Tyrant chic
In the aftermath of Kim Jong-il’s funeral in North Korea, we learn that those of his subjects who didn’t cry hard enough or convincingly enough, together with those who did not attend official mourning events, are being rounded up and herded into labour camps. Sentences start at six months. More in the Daily Mail here. Meanwhile, the […]
The priestly calling of embalming
Say what you like about embalming, a lot of the people who do it feel like this about it. Bergeron had been in seminary four years when he lost his calling, drawn more to the prospect of marriage and having a family. He was 32, an aspiring poet and essayist as versed in the music […]
The Living Dead
Enterprising US undertaker Cecil Gilmore is set to offer an enhanced embalming service. He wants to go beyond the casketed look and display his dead doing what they always did — very much in the spirit of the Puerto Rican embalmer who, in July 2010, displayed a miraculously embalmed David Morales Colon on his motorbike. […]
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.
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 […]
“You’re born alone, you die alone and in between you cheat yourself out of that realisation as agreeably as you can.” Robert Lenkiewicz
Posted by Rupert Callender of the Green Funeral Company Claire and I spent the last day of August At Torre Abbey on the seafront at Torquay, seeing an exhibition called Death and the Maiden, featuring the work of the painter Robert Lenkiewicz. To the uninitiated, Robert was a flamboyant Plymouth based artist, instantly recognisable by […]
Meet Angeline Gragasin and Caitlin Doughty
I know a number of you drop in around this time (10.30 am) hoping there may be a new post because you need a little light displacement activity. Well, I’ve got you something that’s anything but little and light. Two short films here by Angeline Gragasin starring/narrated by Caitlin Doughty “documenting the life of a […]
The good look
1920s advertisement by a Boston (USA) embalmer: For composing the features, $1 For giving the features a look of quiet resignation, $2 For giving the features the appearance of Christian hope and contentment, $5 What is the look that present day Brit embalmers are coached to create? Whatever happened to consumer choice?!! Source: Lisa Carlson
Botched embalming?
Here’s a strange tale. Daniel Brennan died in Monklands Hospital, Airdrie, and was looked after Donald McLaren Ltd, est 1912. I don’t know if there was a post mortem, but we are told that Daniel’s illness was a short one. When Daniel’s mother went to see him at the funeral home she was appalled: “I […]
