Has TV gone too far this time?
Posted by Vale That’s the headline on a Mail online story about tonight’s Channel 4 documentary about mummification. In it a Devon taxi driver – Alan Bills – is mummified following, as closely as possible, ancient Egyptian practices. Alan died in January after suffering from lung cancer and wanted to take part in the experiment […]
Quote of the week
‘I won’t be Tutankhamun, I’ll be Tutanalan… the grandkids will be able to tell their friends their grandad’s a mummy.’ Alan Billis, whose body has been successfully mummified using ancient Egyptian techniques.
The chaos of meaning
We have just received the following press release: In early 2011, Jimmy Edmonds’ son Joshua was killed in a road accident in SE Asia. RELEASED is a photographic essay and a personal response to the tragedy of his son’s death. Intended for publication both as an exhibition and as a book, the project features a mix […]
Habeas corpse
Funeral arrangements for many Brits must take into account the sometimes violently conflicting wishes, needs and loyalties of the various members of blended families. Compromise can sometimes be hard to reach, the more so when one party sets out to hijack the funeral and do it their way. It’s worse for Ghanaians. There, it’s the […]
Mellified man and the wonder of Wikipedia
Posted by Vale Wikipedia – that glorious monument to collaboration and, sometimes, hearsay – has some marvellously strange pages. One of my favourites is the Mellified man. This is claimed to be an ancient process of preserving bodies through use of honey.Li, a Chinese pharmacologist reports that, “some elderly men in Arabia, nearing the end […]
Meeting client expectations
Death with dignity
Posted by Charles When Meg Holmes was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2009 her husband Andrew started a blog so that he could update friends about her condition. Meg died on 1 October. The following post describes her death. My wife Meg died on the morning of Saturday October 1st in the loving company of […]
The real thing
Gail Rubin is now on Day 19 of her 30 funerals in 30 days. Over on her The Family Plot blog she is delighting her many fans with a full account of each as it happens. The appeal of what she is doing is broad. She is compiling an important social document, an account of […]
Is this the most tasteless competition of all time?
Over at Theaodeadpool.com they have an annual competition. The idea is to guess who will die in the next year (they’ve got to be famous enough to merit a newspaper obituary). Editorially, it is GFG policy to present you with everything that’s going on out there. Personally, we’re squirming more than somewhat. Here is an […]
Isle of the Dead
This concert will be a fantastic interweaving of myth, music and magic telling the story of the ancient Sumerian Goddess Inanna and her descent to the underworld to aid her suffering sister Erešhkigal. In leaving her realm of the heavens to face the darkness of the underworldfrom which there is no return, she faces death, […]
