Pushing Up Daisies - Your choice is...
 

I was reading this:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science....ap/index.html

...

If I chose the Ecopod option, I would demand to be buried only if I'm covered in the funny pages.

Although I suspect this is going to smack of the graveyards thread (http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=125468), I was wondering how everybody here feels about what happens to their earthly remains. I suppose this has been a previous topic, but I couldn't find it.

When I die? I want my body to be donated to science instead of uselessly occupying a plot below a fancy rock with my name and dates on it. Cut me up, take what you can use... I've done my time. Donation is cheaper for the family, I'd think. I want someone somewhere to learn something from my corpse, even only if it's a cherry doctor pulling out of his first organs.

Hmmm... cut me up, whomever take whatever they can, whether it be for research or reuse and burn the leftovers up.
I don't care how, avoid the fossil fuels if necessary.
I won't be there.

The most important part of that?

I've already got it in writing.

Donate to science, take the refuse and turn it into something useful. Mulch for a garden? Boil me down to make something you can burn? Whatever...just don't waste more space putting me in the ground and wasting that landspace..

I'm going under an oak. I've already made arrangements.

Cremate me.


And if at all possible brew my remains into a beer. Then drink me at the wake.

You would produce no usable fermentable sugars. And I can see no other use for human remains in a beer either. Cooked properly however...

Me... Feed me to something hungry that will eat me so completly that nobody will have to bother with the cleanup.

Cremated, and the remains put into the chassis of a drag car. Creepy, probably, but I still want to be doing what I love.

Make me into a meat pie and feed me to some pompous jerk.



Just kidding! :) I'm already a registered organ donor and wouldn't mind donating my body to science. I'm pretty sure that most of their cadavers are subsequently cremated, anyway. And considering that 90%+ of my family doesn't live in the U.S.. there's no point in burying me and having a funeral.

"On the day I greet the worms I'll pull the daisies down with me as a fuck you to the norms"

While I do like the idea of being a Robocop like cyborg after death, the idea of being donated to science really bothers me. I know my body belongs much more so to the earth than it does to me so I don't mind so much donating my organs to those in need but the idea of being chopped, sliced and examined...not cool.

I'd wanna go into the earth as eco-friendly as possible. In an unmarked grave somewhere with a lot of grass.

Damn.


There has to be someway to turn me into beer. What about other types of alcohol?

How about a salty beef snack?

"SNAP INTO A WORLD'S KING... OOOOO-YEAH!"

Nope. You don't have any sugars to ferment. They all get broken down during digestion.

You could be the worm in tequila.

I insist on becoming alcohol.


But now that I think about it... would that be Cannibalism?

Dare I say - it would be truly Christian in the earliest sense of the term, to be turned into drink (specifically, wine) ??? :oogle:

I see no problems with your being some sort of adulteration to beer - a sprinkle of King Ash to give the brew it's zip. I personally wouldn't touch the stuff unless you dump your remains into a nice cask of Scotland's finest, but that's just me.

as for the OP - scrap me and burn the leftovers - sprinkle any ash left near trees and running water

What part of your body produces or consists of sugars, though?

I guess the only way it would work would to be used as fertilizer to grow hops.


Now to decide what kind of beer I want to be. I'm thinking an extra hoppy Pilsner.

I used to think I wanted to be cremated. The green burials are becoming more and more appealing.

A funeral pyre on the water might be nice, but I feel like I'd really have to earn it.

Interesting to note: the Body Farm decomposition research facility at the University of Tennessee has a waiting list for volunteer donations.

use whatever is left.
burn the rest.

King, I'm reminded of an old Irish joke. "Ya mind if I pass ye over me kidneys first, laddy?"

Compost. Seriously, google "human remains compost". They freeze-dry you, break you up into a powder, dehydrate it, remove anything metal or plastic, and deliver it to your survivors in a box. Supposed to be great for plants.

Here is something: http://bottlegang.blogspot.com/2007/...-cocktail.html
I'll pass and drink the Hoegaarden clone I'm kegging next week.

Couldn't your decomposing, out-gassing body be used to add bubbles to the brew?

Or how about your burning remains being used to boil the concoction?

More importantly, what would be on the label? King's Mean Spleen beer?

Back to the OP, as many others said, recycle what you can of me, then burn it up.

Sign me up...


Who wants to chew on me then spit me out... ?

I want to be made into Soylent Green...

No, really. I like this ecopod idea. Cremation kind of gives me the creeps, but traditional burials take up space. I'd rather decompose. My other consideration is economical--I don't want my offspring to be burdened with some expensive funeral. Caskets are pricey, and so are urns.

I've dealt with this issue a few times, as my grandparents have passed on. All three chose cremation. Oma's ashes were mostly spread on a beach in Washington on a very stormy day. Some of Grandpa's ashes are in a tulip garden at my parents' house. The rest are mixed with the remainder of Oma's, and they are buried together in a memorial garden. My other grandfather's ashes were scattered in a river that flowed through the county he spent most of his life in. Cremation certainly gives a person a lot of choices as to where their remains go, but like I said...it gives me the creeps (or as my mom says, "You'll be dead! What do YOU care?!").

