Saturday, May 22, 2010

Waiting for the Coroner... A Really Long Time

Story time.  So seven years ago, while I was living in a dorm in college, my roommate decided to move out.  I was alone in the room for the remainder of the year, the other half of my room serving as an occasional closet for my roommate but otherwise it was as if I was in a single room.  I rarely talked to my parents, my professors didn't take attendance, and I didn't have much of a social life yet, so I suddenly had to ask myself the question... what would happen if I mysteriously died in my room?  Would anybody even notice?  Would my body just chillax until the stench alerted everyone on my floor of my untimely demise?

At that point I wrote on my Livejournal that if I ever went three days without writing, they should call my room phone to make sure nothing had happened to me, and if they couldn't get hold of me they should call my parents.  Yes, I was paranoid to an excessive degree.  But I mean, really, what would have happened?

Even worse, what would have happened if I were somewhere truly remote?  It's one thing to die in a dorm room... clearly people would know who I was.  What about those people who don't have any next of kin, don't have any friends, don't get out much, what happens when they die?

A Certain Kind of Death tackles those questions in a quite graphic but very educational way... the stories of decedents are pieced together from scraps of information found around their homes, paperwork is done, burial arrangements are made.  I do not recommend it to people with weak stomachs... but if you have that, I sort of wonder why you're reading a blog called "Stuff Dead People Like."

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Ashes to pencils.

This one has been covered for a couple of years, but say you have a loved one who just loved to write and draw, and that loved one dies and is cremated.

What to do?  Well, Nadine Jarvis has an idea:
She can turn the contents of an average batch of cremains into about 240 pencils.  No need for your artistic loved ones to ever stop drawing!

The case they come in also doubles as a pencil sharpener and... well, an urn.

-- Setkheni

Monday, May 3, 2010

The motorcycle wake.


This, my friends, is the wake of a badass.  Rather than succumb to the usual prone position, David Colon was embalmed and propped on his favorite motorcycle.

You wish your funeral could be this awesome.

-- Setkheni

My inspiration: Cremain Diamonds

I start with this topic because it was my inspiration for all of this.

I was in second grade.  We were learning about rocks in my science class when my teacher explained that diamonds are made out of carbon.  I was one of those nerdy kids who would read nonfiction science books all day, so I raised my hand and asked "People are made of carbon, too.  Does that mean we could turn people into diamonds?"

She explained that, no, we could not turn people into diamonds.

It would be several years later before I realized that she was completely, totally wrong.  Enter LifeGem, a company which takes the cremains of your deceased loved ones and presses them into diamonds to be cut for jewelry.  Jack 1, Ms. Muelius 0.

That led me to a life-long fascination with the ways people deal with death, what we do with the "leftovers" when we are no longer using them, the taboos surrounding them, and of course the rapidly increasing number of creative things to do with a dead body.

That's what this blog is about.  The weird, interesting, and inspirational things that can be done to you when you die.  Maybe you'll find these posts interesting curiosities.  Maybe you're looking for inspiration.  Whatever the case, enjoy your stay.

-- Setkheni