So all the neofeminists, crypto-moralists and consent-culture fanatics are upset because Hugh Hefner bought the mausoleum drawer next to the one holding Marilyn Monroe’s skeletal remains; most of these articles by folks without actual problems to worry about use phrases like “without her consent”, as though a carcass could consent to anything even before it completely rotted away. Yes, actual adult humans are up in arms over the fact that a hunk of rotting meat is going to be sealed up in a box next to another one containing a half-century mouldered set of bones. Really, people. I know y’all have cherished mumbo-jumbo sympathetic magic beliefs about corpses, but the truth is that they’re hunks of dead meat, bones and viscera that quickly decompose into fertilizer. They’re nothing but garbage. They’re not “sacred” or magic; they don’t have mystic powers, nor even much monetary value unless they were under 40 or so and the organs are removed within minutes after death. They’re not people; they have no feelings, and they can’t be “desecrated” because they aren’t sacred in the first place. And they absolutely, positively, have no ability to “consent” to jack shit, nor does their nonexistent consent need to be sought. Next you’re going to tell me it’s “creepy” that all the garbage from all the sex symbols in Hollywood are thrown together into the same dump without the previous owners’ “consent”. OMG MEN’S SHIT GETS TREATED IN THE SAME PLANT AS WOMEN’S WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT! RAAAAAPE!!!! Furthermore, stop calling graves “final resting places”. They’re garbage cans; nobody is “resting” there. Organic matter is decomposing; that’s all. I believe in souls; some of you reading this do and some don’t. But I think we all agree that at death, whatever makes a person human departs; it’s gone, for good. There is nothing of it left in the cadaver, which is no more “sacred” than discarded clothes. The idea that the corpse is “sacred” is a primitive one from the childhood of Mankind; some believed (and a few still do) that at the end of the world souls would come back into their bodies, which would re-animate. You know the song “Dem Bones“? That’s what it’s about. But this is a childish belief for childish minds. One can believe in souls or gods without the silly notion that stiffs need to be cherished like treasured keepsakes for the next 5 billion years (which is roughly the end of the world). Guess what? If bodies really do need to be preserved for that long for you to have eternal life, you’re shit out of luck because I guarantee no one skeleton is going to be in resurrectable condition in a period of time further into the future than life has existed on Earth. A couple of partial fossils maybe, from all the humans that have ever existed, all hundred billion or so of us. So let this dumbass corpse-worship shit go; it’s even stupider than the pretense that a person’s motive for sex can magically pollute it and harm all women everywhere. Which is to say, extremely stupid.
Taking Out the Trash
October 6, 2017 by Maggie McNeill
Posted in Current Events, Perception, Philosophy | Tagged California, dirty, neofeminism | 11 Comments
11 Responses
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SIGH!!!!! I totally agree.. We are a soul with a body!
Maggie loved last nights post on where your at with sex and how you feel about it! Its late night here…. And I’ve run out of puff! But to let you know love your eloquence and insight is often parallel to mine. Look forward to your posts.
Sleep well x
These kind of posts, where you let people – who invariably richly deserve it – have it with both barrels, are always among my favorites!
Never thought of a grave as a garbage can, a marble marker in a park, yes. So grave yards are very pretty land fills.
Spot on as usual Maggie. As I read I kept remembering a poem I read in college called “To His Coy Mistress”.
All that is true unless you’re cremated, in which case you will become part of just about every air-breathing thing on the planet, and contribute to global warming.
There are also newfangled purportedly more benign means of disposing of your remains than puking out worms 6 feet under and contaminating the groundwater, in case you or your loved ones fell for the embalming scam.
One is to deep freeze you in liquid nitrogen, where you become as brittle as glass and eventually end up as a neat little pile of fertilizer (literally).
The other one is to put you into a chemical reactor with supercritical water and a pinch of lye. After one hour or so, most of you gets flushed down the sewer (again, literally), except for pacemakers, gold fillings, and hip implants. The folks at the funeral parlour have fewer excuses for discreetly messing with your remains, and traffic your tibia bones (replacing them with cut broomsticks) or corneas… The method was invented in the UK to dispose of animals destroyed during foot-and-mouth or mad-cow disease epidemics, as it is slightly more elegant than piling hundreds of cattle on a pyre. It is making its way into the US.
Excellent points! Just when I think we’ve finally hit Peak Stupid, they come up with new stupidity. Much as I detest admitting that they’re right about anything at all, the Westboro Baptists have a very good point about our culture’s “worship of the dead.”
Of course you’re right, Maggie. In this case, I would like to think of it as kind of a symbol, almost a romantic gesture of sorts. Not in the Joe DiMaggio style, but pure Hef. Marilyn was his first centerfold, she helped make Playboy by appearing in it, she epitomized the Playboy “brand”, if you will. Plus, from Hef’s POV, he gets to have the last word – “Here I am, lying next to the woman. I built an empire based on this philosophy that she was a poster girl for (literally), and I get to show the rest of you what I did, and she helped to me achieve that”. So, maybe it’s a homage, and tribute, to himself, and her, and showmanship, all at the same time. Well played, Hef. 🙂
Here’s a solution: before a person dies she can write in her will who to be buried next to (no Republicans, Libertarians, sex workers, convicts within 10 meters, etc.)
“Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.”
-Yoda
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A grave is primarily a place to remember a person by, nothing else. I have to say I find this placement nicely appropriate for Hefner and an excellent choice on his part.