends up dead himself, and the two low level employees party hard with Bernie’s corpse. The film was so funny that it warranted a sequel and, apparently, a third installment is in the works.

I’m going to guess that what happened at John Lennon Airport had nothing to do with mobsters and partying at beach houses but it never hurts to dream.

In all honesty, what this entire Liverpool incident needs is a little Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman action. Least of which to help revive their film careers.

But I digress. Perhaps the moral of this most recent dead body story can be located in the tagline for Weekend at Bernie’s: He may be dead…but he’s the life of the party!

Here is the movie’s trailer to help jog some memories:

Categories
Cemeteries Death + Humor Funeral Industry

Elephants? No. Leashed Dogs? Check.

No Camels, Er, Unleashed Dogs Allowed in Cemetery
Katie Mercer, The Province (March 25, 2010)

This is normally the sort of story I’d tweet, but after my columbaria tour one sweltering Vancouver Saturday, I have a soft spot in my heart for Mountain View Cemetery. In an effort to get visitors to actually read (and hopefully heed) a sign, the City of Vancouver got silly:

No elephants.
No camels.
No dogs without leashes.
Dogs with leashes = OK.

According to the Province article,

“I hope the ‘no elephants’ policy provides a gentle reminder to others to keep the leash on their dogs,” [cemetery manager Glen Hodges] added.

The cemetery is the only one in the Lower Mainland that officially allows dogs on their grounds.

Hmm, I wonder about leashed camels…

The sign was designed by cemetery booster and civic historian John Atkin, who in small-world coincidental fashion was my tour guide last summer. For those in Vancouver he recommends an upcoming, day-long forum at Mountain View on April 24: The Final Disposition: De-Mystifying Death, Funerals, Cemeteries & Ceremonies. From the cemetery’s homepage:

A forum designed to address practical and philosophical matters on dying and death. Discussion begins with hospice care and continues with the role of funeral homes and cemeteries. Alternative options such as green burial and the importance of ritual and ceremony will end the day.

Wish I were there!

Categories
Death + Humor Death + the Web Monuments + Memorials

The Overdue Death (and Snarky Remembrance) of Internet Explorer 6

A Funeral Is Being Held for IE6 on March 4. Browser to Be Buried Without the Body
MG Siegler, Tech Crunch (February 23, 2010)

In response to Google’s announcement that come March 1, it will no longer support Internet Explorer 6, the Aten Design Group is holding a funeral for the much be-loathed, cantankerous old man that is Microsoft’s eight-year ancient blunder of a browser.

Mock funerals forever! You can attend the service in person in Denver on March 4, send flowers or merely leave some memories — rants, backhanded compliments or even begrudging respect — at the memorial site. A few of our favorites (may require special knowledge to appreciate and fully ROFL):

Cromat: Enjoy that coffin and remember margin: 0 auto;height: 100%; is valid in heaven.

Danny Raede: He was the browser i used for many years. I will never forget installing xp, booting him up, and then downloading firefox.

Michał: Oh IE6… Such a hard person to please. Always thought he was more !important than everyone else. It’s like he could never fall inline and instead just float’d along by himself. And though he was often the bane of my existence, it pains me to see him now that he has Layout in the coffin. It makes me want to just * > #cry. Is that coffin 100% height?

b0ne5: I’ll always remember IE6 as a maverick. It rendered things its own way, even when all the other browsers were conforming to standards. Conforming was not in its lexicon & it refused to bow to pressure to conform to web standards. Shine on you crazy diamond!

Topher Fangio: I just rewrote a good portion of our site, and he (like an old man with thick glasses) didn’t quite see it just right. The images were distorted, and the colors looked a bit faded. Sad to go that way, looking at a bleak and awkward world…

Amos Vryhof: Die you sick twisted bastard!

Chris Shattuck: The one purpose in our existence that seems incontrovertible is that we should work steadily to improve the quality of the lives of our children and children’s children. IE6 had a difficult, highly criticized life and kept mostly to himself, but he was also successful in this one respect.

Transparency was incredibly difficult for him, perhaps because it would expose too much of his pain. But by forging his way in a world where there were no standards (at least that he was aware of), he did the hard work for his progeny, and IE6, 7 and 8 are a testament that from the flawed can emerge a greater perfection (though there’s still room for improvement). And for all his backwards ways, IE6 is still valued by holdouts across the world who rally for the qualities that he was unable to pass successfully onto the next generation. IE6, I salute you and respect your role in my world.

But damn, good riddance.

Internet Explorer 6: Hai guys! Just thought you should know I will be unable to attend… as this page is broken and does not render properly for me.

Categories
Death + Humor Funeral Industry

Sexy Coffin Calendar Showdown!

