Dia De los Muertos

The Dance of Lifey Death

Some thoughts on death that seem more like rationalization than any kind of philosophy. It kinda flies in the face of the transhumanist movement.
Anyway, it sounds nice & has pretty pictures, so...

Supporting the Government

To help fund the Los Angeles Coroner's office they started a gift shop. Theoretically, the only coroner's gift shop in the USA, it is also online. They sell "ZOMBIE ZONE" crime tape!
Unfortunately, according to this article, it hasn't made a profit and, instead of subsidizing the office, the office subsidizes the store.
In New Orleans the police station in the French Quarter offers souvenirs like T-Shirts sold from a vending machine & other stuff.
Could Hamilton County agencies, the Cincinnati Fire & Police departments do this to supplement their costs? I'm sure Hamilton County Auditor, with his experience in radio could come up with some promotion to promote the Auditor's office. Cincinnati is supposed to be a hot marketing town. Could Cincinnati do better than Los Angeles?

I will Sunbathe on Your Grave !

OK, so "I will sunbathe on your grave" probably isn't as tough a threat as "I will spit/piss/dance on your grave but you might give it a shot next time you're bitching at somebody. When these two women did it they drew a lot of ire, one guy saying the women should be buried alive.
I see no problem with it as long as they clean off any oils they might have slimed the slabs with. Ths person taking the picture might have been the creepiest person in the mess.
Thig is, I have always liked bench type gravestones & I would hope people for generations to come might sit for a spell. No dress code, profanity, smoking, drinking AOK.
I don't know if sunbathing is allowed in cemeteries in general. Cincinnati's Spring Grove Cemetery has some secluded areas currently but I don't know their rules.
Anyway, if you don't want people lying on your grave, you can always put iron spikes all over it.

Death Cafes

Some folks from Arlington Memorial Gardens in Cincinnati discuss their monthly 'Death Cafes' on WVXU.

Death Tech

I posted about this earlier, but here you can just watch & listen to Dr. John Troyer talk all the same shit that was in the Atlantic article. The early adoption of technologies by the death industry seems only rivaled by the sex industry. Think of that.
The biomass eating robots might com in handy when everybody in Texas dies of ebola.
I'm still hoping for the evolving music & speech shit.

What do you want for your last ride?

1 in 15 funerals use non-traditional hearses.
Could custom vehicles lure people away from cremation?
Unfortunately funeral prices continue to increase and cremation is becoming more popular every day, so maybe funerals & processions featuring special vehicles may become a popular oddity for the wealthy that might attract attention from the lower castes. Maybe Funerals of the Starz could be a hit & those guys who customize cars on the History Channel can get in on the act.

Guardian article here

High Tech Urns

With the advent of 3D printing, 3D scanning & modeling, your funerary urn designs about limitless nowadays. Imagine an urn shaped like your head? Your skull? Your BUTT!?!?!
Foreverence made a giant Devo hat for Bob Casale's cremains. Not too impressive but it's a start for what crematiophiles can do in the future.

Your Intertube Immortality

The Uniform Law Commission is plotting ways for your online life to be handled in a secure way.
If your account goes dormant for long some providers just delete you. If your death is confirmed some places freeze your accounts.
Technically you are not allowed to let other people use your accounts as part of your terms of service with FaceBook & the like so you're not really allowed to let the executor of your estate access your stuff. Even if you did & put all your passwords into your will, that would become a public document after your demise. Seems like that last part has to have some kind of fix just going back to safe combinations. I dunno.
Anyway these guys are going to fix everything & change the service providers' TOSs.

Read more here

Bodybags Redux

Last summer there was a case where an Ohio woman used a Kentucky funeral home to cremate her son & had the funeral director split the ashes into 4 bags. The woman was infuriated that he used leftover WalMart bags while the funeral director was kind of freaked out about splitting up the remains.
How the laws in Ohio & Kentucky apply here, I don't know. I couldn't find anything in Ohio about splitting up cremated remains.
You cannot commingle multiple people's remains but you can scatter ashes where other people's ashes have already been scattered which sounds like commingling to me but what do I know?
In Florida the court recently ruled that cremated remains are not 'property' and, as such, cannot be divided. That makes sense to me but then I am more into burial so maybe that influences my opinion as I wouldn't dream of being chopped up and sending an arm here & a leg there.
Meanwhile, I think Ohio should go back to the drawing board.

Florida case here

Ohio/Kentucky case here

Previous blogpost here

The Gypsy Graves in Spring Grove Cemetery
While other folks can tell you about the legends, origins, rumors and stuff about the Gypsy graves at Spring Grove Cemetery that are elaborately decorated on Memorial Day, nobody seems to want to tell where the graves are. This can make finding them a bit daunting as Spring Grove is one of the largest cemeteries in the country.
Blogging isn't Cool to the rescue.
Go in the main entrance and go straight. Go through the tunnel/under the bridge and make the first left (west). Follow this a while, at one point you will see the tomb of John Robinson on your right. You might want to stop and make an offering to him in commemoration of all that he did to bring joy, excitement and wonderment to kids and families around the country for so many years. The ladies adorning the entrance are Faith, Hope and Charity.
Proceed on (west). You will come to a pond and the road will bend right around it. Follow this road and then bear left. As you head north you will see a chain link fence to your left. It will become a brick wall. When you see an iron gate in the wall - stop.
The graves are to your right on that road and the next couple up ahead.
The grave sites are usually family sites that center around a large memorial stone. Some stones have pillars and some use the marking of a thistle. They are made of both red and grey granite. They decorated around Memorial Day with massive displays of flowers and other decorations and are frequently draped with purple bunting. It's probably about as close to a Day of the Dead as we get up here in whitebread Ohio.
While this may seem like a queer and curious custom, it is serious poo to the folks involved, so, if you go, don't gawk, don't mess with the displays, don't take pictures of mourning people - be respectful.

