Saturday, December 13, 2003
Getting a telephone call from the Neptune Society seems like a very bad thing to me. Maybe it's just part of my inability to adjust to the way life has gone downhill since I was a little boy. The Neptune Society will (For a substantial fee) scatter your cremated remains on the ocean. I don't want my remains scattered ANYWHERE while they are still ME. By that, I mean that I am presently what will one day be called my remains, but until that after that day, I don't want ANYONE offering to off me, turn me to dust, and fertilize (or poison) marine life with me.
Knowing that there are tele-ghouls who make their living by telephoning people at home and asking if they'd like to be incinerated and thrown overboard is very creepy to me. While I'm alive, I DO NOT want to receive calls about how every last earthly bit of me could thrown to the maritime breezes (probably an extra $100.00 will get some really good "gone forever more" music like "Feelings", "Amazing Grace", or "What do you do with a drunken sailor?", or maybe even a Barry Manilow tune. The skipper of the death barge will have a good time taking the ashes out to sea, and if the grieving family should elect NOT to accompany the departed on the final voyage and have the ashes of the dead one blown back in their faces, then the skipper could just jettison the powdered loved one a mere 300 yards from shore. This would save the skipper a lot of money.
Knowing that you could be dropped into a polluted, murky green harbor somewhere by a scurrilous sea-dog turned undertaker is enough to erase idyllic fantasies of "eternal life" gained by being jettisoned.
