Humour

Quote of the day

13 January 2012
Charles
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Categories: Humour

“Death can only be profitable: there’s no need to eat, drink, pay taxes, offend people, and since a person lies in a grave for hundreds or thousands of years, if you count it up the profit turns out to be enormous.”

Anton Chekov, 1894

Something for the weekend

6 January 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Humour

We’ve had a request for what follows, and we don’t turn down requests here at the GFG, not on any grounds. If you’ve heard this one before, rejoice for all those who haven’t. 

 

An elderly Irishman lay dying in his bed. While suffering the agonies of impending death he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favourite cheese scones wafting up the stairs. He gathered his remaining strength and lifted himself from the bed…

Leaning against the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom, and with even greater effort, gripping the bannister with both hands, he crawled downstairs. With laboured breath he leaned against the door frame, gazing into the kitchen.

Were it not for death’s agony, he would have thought himself already in heaven, for here, spread out upon waxed paper on the kitchen table, were dozens of his favourite cheese scones. Was it heaven? Or was it one final act of heroic love from his devoted Irish wife of sixty years, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man?

Mustering one great final effort, he threw himself towards the table, landing on his knees in a rumpled posture. His lips parted, he could almost taste the cheese scone before it was in his mouth, seemingly bringing him back to life. The aged and withered hand trembled on its way to the nearest scone at the edge of the table, when his hand was suddenly smacked with a spatula by his beloved wife.

“Fuck off!!” she said, “they’re for the funeral!!”

 

 

 

 

Chuckle of the day

7 December 2011
Charles
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Categories: Humour

A friend was in a minicab when he leaned over and gently tapped the driver on the shoulder. The cabbie screamed, lost control of the car, drove over the kerb and stopped inches from a large plate glass window.

The driver said “I’m so sorry but you scared me”.  

My shaken friend apologised.

The driver replied “It’s entirely my fault. Today is my first day driving a cab — for the previous 25 years I drove a hearse!”

Hat-tip to Jean Francis and Chris Dudzinska

Monday morning smile

5 December 2011
Charles
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Categories: Humour

About ten years ago I had just introduced Father Thomas O’Hara, president of King’s College at the time, as speaker for the annual Our Lady of Mount Carmel Holy Name Society Smoker and took my seat at the head table next to Father Paul Mc Donnell. No sooner had Father O’Hara begun his talk when the pager of funeral director P.J. Adonizio, seated up front, went off. Startled, Father O’Hara stopped in mid-sentence and said, “Is my time up?” To which Father Paul immediately replied, “Somebody’s is.”

Source

Useful advice for senior citizens

21 November 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Humour

Ever wondered about what to look for in a nursing home?

We know. It’s a pre-need question and just like funeral planning we all like to think we wont need it. Or maybe we’ll get lucky and die first.

But life expectancy is only another way to say hanging around. Street corners are too chilly (and there are no toilets) and the libraries are all closing so maybe the nursing home is all that’ll be left to us.

In which case it’s worth checking this site out. Packed with top tips it’s as indispensible as – dare we say it – the Good Funeral Guide itself.

For example here it is on what to look for when assessing amenities in the home:

Don’t be drawn in by fancy extras like craft rooms, massage pools, visitor parking or other amenities that are never likely to be used.

Focus on the basics and make sure that they have the small creature comforts like heat, running water and around the clock electricity.

Top advice. Read more here.

Eric Idle’s eulogy to George Harrison

4 November 2011
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: eulogy, Humour, Memorial service, tributes

Eric Idle’s eulogy to George Harrison at the memorial event at the Hollywood Bowl:

When they told me they were going to induct my friend George Harrison into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame posthumously: my first thought was – I bet he won’t show up.

Because, unlike some others one might mention – but won’t – he really wasn’t in to honors.

He was one of those odd people who believe that life is somehow more important than show business.

Which I know is a heresy here in Hollywood, and I’m sorry to bring it up here in the very Bowel of Hollywood but I can hear his voice saying “oh very nice, very useful, a posthumous award – where am I supposed to put it? What’s next for me then? A posthumous Grammy? An ex-Knighthood? An After-Lifetime Achievement Award?

