Status: Weird, but real
Christophe Thill sent me a link to
Huggable Urns (they're teddy bears that hold cremains) along with the message: "This has to be a hoax? Right? Right?" Sorry, Christophe. I don't think so. The Huggable Urns look real enough, and if you click on the 'Buy Now' button on the
products page, it takes you to a PayPal payment page, which is usually a good sign that a product is real.
Actually, although the huggable urns seem a bit ghoulish and tacky, they're not that bad an idea. They're better than many alternatives. For instance, my mother-in-law's ashes have been sitting in a plastic urn above the washing machine in our garage for the past two years. We just can't figure out what to do with her. So there she sits. And the award for the worst thing to do with someone's ashes has to go to Sandi Canesco of Australia. I write about her in
Hippo Eats Dwarf. She had her husband's ashes injected into her breast implants. She said that "that way I'd never really have to part with him at all." I guess you could say that Sandi has her own unique version of Huggable Urns.
Comments
According to a friend who works in the industry, typical crematoriums only "clean out" the furnaces at the end of the day, not after every corpse. You get the ashes from everyone incinerated that day, all mixed up.
Perhaps there are those places that do actually clean up after every customer.
So when you hug your toasted loved-one, remember that you may be hugging about 20 other people too. Who wants to a hug a dead person anyway?
Have a nice day!
Alex, you can't find a better place for your mother in law than above the washing machine??? :lol:
Blech! {Shudder}
Almost every day that goes by convinces me more firmly that when the time comes I don't want to be buried or cremated, but composted.
"Please note: The Teddy Bears, Dog and Cat are made to hold smaller
portions, where as the pillows will hold the remains of an adult"
aww!
And how much of that sweet, sweet money I could have come away with if we all had taken seriously his proposal, and actually offered up a little encouragement. :down:
Mix them into cement to make concrete, and use the concrete to build a patio.
No, wait! Use the concrete to make a concrete block, then chain the block to a corpse to make it sink when you dump it in the river. :coolgrin:
Sift out any big chunks, then put the rest in an hourglass. How's that for a memento mori?
Mix the ashes with pigments and make Navaho-style sand paintings.
Make gunpowder (I think this has actually been done a few times, e.g. when Hunter Thompson had his remains made into fireworks).
Scatter them on icy pavement so people won't slip (i.e. use the residue from one funeral to prevent another one).
Mix with some glycerin, peppermint flavor, and a bit of sodium flouride, and you've got toothpaste.
Mix with some peat moss and compost, pour into a flower pot, and add a plant.
Fill up ash trays in smoking sections of public areas.
Etc.
Is he a Hindu god or something?
*gack*
Just FYI -
There is a brief write up about Huggable Urns in the May 2007 issue of Harper's Magazine (page 28 in the lower left hand corner).
Michael
I give it 4 paws & 2 thumbs up... aisha
I had worked in a crematory in the late 90's for 3 years processing the bodies into ashes and after every cremation the entire chamber was swept to ensure all of the bone fragments (that when pulverized constitute the 'ashes') were cleared before another body was cremated.
This is the very same practice carried out by every crematory I have come to know.