Wednesday, December 15, 2010

But do they make it in argyle?

I know, I know, this is old.  But it's new to me!  And I so very rarely get to talk about caskets.

This is a coffin. A wool coffin.  This is one of many ways people are making burial of the dead a little more eco-friendly, and I have to admit, if you were to simply tell me that one could make coffins out of wool, I'd have expected something that looked like one of my great aunt's knitted scarves and not this elegant white casket.

Warming Up the Cold Touch of Death

Does it turn blue if you take the white pills?

First thing I thought about when I saw Ann Marinenko's ghost urns was the Android mascot.  No lie.  I think the description on the website I found these on is... strange.  They refer to the urns as "timeless like a pall," but I bet if you gave one of these to anyone who has attended their fair share of funerals they would disagree.

I will give them that they're whimsical and cute, if a bit unsettling.  Not a bad choice if they get off the ground.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Jack Bell gallery showcases awesome caskets...

I've showcased urns here before, but I don't think until now I've showcased caskets.

And this guy makes some awesome caskets, shaped like things like cars and airplanes and animals and... is that a cacao pod?  I don't know, I just know that it's made of awesome.  His name is Paa Joe.

Article can be found at Gawker which also has a link to the exhibition itself.

Just in time for Christmas!

What do you get for the death aficionado who seems to have everything?  A souvenir from the LA County Coroner.

Their sales have apparently been... well, dead.  Which makes sense because the last thing you want to see as you go to identify your dead next of kin at t he morgue is a rack of hats featuring chalk lines or a lapel pin featuring a foot with a toetag, so they don't really advertise it.  Until now. All they need is the right advertising.

From Yahoo! news:

The store has always been somewhat of a barebones operation. It evolved from a few coffee mugs and T-shirts the department had printed up to use as giveaways at conferences. Then people started requesting them and the department opened a small shop in a supply closet in 1993.
A following developed for the items that poke fun at death — there's nothing gory or bloody — and it landed in tourist guidebooks as a stop for unique souvenirs.
Tour buses stop there and tourists do seek it out. However, the shop's success has been limited by its location on the eastside of downtown Los Angeles amid a grimy strip of auto-glass businesses. The shop lacks a sign outside the coroner's office, a red-brick, century-old former hospital.
From a search I learned that they actually have an online version of the store at this location.  Which is cool until you realize that some of the merchandise doesn't actually make any sense

Wow, Oklahoma, really?

Yeah, this is a little late, but... interesting.

There's a shortage of one of the three drugs used to kill people on death row.  I don't know if you knew that, but you do now.  It's the part that serves as an anesthetic.  So a lot of death sentences are being delayed until more sodium thiopental is produced.

Oklahoma didn't want to wait, so they're considering using drugs used to euthanize animals such as pentobarbital to do the job, which sounds humane until you realize we don't really know the dose necessary to kill a human without it being cruel.
In court briefs filed on his behalf, attorneys argue that pentobarbital is unsafe and is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. They say there have been numerous problems in executions across the country even with the drug that has been tested. Defense lawyers also say the new drug is not an ultra-short-acting barbiturate, as the law requires.
I find myself mildly amused by their argument that it is "unsafe" considering the whole point is to kill someone, but I digress.  The point is that there are complications even with the usual drugs they use, so introducing a new method could spell disaster whether you believe in capital punishment or not.

Article found on NPR.

How did you get here?

I have a strange obsession with Google Analytics, like many people running websites and blogs.  I just love seeing what barbaric search terms drove people to click on one of my links.  I have taken the liberty of screen shooting the top ten for this site:

Wow.  I am seriously tickled by this.  Besides the number five "Stuff Dead People Like" which I assume is all people who wanted to title their blog that, every major search cue is over this piece of crap satire piece.  On the bright side, this does mean that there are many, many people out there who are actually using search engines to question things.

And hey, at least it's better than one of my other blogs where the predominant search was for the word "lesbocution."

Monday, December 6, 2010

Freeze dry your pet for $395!

Or more, if you have a normal sized pet.

This is topical for me.  My beloved rat, Scotch, died recently and because the ground is frozen I cannot bury her.  She is instead in my freezer at the suggestion of my father.  Some think that's excessive, as she is in fact just a rat.

So imagine the thoughts going through my head when I saw this:
That is Foxy.  When she died, her owner Debbie was distraught.  But rather than bury Foxy, as most of us would have done, or have her cremated as we have done, Debbie went to Perpetual Pet, which for $395 (or more for a larger pet) will freeze dry your pet in a lifelike position so you can make him or her a permanent part of your home's decor.

Is this the extreme version of a rat in a freezer?

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Down on the body farm, again.

So many memories of Anthro class.
Neatorama just posted this entry on a new body farm which is being created in Pennsylvania.

From the linked article in The Atlantic I learned that, although pre-donated bodies are preferred, unclaimed bodies with no next of kin are also donated to body farms.

I don't know if I consider that better or worse than what I learned in A Certain Kind of Death.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Ashes to ashes, dust to *beep* *beep*

It always warms my heart to see a last wish fulfilled that isn't utterly insane.

This guy, Melvin Baker, was carried to his funeral by JCB backhoe. Although he was cremated, he was put in a regular sized casket for the occasion.

My favorite quote from this article:
”After he died, I dreaded bringing it up with his family, but Jean just said ‘we’ve got to do it for him, Keith, he went on about it all the time’.

Via Neatorama.

Also, upon searching to see if this was legit as there weren't that many sources on this, I found a video on YouTube: