May 13, 2009

• Can't we stop putting crap into the ocean? Reminds me of all those tires and the other junk that were thrown in that are now problematic....
• Those reef balls look impressive.
• These underwater burials are poignant and beautiful. Short of abiding as a wraith in thrall to great Cthulhu in R'lyeh, I'd favor being stuffed into a facsimile of an ancient Greek wine jug, there to become encrusted with barnacles and ciliated bryozoans. Yet there are other forms of burial beyond the sea and the leaden casket. Consider ultimate dissolution in the mouth of a volcano! Memorial? That would be the plume of regurgitated slag spewing forth in chthonic revulsion... Also I like the green burial idea . A tree grows over one's remains, laid down in a biodegradable sack.
• Has anyone done some sort of calculation to figure out when cemeteries are just no longer sustainable? They are one of the stupidest things that our society does. On the other hand, they do give ghosts a place to go. Do we really want ghosts roaming around underwater? Will fish become possessed? Will it be possible to administer holy water on the possessed fish?
• My father had a half-brother who died of diabetes complications at 17. This was in the early 1930s. Their parents purchased a burial plot for him (based on price) in a cemetery that wasn't near their home so they didn't visit often. A few years later they were curtly informed that the land on which Charles was buried had changed uses; it was going to be turned into a shopping mall. Charles' remains were unceremoniously dug up and dumped in a mass grave somewhere... the family was too horrified to get details, and to this day nobody knows where he is. And that was in the 50s. So even a half-century ago, the idea of "eternal rest" wasn't necessarily so eternal. You raise excellent points, bernockle. What necropolis will become tomorrow's housing project? It's shocking how much real estate the dead use up. There are limits, and many boneyards are reaching them. What next? And what about those fish? I'd like to know how that works. Also, can ghosts roam underwater or do they need some kind of SCUBA apparatus? And how does holy water operate under the surface, anyway?
• There's a Reef Ball site not too far from where I live but I don't, as yet, know any of the residents. I also like the green burial idea, being much like the traditional sailcloth and roundshot burial at sea. As far as sea ghosts are concerned, someone has to crew the ghost ships.
• This cremation and burial business seems very wasteful. People are starving on the planet. Isn't there some way of recycling the bodies? Maybe processing them with soy or something? You could make it into biscuits and maybe colour them green to accentuate the fact that they come from nature. It could be stockpiled and then distributed during a special period, say between Ash Wednesday and Holy Saturday. I'm having trouble coming up for a name for the product though.
• Seabiscuit?
• Dead Cookies?
• S'morgues?
• Islander, FTW!
• Has anyone done some sort of calculation to figure out when cemeteries are just no longer sustainable? They are one of the stupidest things that our society does. My goodness no! We should be burring large numbers of people in the driest or most anoxic soil we can find, and with lots and lots of grave goods. If we have to bury people at sea we should do so in the deep parts of the Black Sea, where they'll mummify, and again with the grave goods. Somebody think of the archaeologists!
• I think I'd like to be buried in a plutonium casket, and if someone comes near...kabloooie! Ha. That'll teach them grave robbers.
• Then there's burial on the moon! Since our estimable satellite has mares, or seas, now thought to actually contain water, we can have the best of both worlds - a sea burial with minimal pollution.
• Oops! The plural of mare is maria.
• I did not know that! That is neat.