What Would You Be Caught Dead In ?

not this!This fashion show of funeral gowns rejected by Star Trek was probably a little different for the models who are probably a little more used to runway shows. Dunno why they are lying on mirrors on the floor but what the heck, you usually don't look up at people on runways, either.
So what would you want to be buried in? Your usual attire? Something more formal? A Batman costume?
You can go biodegradable
The Siberian Ice Maiden wore a 3 foot high hat that necessitated an 8 foot coffin.

Some more crap to ponder

An AI Seance

OK, when the going gets weird, the weird get going. So, after you kick the bucket, these guys have come up with a scheme that marries the dumbass shit you tweet & blather about in other online venues with an artificial intelligence engine, globs it onto an avatar and lets your loved ones semi sorta kinda speak with your dead ass via Skype.
First thing to pop into my noggin was the scene in Dark Star where the crew has to resurrect the dead captain.
I don't get it. It might fly with casual friends, but for close friends & relatives, forget it. Or maybe that's how people relate to each other now.
Still, I bet Harry Houdini would have kicked the developers asses.

More here

Hamilton County GOP Power Grabs

Let's face it, the Hamilton County GOP doesn't give a rat's ass about the county & it's residents. Everything is about Republican dominion & their old boy's network (including spouses, & cousins).
In a recent Newsmakers episode coroner, Dr Sammarco outlined a whole host of county agencies that could share the Mercy Hospital site in Mt Airy with the crime lab. Her suggestions were primarily law enforcement which fits in with the crime lab's purpose. The GOP's last minute bid to move the Board of Elections to the facility is wrong headed and not even a good fit as the crime lab requires a bit of security & the BOE is by it's nature a public office with people coming & going all day long.
HamCo GOP Chairman Al Triantafilou waged a dirty campaign against Sammarco in an effort to get his boy into the office based on a campaign of "everything's just fine at the crime lab". This is his move to screw the crime lab that he characterizes in a bit of Wally Butterworth channeling as a "failed Democrat experiment".
There's no point trying to work with the GOP on this - they are dealing in bad faith - but crazy begets crazy, so John Cranley has offered space for the BOE downtown. A roughly $700k/yr gift to county taxpayers from Cincinnati. Obviously not what the GOP chairman wants as he tries to drive a wedge between city & county. Cranley also asked GOP BOE member Chip Gerhardt to recuse himself from voting on the issue as he is a city employee. Gerhardt promptly resigned due to his fealty to the GOP death cult.
The HamCo GOP is so hellbent on rigging elections & attaining power, they will sabotage public safety without a second thought. They are behaving more like suicide assassins than the statesmen they purport to be.
The citizens of Hamilton County need an Atticus Finch.

HERE is the direct link to the Newsmakers interview.

As the Crime Lab turns here, here and here

Are Your Departed Loved Ones Necro Slaves ?

I do not endorse this company, but they are spot on about the current online memorial services.
I paraphrase

Dad worked hard all his life and now that he's passed, he's still working - selling online advertising.

FWIW, your family can probably get it's own website with message boards, videos, databases & such for around a hundred bucks a year, so 5 zeds or more & you can probably beat the big guys' price of $20/yr apiece & you can set it up anyway you want and no advertising.
Well, if you want to run ads for cousin Otis' bait & ammo shop - go for it.

Watching

While there might be some value in public executions & torture, it's not likely going to happen anytime soon. At least not while we have Democrats in office.
But would you want to watch a family member be executed?
In a recent execution, using an untried chemical cocktail, the children of the executed watched as their father died over a short period of time, 15 - 25 minutes. Shootings & beheadings take less time. Crucifixions take considerably longer. Regardless, even if your dad brutally raped & murdered young pregnant woman, watching him die is going to be painful. So why watch?
I've done one natural death watch. It's no fun but you don't want to leave the dying alone. But that's not an execution.
I don't get it, I think I would tell my kids to stay away. There's no reason to have that burned into your memory.

Fishwarp aarticle with an amusing misspelling here

RIP Brian Griffin

Blogging isn't Cool mourns the loss of Brian Griffin - recently killed in a traffic accident.
More info here

Worried About Death ?
I'm not sure this graph really mens much, it's touting that atheists are less worried about death, but I am not sure if it just means atheists just don't dwell on it so much. Most suicidal extremists tend to be religious.

Sending Coal to NewcastleIn a drama of politics, religion & necro-voting that would have made the Marquis de Sade blush, a nun who filled out & mailed her roommate nun's absentee ballot postmortem will get, essentially, probation. The funny part is that she will be required to do community service. Isn't that kind of a major part of nunning anyway?
yeah, that'll teach her!

Fishwarp story here

The Culture of DeathWell, ok, maybe not the culture but the business of death…..

It was a common sight to see some men come into the shop from the county with a long cornstalk in his hand — a measure of the length of someone just dead.

The Springfield Noose Son takes a look back at the funeral business in the 19th century.
Springfield was also at the forefront of the burial vault biz, too - originally meant to deter grave robbers & now just serves to make life easier for cemetery grounds keepers.