Coffin Calendars Are a Sexy Hit
New Poland Express (October 16, 2009)

via Trendhunter Magazine, “Controversial Casket Calendars”

Last October DeathRef tweeted about Italian coffin maker CofaniFunebri, which created a coffin product catalog featuring scantily clad goths. (This did not make the Death Reference Desk proper — while fine with being a sexy goth coffin calendar tweeter, I was reluctant to become a sexy goth coffin calendar blogger.)

Hesitation, begone! This is officially a post-worthy trend, which I initially missed but to which Trendhunter (appropriately enough) just alerted me. Not about to be outdone, Poland’s largest coffin manufacturer, Lindner, came out with its own sexy model, coffin-humping calendar. Hey, guys, don’t you know there’s a crisis going on? And perhaps it’s because of declining casket sales that marketing teams are getting creative (read: skanky) with outreach initiatives.

In response to criticism about the appropriateness of such a venture, the Lindner managing director, Barthosz Linder, says:

I don’t believe that sex alongside death is shocking and offends people who have just lost someone close to them. I produce coffins. I could produce furniture or something else. But I don’t. And this is a good coffin. I decided on such advertising because I wanted people to know about our brand. That’s it.

And about ripping off the Italians? What say you to that, Mr. Lindner?

The idea for this calendar is mine. Although I admit that I was inspired by an Italian calendar. There, a company does the same thing, but I thought, ‘Well, our Polish girls are prettier, and our coffins are better. … So we can do better.’

This is the part where I’d say, “You be the judge!” if I didn’t suspect you had better things to do. But if not, you can check out the full CofaniFunebri calendar here and see teaser pages from the Lindner calendar here, which boasts of “12 beautiful coffins [and] marvelous pictures of 12 beautiful Polish girls in magic landscapes.”

Categories
Burial cremation Death + Humor Death + the Web Funeral Industry

Video Killed the Cremation Star… or So Suggests Casket Company

Aurora Casket Company Trying to Stop Cremations with Video
R. Brian Burkhardt, YourFuneralGuy (January 25, 2010)

YourFuneralGuy just found a gem: it seems the Aurora Casket Company, one of the big three casket manufacturers in the United States, made a video of a mock funeral for direct cremation, the very villain encroaching on and slowly killing their market.

It’s dry, earnest and, well, pretty awful:

The Death of Direct Cremation from Aurora on Vimeo.

I do applaud the intention — I just hope they’re laughing, too. Whatever some marketing blog or fifteen year old told them, the internet will not save the casket industry… this time.

Categories
Death + Humor

Dead Drunk Funeral Freebies for NYE

Free Funerals for Drunk Drivers
Jerry Carnes, 11Alive (December 29, 2009)

A public awareness campaign for drunk driving meets cheeky morbidity in Rome, Georgia. Here citizens can sign a contract at McGuire, Jennings and Miller Funeral Home stating they intend to drive after drinking or doing drugs on New Year’s Eve. Those who die will receive a free funeral, including a casket, grave site, body preparation and limousine (and perhaps a pre-revelry visit from the police?).

Unfortunately the offer is not extended to those killed by impaired drivers — nor has anyone taken them up on the offer. We guess it’s the thought (and publicity) that counts.

Have a happy and safe New Year’s, everybody!
<3 Death Ref

Categories
Death + Humor Death + the Economy Funeral Industry

Wal-Mart: Save Money. Live Better. Die Cheap(ly).

Wal-Mart Offering Low-Cost Caskets, Urns On Its Website
Emily Fredrix, Associated Press (October 28, 2009)

It’s all over the death-dar: following Costco’s lead, Wal-Mart now offers caskets and urns for sale online, with priority Fed-Ex freight shipment anywhere in the continental U.S.

With prices that undercut funeral home options combined with its juggernaut consumer base — not to mention “and in this economy” as all are wont to say — Wal-Mart can expect to make a, well, killing in the death biz, potentially causing the funeral industry to rethink its pricing strategies and oftentimes gouging of customers. In the meantime, the rest of us can enjoy / be numbed by the terrible puns of talking heads:

[This was one a video, but it’s been removed. It was terrible.]

This poor man actually apologizes for the crappy copy halfway through, sunk beneath his breath, “I didn’t write this.” Oh, the humanity! The indignity!

When death meets consumerism meets mass media, watch out. When nothing is sacred — is trivialized, cheap — we don’t have to think about what anything means. Like death, and ripping off the bereaved, and making unethical purchases because it’s all you can afford.

