(Preface from original Canonical list site)
From the "Los Angeles Times" An Alameda mortician is peddling a set of plans to build your own casket which, in the pre-afterlife, can double as a coffee table or bookcase. "The attitude of funeral home owners has been that eventually you're going to have to come to them," said Al Carpenter, owner of Direct Funeral Services. "This is the first time you can do something on your own."
My husband is in danger of losing his license to practice medicine. He was caught having sex with some of his patients. It's such a shame. He was the best mortician in town.
There were three morticians trading stories in a bar one night. The first one says, "What a day I had today. The guy wasn't wearing his seatbelt and his head flew into the windshield. Took me all day to make the face look natural." Not to be outdone, the second mortician says, "You think that's bad? I had this kid in who got hit by a train while he was riding his bike. Took me TWO days to put all the pieces back together!" The third mortician just shook his head. "You guys have it easy," he said. "I had this female parachutist whose chute didn't open. She landed on a flagpole and it took me all week just to wipe the smile off her face!"
Rachel Barton-Russell petitioned a court in Springfield, Ore., in February 1994 for a ruling on the meaning of the state's law against corpse abuse. Her deceased husband, Donal Eugene Russell, had declared in his will that he wanted his skin used to make book covers for a collection of his poetry, but the state Mortuary and Cemetery Board claims that carrying out that request would subject a funeral home to liability for corpse abuse.
In Baton Rouge, La., in June 1994, minutes after funeral services for a 25-year- old man ended, his body caught fire inside the closed coffin, causing smoke to come shooting out of the cracks. Investigators said embalming fluids spontaneously combusted.
A former municipal morgue attendant in Brisbane, Australia, told reporters that in July 1994 that the morgue routinely made available for researchers a variety of organs from corpses without permission from the families of the deceased. In particular, he said the morgue sold pituitary glands collected during the late 1980s for about 50 cents each to fund a staff Christmas party last year.
The widow takes a look at her dear departed one right before the funeral and, to her horror, finds that he's in his brown suit. She'd specifically said to the undertaker that she wanted him buried in his blue suit; she'd brought it especially for that occasion, and she was distressed that the mortician had left him in the same brown suit he'd been wearing when the lightning bolt hit him. She demanded that the corpse be changed into the blue suit she'd brought especially for that purpose. The undertaker said, "But madam! It's only a minute or two until the funeral is scheduled to begin! We can't possibly take him out and get him changed in that amount of time." The lady said, "Who's paying for this?" Seeing the logic to this argument, a very reluctant mortician wheeled the coffin out, but then wheeled it right back in a moment later. Miraculously, the corpse was in a blue suit. After the ceremony, a well-satisfied widow complimented the undertaker on the smooth and speedy service. She especially wanted to know how he'd been able to get her husband into a blue suit so fast. The funeral director said, "Oh, it was easy. It happens that there was another body in the back room and he was already dressed in a blue suit. All we had to do was switch heads."
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