Great... Whole Foods is going to start burying people? :)

I want some collage kids to drag me around with sunglasses on and have adventures and meet hot chicks. Like weekend at bernies!

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0...1.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Anything that can be used, take it, then burn the rest and throw the ashes into the ocean. I have always wanted to travel, but wont fly so this is the only way I will ever leave Australia. Cheaper too.

Hopefully something can be used to better someone else's life - retinas, scalp, ANYTHING....

Other than that, break me down as small as possible, so I don't take up the whole 7' x 2.5' x 6' plot....and bury me in a small plot. I DO like the idea of a headstone, but not of taking up so much space.

My wife has said that she'd like to be buried next to me in an arrangement like I just outlined.

Anything to hang out with Andrew McCarthy.

I want to be cremated and fired out of a cannon, or have my ashes mixed with cocaine and handed out at parties.
I'd drink you. (not gay)

I want to be cremated.

Interesting topic. We just got back from Lebanon yesterday, and I had the opportunity to go along with ktspktsp's family to their family burial areas for a visit.

In the Christian areas, most families have their own vaults, and each vault is gated and locked. You walk inside (we're talking the size of a garden shed here), and you face a wall with 6 doors, each one holding a coffin behind it. Beneath your feet is an underground vault with more room for other coffins. There are no names or markers on any of it, just a family name on the outside, and that is how it's done there. Interesting, but I would not prefer it for myself.

In the Muslim graveyard (Sunni, to be exact, though I am not sure what the differences would be for Shi'a), the bodies are buried almost immediately after death, and without a coffin of any kind. The body is wrapped ceremonially with a white sheet and laid in the bare earth, then covered up with more earth. Then a smooth cement slab is poured over the top, with a small tombstone (written in Arabic) at the head. The cool part is that a round opening is made at the foot of the slab, opening directly into the earth, over the body. Each grave typically has at least one tree or large plant growing out of that hole, and it's obvious that it's being nourished by the decomposing matter below. The point, if I remember correctly, is the idea of "from dust we came, and to dust we will return," and that the body should become part of the earth again. I found it quite beautiful, actually.

As for myself, I go back and forth on this a lot. After witnessing my own grandmother's cremation (to the point of actually seeing the flames burning her body, through the crematory furnace window), I can see how it might creep people out... but there is something so efficient about it, too. Yes, it burns up fossil fuels, okay (I wish we could do things as they are still done in India, for example, where they burn funeral pyres on wood by the river Ganges, in the open air--talk about a way to go out!)... but still, I hate the idea of decomposing in a box. And since so many lands are part of who I am, I would love the idea of my ashes being spread over many places, by a trustworthy person (or people--like Lurkette did with her brother's ashes on TFP). So I lean towards cremation.

But the part of burial that I do like is that it gives a place for the living to come and grieve, and hopefully heal from their loss. Not that I think I'm some terribly important person, but I know the psychological comfort that a tangible gravesite provides for the living, and I know that ktspktsp or my parents or my friends and family (if they outlived me) would need something like that. My father's body was never found when he drowned suddenly, and I think the lack of a body really ripped the heart out of his family for many years... they had nowhere to go to mourn him. Eventually, his mother put up a tombstone in the family graveyard, and while there is no body beneath it, it gives a place for us to go and recognize his death.

So, after writing this dissertation on burial, I think I would like to donate my organs (still iffy on that one, but I know it's the ethical thing to do), be cremated, ashes spread in a few of my beloved places, and then a memorial placed somewhere in my name, for the living to have a place to go. Or something like that. But nothing is in writing yet... we need to get that done.

I'm eventually going to talk with my friends and family about it someday. I like the thought of my body NOT being trapped in a box. But, if I die of mysterious circumstances, I'd want to be preserved and put into a coffin just so they can exhume me someday if they must. Ultimately, I'd love to die at sea and just sink into the bottom of the ocean. To just be forgotten and become nothing sounds like a nice way to leave this Earth to me. I don't want a tombstone or plaque or anything from which somebody can remember me at all. I just want to die and be forgotten. Unless I'm murdered. Then, I want to be all over the news and even on t-shirts. haha

Nobody is that important.

Speaking of weekend at Bernies

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddly...ddlyEnoughNews

I want to used as the path to greater riches...
http://www.1010wins.com/Cops:-2-Whee...-Check/1448848

My father died that way, and let me tell you... unless you live entirely alone, have no family whatsoever, it is impossible for you to simply "die at sea and be forgotten." It is such an utterly tragic way to leave survivors... no body, no goodbye, nothing.

But if you have that strong of a death wish, go become a commercial fisherman. One of the most dangerous jobs in the world, and I can guarantee you that NONE of those men would choose to die at sea, if they could. But many of them do, quite horribly. Honestly, I can't see why you would want to die that way, but each to their own.

Now, burial at sea is something else... I can see the appeal of that, somewhat.