Death 2.0
Let this blog post serve as official record that I would like to be cremated. The world would be a much dimmer place without Jack of All Blogs, so the good news for you is that I don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon. But should some unforeseen stroke of madness occur, and my friends and loved ones are faced with the painful decision of where to place my bodily vessel, now they know: Burn me.
Or hold an online funeral (sarcasm!).
It is the morbidly popular trend that’s sweeping the WWW: online memorials for our dearly departed. The thought of a group of people gathering around a flat panel monitor, or worse yet, ‘dialing in’ remotely, makes me me feel, well, like a number. And since I’m not The Prisoner, I’d like to keep my humanity – even after death!
Don’t get me wrong, wasting perfectly good green space by putting people into the ground in a box doesn’t make much sense either. And I knew that dying jumped the shark once Wal-Mart started selling caskets and Websites allowing you to build a customizable Web page to honor the dead popped up. Back in the day the obit writer at the local paper was the low man on the totem pole. Where does that leave the obit Web guy?
None of this should be a surprise. Death is big money. The $12 billion industry is finally branching out, bringing the macabre above ground. Whatever. When I go, I’d like my oven at 1600 degrees, please.
What do you think?