He’s going to need a whole new shelf up there.

So: posthumously inducted – sounds rather unpleasant: sounds like some kind of after-life enema.

But Induct – in case you are wondering – comes from the word induce – meaning to bring on labor by the use of drugs.

And Posthumous is actually from the Latin post meaning after and hummus meaning Greek food.

So I like to think that George is still out there somewhere – pregnant and breaking plates at a Greek restaurant.

I think he would prefer to be inducted posthumorously because he loved comedians – poor sick sad deranged lovable puppies that we are – because they – like him – had the ability to say the wrong thing at the right time – which is what we call humor.

He put Monty Python on here at The Hollywood Bowl, and he paid for the movie The Life of Brian, because he wanted to see it.

Still the most anybody has ever paid for a Cinema ticket.

His life was filled with laughter and even his death was filled with laughter… In the hospital he asked the nurses to put fish and chips in his IV.

The doctor – thinking he was delusional – said to his son “don’t worry, we have a medical name for this condition.”

Yes said Dahni “humor.”

And I’m particularly sorry Dahni isn’t here tonight – because I wanted to introduce him by saying “Here comes the son” – but sadly that opportunity for a truly bad joke has gone, as has Dahni’s Christmas present from me.

George once said to me “if we’d known we were going to be The Beatles we’d have tried harder.”

What made George special – apart from his being the best guitarist in the Beatles – was what he did with his life after they achieved everything.

He realized that this fame business was – and I’ll use the technical philosophical term here – complete bullshit.

And he turned to find beauty and truth and meaning in life – and more extraordinarily – found it.

This is from his book I Me Mine:

“The things that most people are struggling for is fame or fortune or wealth or position – and really none of that is important because in the end death will take it all away. So you spend your life struggling for something, which is in effect a waste of time… I mean I don’t want to be lying there as I’m dying thinking ‘oh shit I forgot to put the cat out.'”

And he wasn’t. He passed away – here in LA – with beauty and dignity surrounded by people he loved.

Because he had an extraordinary capacity for friendship.

People loved him all over the planet.

George was in fact a moral philosopher: his life was all about a search for truth, and preparing himself for death.

Which is a bit weird for someone in rock and roll. They’re not supposed to be that smart. They’re supposed to be out there looking for Sharon. Not the meaning of life.

Michael Palin said George’s passing was really sad but it does make the afterlife seem much more attractive.

He was a gardener – he grew beauty in everything he did – in his life, in his music, in his marriage and as a father.

I was on an island somewhere when a man came up to him and said “George Harrison, oh my god, what are you doing here?” – and he said “Well everyone’s got to be somewhere.”

Well alas he isn’t here. But we are. And that’s the point. This isn’t for him. This is for us, because we want to honor him. We want to remember him, we want to say Thanks George for being. And we really miss you. So lets take a look at some of the places he got to in his life.

Video montage is shown of George Harrison’s life, from youthful Beatle to mature solo artist.

Well he’s still not here. But we do have someone very special who was very dear to him – who is here. The first man to perform with the Beatles. The one and only Billy Preston.

Billy Preston and a chorus of vocalists sing Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord.”

Thank you Billy Preston.

So this is the big drag about posthumous awards: there’s no one to give ’em to.

So I’m gonna keep this and put it next to the one I got last year. No, I’m going to give it to the love of his life, his dark sweet lady, dear wonderful Olivia Harrison, who is with us here tonight. Liv, you truly know what it is to be without him.

Thank you Hollywood Bowl you do good to honor him. Goodnight.

Mellified man and the wonder of Wikipedia

20 October 2011
Charles
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Categories: Death; Good death, Embalming, Humour

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 of their lives, would submit themselves to a process of mummification in honey to create a healing confection. This process differed from a simple body donation because of the aspect of self-sacrifice; the mellification process would ideally start before death. The donor would stop eating any food other than honey, going as far as to bathe in the substance. Shortly, his feces (and even his sweat, according to legend) would consist of honey. When this diet finally proved fatal, the donor’s body would be placed in a stone coffin filled with honey. After a century or so, the contents would have turned into a sort of confection reputedly capable of healing broken limbs and other ailments. This confection would then be carefully sold in street markets as a hard to find item with a hefty price.”

