Ewww...

October 31, 2002 1:16 PM

Ewww... Even for Halloween this one's a bit creepy. I don't think I'd ever want a plasma screen above my casket providing "a lively counterpoint to the display of an open casket." And what healthy person has time to record their life in such a fashion? They should be out living it.
posted by MediaMan (7 comments total)

where thousands of people are not so much buried as dynamically archived

If I owned a company, this would be my catchphrase, no matter what I sold!
posted by archimago at 1:29 PM on October 31, 2002

vain, televised, and on permanent loop is no way to go through death, son.
posted by condour75 at 1:34 PM on October 31, 2002

"For most people, the only permanent memorial is a name and date etched in stone," reads a line of promo text on the website. "Forever Life Stories fill in the dash between the birth date and death date."

My mom has a nitch. A nitch is like several shadow boxes but together in one large case. Anyway there was no more room in the mausoleum so they added these nitches. Now my mom will have a shadow window size area for her ashes. And any other things she can fit in their like her husband who bought it so he would be buried with Air Conditioning.

Next to them this one fellow was a school bus driver for most of his life. In it is his name badge, bus license and a vest with all the pins and buttons he had collected from his riders. There was even a set of bus keys and some of the kids decorated a bus with pictures of him driving it and them in it.

I thought about some how hooking up a solar powered power source to an electronic piece of media that could show my mom's life. Yet she said who would come look and watch, how boring. Plus the warranty on most electronic goods are 3 years.
posted by thomcatspike at 2:26 PM on October 31, 2002

This is just another extension of the grave, the headstone, and the concrete vault: all attempts at prolonging one's time on earth. But how much time are you really buying? How long will the headstone be readable or the plasma screen workable? 100 years? 200? How long will the graveyard be there? 1000? 2000? Eventually all is ended. My point is why bother with any of this nonsense to begin with. When I go it is ashes to the wind, Baby!
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 2:38 PM on October 31, 2002

And Thom, I am sorry about your mother. I hope I don't lose my mother for a good long time, yet.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 2:41 PM on October 31, 2002

Secret LG, don't be sorry she's not dead. She is just overly prepared. Sorry for the imply.

Listening to my mom tell the story from her husband's point of view you would think so. Because he would die if he did not have A/C in death, . He was worried they would run out of A/C spots in the area.

Sharing the story of the bus driver gave you this thought. See my mom thinks it's funny about the A/C and wanted to share her nitch with me. I live some distance from her So one visit she showed it to me. It's odd to see an empty spot, like a hole waiting for a casket with just a name tag. But she was proud of her neighbors and one's to be that she wanted to share their life, by being my tour guide.

Another couple next to them have Waterford urns, which my mom knows I like. So she wanted to show me this man's ashes in it. His husband will be placed next to him when he dies too as there is an empty urn with wedding pictures and a ring. My mom was proud to have neighbors that were in Waterford, a bus driver whom was loved by the community and her husband will be in A/C until I pull the power plug. Uh the ashes didn't seem too gruesome to look at either.

PS, some went with their collectables, hotwheels GI Joe and even StarWars. It's funny their cremanted and most you can't see their ashes just their toys.
posted by thomcatspike at 3:41 PM on October 31, 2002

My "tombstone video" would go something like:

"So, my heart monitor went all beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeeeee.... And then I was dead.

"It was... a bummer.

"I'm SPrintF, and I'm dead."
posted by SPrintF at 4:56 PM on October 31, 2002