1. Why does Isonomist deserve our contempt, but JanZ our sympathy?
2. The Painted Bird is a novel about a boy, who looks like a gypsy, who is sent to hide in the countryside during the war, while his parents stay in the city because they can pass for Polish. Apparently, some people find this offensive.
3. I don't know what the Holocaust Industry is.
4. Which was beyond the technology of 1969 - sending a man to the moon, or faking sending a man to the moon?
5. There is no 5.
6. What is wrong with you people? Yes, I said you people.
7. All of you are crazier than I imagine. Some of you are crazier than I can imagine.

With reference to #1.

Exactly.

Is there a dark memory from childhood that happened in room # 5??

jo

Gosh, you're dense.

2. that's the fucking painted bird, in homage to our dear departed BT.

3. Probably a reference to Bayer industries, you know what they made.

4. Having seen Plan 9 from Outer Space and Barbarella, I bet choice #A.

5. Of course.

6. I work in an intellectual sweat shop.

7. It's always difficult to produce any kind of useful barometer of mutual mass psychosis. The numbers all taste funny.

Fuck you, he explained

(hg)

to lack imagination. However, I am comforted to believe that this is a mere rhetorical flourish. Accountants and Canadians tend to get overly dramatic in print.

All of you are crazier than I imagine. Some of you are crazier than I can imagine.

Isonomist deserves our contempt for being a bossy, controlling nanny-statist, an enemy of freedom and one of those people that thinks she's being very polite when she's intruding in personal ways. On the other hand, I'm told she looks spiffy in sandals, so it balances out.

Not sure why Jan Z is deserving of sympathy. Milk of human kindness, perhaps.

The cremation industry has been rife with scandals in the US. Here's a tip. If you want your loved one's remains to be treated with respect, don't have them cremated. If you don't care and they don't care, fine. Perfectly understandable. But the remains have a very long shot of getting respectful treatment unless they're buried. And don't think for a second that the ashes you get back are theirs.

A public service announcement.

Really though, once you turn over your dead to the Death Industry, dignity goes right out the window. The first thing they do is take all your loved one's clothes off and... oh, but it's too horrible. I wouldn't want to be rude. Especially after a fresh pedicure.

1. I just love both so much . . .

2. One wonders if, perhaps, the parents simply weren't all that found of the swarthy little tyke?

3. Good for you.

4. The latter if anything. The former was accomplished. I was watching.

5. Why?

6. "It doesn't matter inside the gates of Eden."

7. And you are sane in what way?

1. "fuck off and die" JanZ? let's see if he's got that out of his system, i ain't no psychologist but
2. your record for commas in a sentence
3. tours, maybe?
4. don't know, was too busy popping zits
6. kinda loose with your you and our's
7. see, would work the same with us's
8. (i have occasional problems with apostrophe's)

Well, yes, they do that. But the cremation side of the shop is far more callous than the burial side of the shop. I mean, really icky. Like, stacking em up five deep, sifting through the ashes for dental fixtures, and ladling the commingled ashes into urns by the pound (more for men, less for women). And then slapping whatever label on the thing they need to fill the order. We had one of our own here a few years ago. Dad was involved in the lawsuit. The phrase "stacked like cordwood" came up a lot. But these things happen all over the country. God knows what's in the doggie urns my mom has, because the crematoria sure don't. Hell, we'd be more respectful sending the corpses to the taxidermist.

And don't get me started on those pledges to scatter them out of an airplane over the ocean. May as well promise to shoot them into space. Doesn't happen.

At least when they're buried, you're sure where they are. I'm appalled at how little respect some of these morticians have for the dead. One would think that would be a prerequisite for the job.

Here's the thing: it's not your loved one any more. Yes, it's all terrible and all, but the worms get em if the mortician don't. Ever seen an exhumation? As for the prerequisite for morticians, I thought the only real one was alcoholism.

Where did you hear that crematoriums "stack 'em up like cordwood" ? I never heard that before.

I think you're making that up.

Which is fine, if you feel that way, as I said. Not sure I feel that different myself, on substance. Though tradition and propriety play heavy with me.

However, a lot of people don't feel that way. And they are being defrauded in a manner pretty damned awful. And Evil.

Happen all the time. All over the country. Funeral homes don't have control of the bodies, and the incentive is to process as many bodies with as few ovens as can be managed. If you got an urn laying around, don't count on those ashes being especially connected with the person on the label.

What a fun topic!