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TV Show Seeks Terminally Ill Volunteer for Mummification
Terminal illness got you down? Does your future seems bleak? Channel 4 and production company Fulcrum TV would like to brighten your day by making you the star of an upcoming documentary. They would like to offer you the chance to be mummified on TV and maybe even displayed in a museum afterward. An advertisement for the project reads: "We are currently keen to talk to some one who, faced with the knowledge of their own terminal illness and all that it entails, would nonetheless consider undergoing the process of an ancient Egyptian embalming."
Am I going to be done terriyaki style?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Remember, the actual brain is located in the stomach. That thing in your head is just waste and is to be disgarded!
Terminally III?
Is that, like, the sequel to Terminally II?
Hello,
Commiserations on the news of your imminent demise. At Channel 4, we believe that the most appropriate way of dealing with this sad news, and the undoubted grief of your nearest and dearest, is for you to submit your corpse to be messed about with on national television for public "infotainment". The documentary we are producing will take just as sensitive, informative, and considerate an approach as the famous documentaries "The Boy Whose Skin Falls Off", "The Woman Who Never Grew Up" and our other televised equivalents of old-time circus freak-shows.
We've set up a 24 hour hotline, just in case you really are that close to popping your cloggs, and look forward to working with your mortal remains soon!
best regards,
Channel 4 Public Relations.
That is like saying that solar power isn't a renewable resource because eventually the Sun will die in 5+ billion years. It may be technically true but not meaningfully so.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Duh. Preferably you die the moment after you signed the contract so they can start making the documentary. Do you think they want to wait another 40ish years or however long you plan to live?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
how is that possible, i thought he was an robot from the future...
God's gift to chicks
Because obviously they'd like to get some filming done before May Sweeps... this is show business, you know. Can't be waiting for you to croak 20 or 30 years down the line...
Because they're looking to cash in on the morbid fascination of seeing a sexy, healthy-looking person who died of some non-obvious disease (such as certain cancers) get stripped down and cut to pieces.
It's much less can't-look-away horrifying if they're cutting up an 80-year-old. Who'll want to buy ads in THAT half-hour?
Why not? Assisted suicide live on TV? Think of the ratings!
Why not turn it into a game show where you get to pick a vowel? We can call it "Hangman".
(I'm so going to hell for that)
Life is not for the lazy.
We all "know we are going to die"
Well yeah, obviously, but that's completely different to being told "two months".
It's for science!
No, it's for "science."
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
So it's not just me that sees shows like Mythbusters as an intellectual version of Jackass.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
You prevent deaths with condoms, birth control pills, and poor oral hygiene - by preventing the lives from starting.
Don't forget to add personality to that list of prophylactics!
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
And slashdot, of course.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I am "faced with the knowledge of my own terminal illness"
I take it you've been diagnosed with the dreaded Alive, Well and Happy Syndrome, caused by a complex combination of healthy diet, regular exercise, a low to moderate alcohol consumption, a lack of tobacco or nicotine intake, frequent sexual intercourse and a supportive social network.
Fortunately, it's in decline among US youth; see the article published in pubdot at http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/01/12/1337235
Tut tut tut...
[UID-HeinzIntel]
I remember watching this done on a modern human over 10 years years ago on discovery networks... it was very cool.
from his wiki article:
"In 1994, Brier and a colleague, Ronald Wade, director of the State Anatomy Board of Maryland, claimed to be the first people in 2,000 years to mummify a human cadaver using ancient Egyptian techniques. This research earned Brier the affectionate nickname "Mr. Mummy" and was also the subject of the National Geographic television special of the same name."
Reminds me of the quotation:
"Life is a sexually transmitted disease with 100% mortality rate."
We all "know we are going to die".
Not really, no. I'm serious. One thing that humans are fascinatingly good at is ignoring this "knowledge". There's some brain research that shows evidence of our brains actually being wired up so that we avoid facing this, on very low-levels. In other words: It's not a conscious decision, not even an unconscious one. Runs a lot deeper than that.
So, it's only true for broad definitions of "know". Yes, the fact is recallable from memory. But your brain goes to great lengths to ignore it, and almost always when you actually do recall it, it has about the same emotional impact as last year's sports numbers. Actually, for sports fans, less than that. But it shouldn't. Ever wondered why that is? Now you know. For some definitions of "know". :-)
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"Life is a disease; sexually transmitted and invariably fatal"
- Neil Gaiman, Death: The High Cost of Living
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
Staring the most famous politicians of the world!
Then do a follow up season with dictator leaders, soap opera celebrities, ..
What the hell do you care? It's not like you're going to be lying there thinking, "Aw man, this really sucks!"
My family has approached me a few times about what I want to be done with my body when I die. My answer is always the same. I want what organs might be useful donated. After that, I really don't care. Bury me, cremate me, donate me to science, do whatever gives you what comfort and solace you need, because that's not me.
When my mom passed away, which is by far the single most gut-wrenching experience I've ever been through in my life, that thought was the only thing that got me through the funeral without totally falling apart. My mom was a lot more than just the collection of organic molecules that lay before me, and she's gone. I appreciate the body that lay before me; it was her "house" for 60 years and allowed me to see her, talk to her, interact with her, and love her. But the house was now empty. Sad, for sure, but it wasn't the loss of the house I was mourning.
So yeah, once I'm gone, you can pull my brains out through my nose and make gut soup for all I care. It was just my house, and I don't live there any more.
Because having you blood drained and replaced with embalming fluid and you body covered in makeup and posed like we do today commonly is perfectly rational.
It is rational. It gives people time to travel (sometimes long distances) to consol one another on the passing of a friend. The makeup, the embalming fluid, it's all there for the purposes of the viewing. The funeral is for the living.
Irrational is leaving a body to decompose and make the gathering uncomfortable for the sake of being the 'thoroughly modern nihilist' who doesn't follow those lame and old-fashioned traditions because they are soooo much cooler than that.
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