Weave your own willow casket!

grandma


Remember those jokes about taking a basket weaving course in college? (Or was that just my college?) Just because you finally graduated/dropped out doesn’t mean that you still can’t learn to weave. And just because you’re learning to weave doesn’t mean it has to be something wussy like a chair or swinging sex sling. Musgrove Willows in the UK is teaching the morbidly crafty how to weave their own willow coffins.

From GroovyGreen.com:

Last weekend’s “Weave Your Own Coffin” course ($500) was booked solid. The idea is that you use the final product in the meantime as a blanket box. If anything, it would definitely be a macabre conversation piece.

For those that are interested, Musgrove Willows will be offering the course once again in the spring. Now you know what to get that loved one for Christmas…

It’s true, a handmade personal gift is usually considered the nicest kind of gift–but it will be hard to get it wrapped and under the tree, I bet.

It looks like Muskrat Willows isn’t the only wicker casket game in the UK, either. While searching for a willow coffin image to accompany this post, I came across several other companies that will let you return to nature in a more, uh, natural container. Natural Endings is a “green funerals” specialty company, while Somerset Willow Company will sell you fancy body boxes like the one shown above.

Personally I can’t think of a body inside of something like this without also imagining it set on fire, but of course you can go the more traditional route and drop the damned thing into a hole in the ground. Well, you can’t, because you’ll be in it. It’s your coffin, after all, once your bereaved survivors pull all the blankets out of it.

August 26, 2008 | Filed Under Funerals | Comments 

10 Strange Coffins

Listverse calls their list the “Top 10 Bizarre Coffins,” but we’re not sure these are the craziest ways to be buried, just the most embarrassing. Still, they’re eccentric. Weird, you betcha. Stupid? You be the judge.

July 17, 2008 | Filed Under Funerals, Lists, Shopping, Supplies | Comments 

French mayor says cemetery full; don’t die or you will be punished

The mayor of Sarpourenx, France, which I’m pretty sure translates to “suffering” or “the soap lady” (my French, she is no good), has declared the village cemetery off limits to everyone else planning on being buried there.

In an ordinance posted in the council offices, Mayor Gerard Lalanne told the 260 residents of the village of Sarpourenx that “all persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish.”

It added: “Offenders will be severely punished.”

The banning is at least in part a political maneuver, meant to protest the fact that an adjoining village refused to let Sarpourenx acquire some adjoining private land to expand the cemetery.

There’s no word on where the dead will have to go, but I’d suggest burying them in the neighboring town’s public square.

(Photo: Tony the Misfit)

March 10, 2008 | Filed Under Funerals, Funny, News | Comments 

How To Be Hip & Well Preserved

T-Shirt - Got FormaldehydeEveryone knows that if you want to be cool, you have to carefully pick your t-shirts. We think this “Got Milk” parody is a nice one. First of all, it’s stylishly black–nice and simple, goes with so much. Second, the parody is funny without being over-the-top. Third, it’s about corpses and funeral parlors, which means it will make some people curl their lips with slight distaste. Fourth, the design is subtle enough that you don’t feel like a walking billboard for your smartassery.

The next evolution in this mock-campaign is a bunch of photos of celebrities with formaldehyde smeared across their upper lips. Yes, please.

About $18 from UndergroundHumor.com

February 4, 2008 | Filed Under Funerals, Shopping | Comments 

“Find A Grave”: Like A Phone Book For Dead People

Lottie’s TombstoneLooking to put flowers on Doc Holliday’s grave–or maybe a bottle of whiskey–but it’s been so long since you’ve seen “Tombstone” that you can’t remember where they said he was buried?

Never fear, Find a Grave is at your service. Or, at least, they know where it was held.

Listing well over six thousand actors and close to four thousand authors and writer, Find a Grave has to be the largest grave index on the internet. Some contributors are credited with close to a million postings.

And before you scoff and say “oh, but when was the last time it was updated?” check out the New Listings page that includes Dan Fogelberg and Benazir Bhutto. Or the more recent 2008 Necrology.

Famous graves pages include pictures of the deceased, a short biography, and a picture of the grave site when available. For most famous graves, there is also a way to leave notes and virtual gifts, such as flowers or teddy bears. Users must register to use this feature. However, on some graves (such as William “Billy the Kid” Bonney’s), this has been disabled because “it was being continually misused.”

Search features for locating famous graves include the standards of by-location, claim-to-fame, and date. The most interesting search option is called “posthumous reunions.” Here, you can find listings for the graves of your favourite band, movie, or television show. Some reunion categories link sports teams or murder victims or criminal gangs. Not all of the listed categories under this search feature will return a list of names, as in the case of the “Poltergeist Reunion.”

The index does not contain itself to the famous, but includes a claimed listing of 20 million grave records. Now, we all know there are more than 20 million graves in the world. So, don’t be surprised if a search for your loved one ends with a link to the World Vital Records site or Ancestry.com.

(Photo: Scurzuzu)

[tags]cemetery,genealogy,grave,road trip,travel,famous,burial,funeral,tombstone[/tags]

January 10, 2008 | Filed Under Funerals, Reference | Comments 

Next Page →