Could be worse! Check out the Indonesian Toraja tribe that keeps dead family's bodies around the house for a long time, and also exhumes them for yearly celebrations:
In a typically bad episode of the simpsons, they had a coffin cam, which always struck me as something that you definitely don't want to do, but probably someone has.
A battery powered one would be adequate for what I presume is the primary application, a problem that stretches back millennia. And cheaper than hosting a wake.
Not all the way to the coffin, but just the other day I saw a news report of EMTs calling time on a patient with no pulse who is in fact still alive today.
Like you also see referenced in the sibling comment - yes, some people indeed come back. And it is probably not funny, if you come back to life, but find yourself buried alive.
I don’t generally like obligatory xkcd references, but this one is an exception. I like how it reminds us that our experiences are not universal, and people have all kinds of experience spatterings, even if we may come from a shared cultural background. And, instead of the inclination to feel superior to someone who doesn’t know a thing, we can instead feel pleased to share our beloved cultural touchstones.
I had a coworker, originally from India, who had not heard of the 1918 flu pandemic. (This came up back when COVID was first ramping up.) Apparently it's not taught about in India, even though it killed many millions.
The goal was not that "everybody knows your name"; only that one's identity be well-known enough that it will not be forgotten, or at least (in this particular case) be rediscoverable. So the point is not undermined at all.
If you plan to immortalize yourself in a negative way you can just pull a Pompeii and start doing graffiti. A few crude dick drawings and raunchy jokes signed with your name should be enough to keep future archeologists entertained.
I find it interesting the people actually think they might be special enough that people in a "few scant centuries" would even care to know who you were. We've long left the 15 minutes of fame to thinking we'll live in history.
It’s less that people will remember dylan604 and more that they find your skeleton laying around and can’t figure out whose it is (and therefore assume it must be King Charles’).
I don't see it that way, as I see it more of dylan604 doesn't care if someone can properly identify dylan604's bones let alone assume that someone in the future will give one iota of care about what a dylan604 even means. Besides, I plan on being cremated so there will not be anything left to ID. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust and all that completion of the circle of life stuff. Everyone being entombed in their plastic sarcophagi are breaking that cycle. Can't even become worm food in those.
It is quite surprising yo discover that some of the props used in tv/movies/theatre are actual real objects that just "fit", but it makes sense if one thinks about it.
I think I heard the story of a "lost" Hungarian picture rediscovered through becoming a movie prop on HN some time ago, and while not as interesting as the clock coffin, it's still quite good[0].
i was involved in the assset-categorisation of my family's ~130yr old UK funeral directing business prior to it's sale to a "funeral conglomerate" in the mid-90s. deep in the basement (of a basement!) in the family "brownstone", we found a fake coffin. seems it was made by the family firm (we used to actually make the coffins back in the day) for a local vaudevillian/magician in the very early 1900s, who never actually came back/paid for it -- which is why i assume we still had it? it was full and structurally complete when we discovered it, worked just fine after being emptied of a few rolls of wool (we assumed for death pillows). i was a teenager then, wish i had had the wherewithal to take some photos! after we dragged it out, we had a good couple of days of fun playing around with it, seeing how it worked, trying it out, and even sleeping in it! TL;dr it had a smoothly-weighted raised sliding false "third bottom" that slid in between two layers that made up the upper two thirds bottom. it was a much darker wood than the usual coffins, which always surprised me. perhaps coffins were much darker a century earlier?
If by any chance you haven't seen the movie — please, do. There's a reason it became a cult classic and a lot of people watch and re-watch it many, many times.
I just watched a rerun of CSI that was clearly a homage to this. I remember thinking "What kind of crazy murder will they think up next?" Truth is stranger than fiction.
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[ 0.68 ms ] story [ 142 ms ] threadHard pass.
Meanwhile, I noticed the farmer's wife in the American Gothic is giving it a WTF stare.
* https://www.escape.com.au/destinations/asia/the-tribe-that-k...
* https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/09/29/7646387...
https://www.ancientpages.com/2016/02/09/strange-history-of-s...
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/us/new-york-woman-found-alive...
However Wikipedia says that's not the case and "a wake for the dead harks back to the vigil, "watch" or "guard" of earlier times. "
Perhaps I should develop a way to tattoo bones in life so that in death you can be known.
Another whimsical XKCD reference.
I don’t generally like obligatory xkcd references, but this one is an exception. I like how it reminds us that our experiences are not universal, and people have all kinds of experience spatterings, even if we may come from a shared cultural background. And, instead of the inclination to feel superior to someone who doesn’t know a thing, we can instead feel pleased to share our beloved cultural touchstones.
From my hometown I think there are two past living things that people are aware of a century later.
First is Alfred Nobel of the Nobel Prize, no further explanation needed I guess.
The second is a circus horse that I couldn't explain why people care about 100 years later even if I tried.
I think I heard the story of a "lost" Hungarian picture rediscovered through becoming a movie prop on HN some time ago, and while not as interesting as the clock coffin, it's still quite good[0].
[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2014/...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/27/stuart-little-...
Discovered while they were filming the Six Million Dollar Man.
[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dead-man-gawking/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_McCurdy
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/csi_vegas/s02/e02