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From News-journalonline.com

Remains to be seen, or possibly flung (alyson hannigan mention)

By C. A. Bridges

Wednesday 29 December 2004, by Webmaster

The year is drawing to a close. The land is barren, the trees are bare, the wind is chill and unforgiving. My thoughts turn, as they do at the end of every year, to the haunting specter of my own looming demise. Oddly, this always cheers me up. Not because I have any particular death wish, mind you. I’ve never had the slightest suicidal impulse, not even during TNT’s Ben Affleck movie marathon. But the amazing options available to me for the disposal of my final remains are truly exciting, and frankly I can barely wait.

No one who’s anyone gets buried anymore. Sure, some people still go for the flashy burials in Cadillacs or ice chests or sarcophagi made of Popsicle sticks or something, but ground internment is so last-couple-thousand-years. The in thing now is to get cremated and do something more interesting with your "cremains" than you ever managed to do with your actual living body.

Interested in ritualistic necrolittering? Have your ashes scattered over the eastern seaboard, off the coast of Australia, or over Big Sur. There are plenty of companies ready and willing to respectfully dump your ashes over Oahu, the Golden Gate Bridge, the waters of the Boston Harbor, or just about anyplace where you won’t become a traffic hazard.

Or you could sail away from this mortal coil in a balloon from EternalAscent.com, which will gracefully float your granules to freeze and scatter five miles up. For a more festive distribution CelebrateLife.net will package and fire you off in a tasteful fireworks display, which has the benefit of being both memorializing and crowd-pleasing, especially if you offer beer.

Prefer to get away from earthly things entirely? No problem! MemorialSpaceFlight.com will arrange to have your ashes hauled into low Earth orbit and released. Depending on the final altitude and trajectory, you could burn up in reentry in two years or you could outlast the human race. Ha! Take that, you mortal weenies!

Personally I’d like to be scattered over a heavily populated area, such as Manhattan or Los Angeles during rush hour. I’m a people person. Who knows, I might land on someone famous! I might find myself smeared across Christina Ricci’s windshield or sprinkled over Alyson Hannigan’s double frappe cappuccino. I’d love to get crop dusted over Disney World’s Electric Light Parade but I bet it would cost extra.

If posthumous street value is what you’re after, LifeGem.com can convert your ashes into a handcrafted, beautifully cut diamond. How cool is that? You’ll look fantastic, you’ll be worth as much as a real diamond, and if you’ve been hitting the pork rinds there’ll be enough of you to make Angelina Jolie’s Oscar dress. And face it, you would have wanted it that way.

EternalReefs.com will put you back into the circle of life by mixing your cremains into concrete and using you to create an artificial reef. Your mortal bits will spend eternity as a habitat for fish, turtles and other forms of sea life. Depending on your opinion of seafood this would either be a glorious affirmation of life or a horrifying eternal punishment, especially if you were allergic. I don’t know if similar services exist to mix you into highway overpass supports, but the principle is the same.

If you really want to hang around and creep out your loved ones, at least pick something more original than a pot to sit around in. An ashtray is a little obvious, but how about a Bugs Bunny cookie jar? A lava lamp? An hourglass would be appropriate and stylish. Maybe a nice little zen garden, with little rocks and a tiny rake so soothing lines can be traced and retraced in your dust.

Since most of these methods involve only a small portion of your cremains, it is possible to choose more than one way to commemorate your life. I’m planning on having a pinch of myself placed inside the liquid in a Magic 8-Ball so I can continue to be the decision-maker for my family. An envelope of me will be mailed anonymously to a government building, just for fun. And the rest?

Well, if you’re at Disney watching the parade, don’t look up.