What Not To Do With My Remains

[dr_pretentious]

Until I started writing fiction, I didn't know I had an obsession with bizarre funerary customs. Grave goods, mummification, ritual grave robbing, cremation, burning boats, decorative ossuaries--bring it on, there's a place in the Big Book for all of it.

All of it except this.

It's not gross. It's perfectly worksafe. It won't give you nightmares. It might give you a good laugh. The basic premise isn't any weirder than mummification, really. Nonetheless...

I'm with seedmoon on this one. Whatever you do with me, don't do that.

Comments

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

For pets, it kind of makes sense. But putting the remains of a human in one of those teddy bears...

[anghara.livejournal.com]

I'd second THAT.

I love plush toys, I have an entire collection of them, but having one of 'em sitting there with someone's eartlhy remains behind those button eyes would freak-me-out.

Ew.

[vgnwtch.livejournal.com]

It's that they're so nauseatingly twee, to be honest, more than anything else.

you know it's what you want

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

no, silly, not a teddy bear. we'd preserve your body intact, cremate everything in you, and prop you up at your writing desk, dressed the the hammer of the your authority.

you would be accompanied in the afterlife by carefully preserved pen and paper, along with purple, so long as we could keep it running. we'd provide freeze-dried fru-fru caffeine substrates from your favorite pusher.

you've wondered how your offspring might benefit from your glory. if they have the sense to charge a few bucks a head to visit your shrine -- and sell refreshments and suitable things to leave as votive offerings -- they could do quite well for themselves.

Re: you know it's what you want

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. If I ever have offspring, no doubt they'll inherit my willfully perverse streak and take their Uncle Twoeleven's suggestion to heart.

Hm. I've been wondering what the Birin tribe's funerary customs are. (They're the tattooed guys, one of Lel's conquered peoples, in Volume 2--you haven't read them in a long time.) Heck, it's no weirder than skinning your ancestors to make drums so they can keep talking to you.

Actually, for myself, I prefer a sort of reduce-reuse-recycle ethic. Organ donation may be problematic, since I've never been in stellar health, and I've spent long enough in Europe to be considered a mad cow risk and long enough in Korea to be considered a hantavirus (?) risk. Even Bethesda Naval Hospital wouldn't take blood from me, and goodness knows they've got enough broken Marines there to get rebuilt, they could use some. Anyhow, I'm thinking I could be donated to a university with a forensic anthropology program. I could keep teaching, compost in place for a while, and help people learn how to build cases for the prosecution of crimes against humanity. Everybody wins except war criminals.

Re: you know it's what you want

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

ah, the old carbon to carbon, tin to tin approach.

actually, the most popular of those sorts of people (an outfit generally refered to as "the body farm") has a waiting list. gotta sign up early to benefit humanity. :)