Well, My Burial Plans Just Went Up In Smoke

I got all excited for the possibilities of my ashes a few weeks ago when Keith Richards admitted smoking his father’s cremated remains. I thought it so exciting that I even blogged about it, but then again, I’ve blogged about space junk, toilets, dead deer, airline barf bags and Fred Willard at one point or another, so that’s not saying much. Then I read an AFP News story today about a scientist who says we should stop cremating our dead. He claims that it contributes to global warming in some boring, scientific, ozone, carbon related way. If I wanted to be able to thoroughly explain it to you, I would have paid attention in science class instead of making top-ten lists all the time.

I guess this is the type of news you’d expect as Earth Day approaches, but now I can’t pass away safe in the thought that some old rocker somewhere will smoke my remains for the heck of it, only to brag about it to a tabloid years later. That’s too bad because I had already started making a list of potential candidates. Heck, I even stipulated there would be a $25 Applebee’s gift certificate to whoever found my charred artificial heart valve among my ashes. It could be used to make a ring, earrings or a fancy napkin holder, unless surgeons recycle that type of thing. Maybe they use it in constructing a half man half machine prototype or they put it in the pig whose valve they just took out to place into a human, but more about that down the road.

What could we do to still dispose of our deceased and not slap dear Mother Earth in the face you ask? Well, the same scientist says that we should all be buried in a cardboard box under a tree. That way, we can all gradually become compost and fertilizer. It’s bad enough being called a piece of @%#%$ in life, but in death? That’s too cruel. It also means that I can’t use my second burial option now either. If cremation proved to be too expensive, I asked that my body be placed in big plastic bags that were filled with lots of foam peanuts and fastened with those plastic rings that hold six-packs together so that I could be floated down the river and into the sea. That’s pretty harmless, right?

Now I have to go back to the drawing board and figure out how I want to be thrown out, I mean disposed of, I mean preserved. Geez, how do you say not buried or cremated? I’ve already thought about being frozen, but I’d be afraid that my family wouldn’t be able to resist using my frozen block to cool their drinks during our annual 4th of July get together. After all, a frozen person would be pretty big and since I’d already be there, they would get the best of both worlds: a huge chunk of free ice and they would still get to celebrate with me (I’ve always loved fireworks).

Perhaps I could be preserved and mummified like us Catholics did with all of our 800 year old saints (I watched a special about it late one night when I couldn’t sleep. Needless to say, I wasn’t able to go back to bed when it was over, either). I could be dressed in my favorite Dale Earnhardt shirt and propped into my favorite seat at the California Speedway so I could enjoy racing even in death. The same could be done with me in my LA Clippers Jersey so I could forever sit at Staples Center and watch my Clippers play. The only downside is that even mummified, I would probably still completely decompose before the Clippers when the NBA Championship.

Of course, in both of those ‘burial’ options, I will need to get some type of health or safety clearance, which will probably be pretty costly to obtain. What does mummifying go for these days, anyway?