Categories
Death + Humor

The Weird Book Room

deadpeople
The Weird Book Room has a little something for everyone. As part of the larger AbeBooks.com, this little corner of the website offers titles you may or may not find in your local library, neighborhood bookstore or even the thrift store around the corner. Most are downright obscure—and probably out-of-print to boot in many cases. Some, like Twinkie Deconstructed (which I admit to reading), was published just a few years ago and is hardly rare. But here they all are, collected for your amusement and yes, your purchasing enjoyment.

What kind of books can one find in the Weird Book Room? Funny you should ask. Titles such as Why Do I Vomit?, 50 Sad Chairs and Is Your Dog Gay? are just the tip of the iceberg. The death-related titles aren’t quite the gutbusters, but worth a browse with such titles as Dead Pet: Send Your Best Little Buddy Off In Style, An Incomplete History of Funerary Violins, and my personal fave, People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It. We have that last title in our collection at Multnomah County Library and I checked it out, but it was so bad I couldn’t even get through the first 5 pages.

Christmas is coming and Hanukkah too. Perhaps a copy of Jewish Chess Masters on Stamps is in order?

Categories
Death + Humor Death + Popular Culture

Hot Human on Dinosaur Action…with Pictures

The Death Reference Desk’s good friend Joanna Ebenstein at the Morbid Anatomy Library in Brooklyn is into the hipper, cooler, creepier side of dead stuff. That’s why Death Ref likes her so much.

So when Joanna invited me to give a talk on Monday, October 26 at the Morbid Anatomy Library I said YES YES YES.

But the whole story gets even better. I know. Who knew it was possible?

Instead of my usual death…death…dead bodies…bla bla bla action I am giving a talk on the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY. The talk is full of hot human on dinosaur action and I have photos and video to boot.

Come on down to the Morbid Anatomy Library and be SAVED!!!!

Here is the official announcement:

Morbid Anatomy Presents at Observatory:

“Humans riding on the backs of Dinosaurs: A walk through the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky USA.”

by John Erik Troyer, Ph.D., Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath

Date: Monday October 26th
Time: 7:30 PM (doors at 7:00 PM) *please note earlier than usual start time*
Admission: $5

Creation Museum

In May 2007, the twenty-seven million dollar Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky. The museum is dedicated to representing a “young earth,” Christian explanation of the planet, which makes the known universe roughly 6-10,000 years old. Within the museum, visitors can view a large-scale Garden of Eden diorama, a fully loaded planetarium, and animatronic dinosaurs. Since opening, well over 835,000 people have visited the museum. The Creation Museum is a key player in what Troyer calls the American Science War and is part of an ongoing battle between advocates of Evolutionary Biology, Intelligent Design, and Creationism.

This presentation closely (and humorously) examines the relationships between Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution in America by giving a pictorial tour of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. There will also be artifacts from the museum for your perusal.

Creation Museum

Biography:
Dr. John Troyer is the Death and Dying Practices Associate and RCUK Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. He received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society in May 2006. From 2007-2008 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University teaching the cultural studies of science and technology. Within the field of Death Studies, he analyzes the global history of science and technology and its effects on the dead body. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website and his first book, Technologies of the Human Corpse, will appear in late 2010.

DIRECTIONS TO OBSERVATORY: ***PLEASE USE NEVINS ST./PROTEUS GOWANUS ENTRANCE***

Observatory is located at 543 Union Street at Nevins St., in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn. The entrance is currently through Proteus Gowanus gallery, in the alley off Nevins St (see below for full details).

R or M train to Union Street in Brooklyn:

Walk two long blocks on Union (towards the Gowanus Canal) to Nevins Street. 543 Union Street is the large red brick building on right. Go right on Nevins and left down alley through large black gates. Proteus Gowanus is the second door on the left.

F or G train to Carroll Street:

Walk one block to Union. Turn right, walk two long blocks on Union towards the Gowanus Canal, cross the bridge, take left on Nevins, go down the alley to Proteus Gowanus, the second door on the left.

For more information, see observatoryroom.org

Categories
Death + Humor Death + Technology Monuments + Memorials

Death: The Final Frontier

A Geek Funeral
kdawson, Slashdot.org (September 29, 2009)

While the obsessively geekerrific can always go for the deluxe Star Trek casket or urn, I rather enjoy this gutted SPARCstation-turned-urn engraved with classic Trekkie nerdery, submitted to Slashdot by reader Sam_In_The Hills for his late brother:

SPARCstation urn

At the memorial service, friends and family scrawled kind thoughts and remembrances on Post-it notes and slid them into the floppy drive of this circa 1990 machine. BRA-VO.

I also couldn’t help but notice that Slashdot uses the tag “geekurn.” I am sad to report it’s the only item tagged as such — but the precedence has now been set. Don’t let us down, Slashdot.