Who knows, in this age of innovation in the disposal of dead bodies, (and a cash strapped NHS) it might catch on again.

It’s clear though, from other articles, that we have become a good deal less imaginative about death and dying. There’s another page that simply lists unusual deaths.

It’s worth a look for the sheer variety of deaths listed. There’s more roasting than you might imagine including being roasted alive in brazen bulls. A disturbing image, I would have thought, for stock marketeers in these troubled times. Then there’s the politician Draco who, in 620 BC, was smothered to death by gifts of cloaks showered upon him by appreciative citizens. There’s got to be a metaphor there for the risks all politicians face if they of accept too many gifts.

My favourite though is the Stoic philosopher, Chryssipus, who died of laughter after giving his donkey wine then seeing it attempt to eat figs.

They really knew how to live – and die – in those days.

Dying Large

5 October 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: eulogy, funeral customs, Humour

Very nice piece here by Wendy Dennis in the Huffington Post.

I must have crossed some kind of age threshold, because when I go to funerals lately, I start thinking about my own. It’s not the dying part that scares me. It’s the numbers I’ll draw for the service. I’m in the sanctuary and the place is packed and some relative is at the podium going on about how wonderful the dead person was and how much they gave to the UJA, and I start taking a head count and doing the math and the minute the funeral is over, I call up my daughter and tell her that when my time comes, she has to hire extras.

She hates when I talk like that, but I don’t think you can be too careful about the optics of your own demise. For instance, if I die in a horrible accident, I want my handlers to know that they are not, under any circumstances, to let anyone mark the spot with teddy bears or carnations, tell my loved ones that I’m “in a better place”, hold a “life-affirming” remembrance for me, or deliver one of those treacly eulogies that make people wonder if they’ve walked into the wrong chapel.

There ought to be a law against delivering a crappy eulogy. I can’t tell you how many funerals I’ve sat through wishing that the Law and Order crew would burst into the sanctuary, handcuff the offenders, and read them their rights — especially the one about their right to remain silent. When someone is charged with the responsibility of delivering the last words that will ever be spoken about another human being, I think they have a moral obligation not to mention their meatball recipe.

More here. Well worth it. 

The Importance of Being Urnest

22 June 2011
Charles
10 Comments
Categories: ashes, cremation, funeral customs, Humour

That Brits are born with an acute and possibly pathological sensitivity to absurdity is well known. The Great American Funeral has engendered great and gloriously funny books by Jessica Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, neither of which had more than minimal success in laughing Americans out of their (perceived) absurdity.

There is method in the funerary lunacies of the GAF, of course: they come at a cost to the client. The recent rise in the cremation rate has filled most US undertakers with helpless economic terror, and it is interesting that they have taken no lessons in adapting to this from Brit undertakers, who have been making a tidy living out of burial deniers for as long as anyone can remember.

The GAF has, it seems, some capability to evolve. Burning necessity has begotten ingenious adaptation of the hearse, conserving it as the only fit and proper vehicle not only for the reverent transportation of cosmetised corpses but also the burned and reduced version, cremains. No glove compartment or passenger seat of the family car for them; only the full hush and awe will suffice. And it’s billable!

My thanks to Sarah Murray, author of Making an Exit, for bringing these hearses, more correctly termed urn enclaves, to my attention. She adds: ‘It was explained to me that urn enclaves have “adjustable bier pins” accommodating different sizes and shapes. They flip up from the floor of the hearse and are cleverly stowed again when the vehicle needs to carry a coffin. One brochure tells me that if you don’t want to buy a new hearse or go to the expense or trouble or getting yours refitted, “portable urn enclaves are also available for funeral directors who wish to extend the service of their existing coaches.”‘ Coaches, forsooth!!

Find another YouTube clip (unembeddable) here.