A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

Dead and loving it them

Man, those Sawyers really were ahead of their time:

Tim shoves past his mother and grandmother, and in the process, knocks Esther Dunlop, age 76, to the floor. Esther lies there unmoving; Tim's sister, Megan, picks up her grandmother and sets her back in the chair, straightening her hair and closing her mouth, which had popped open in the fall. The ease with which the skinny 14-year-old has righted the older lady is almost startling, given Esther's seemingly sturdy frame.

No one says anything about the cake or the candles, which have since burned themselves out and are sending up wisps of smoke, like incense at a Mass for the dead. The imagery is appropriate. What is not readily apparent from this scene is that Mrs. Dunlop expired in June because of a massive cerebral hemorrhage; she died instantly as she lay on the couch in the Braswells' home, where she had lived for several years, watching a rerun of her favorite show: CSI: Miami. What now sits before Timothy Braswell's melting ice cream cake -- blue hair and all -- is her lifelike, taxidermied corpse.

UPDATE: Research by the ever-intrepid Michael (detailed in the comments section) points very strongly to the likelihood that this is a hoax, as most sane people who read the article suspected in the first place. The lovely and talented boxing octopus is working on independent confirmation.

UPDATE 2: It is indeed a hoax, as my source (whom I cannot name) has confirmed.

The rest of the original entry is under the "More" link.

I'll skip some of the subsequent text, which describes the Dunlop family's decision to forego a regular funeral or cremation and instead opt for "humidermy," the process used by a company called Preserve A Life to "mount" your loved one.

Yeah, I know...gotta be a joke:

In the case of Mrs. Dunlop, [Preserve A Life representative George Canetti] advised, she could be "mounted" in a seated position, so her family could enjoy her presence at family functions, or just watch Jay Leno with her. He also quietly advised that, even though it didn't seem possible as the family was grieving, there would be times when it would be inappropriate to have grandmother in plain view. During those times, her countenance could be stored in the hallway closet, since her legs could easily be adjusted to a standing position.

Indeed, Gloria says all these months later: "When we have friends over, friends who don't know about what we've done with Mother Dunlop, we put her out of sight for the evening. I know some people will think this is really weird, but it's been so comforting having her here with us. I think, if she could talk, she'd be pleased. Sometimes, it's almost like she never passed away."

Of course, she can't talk, because her vocal cords and brain have been removed, along with the rest of her organs and bones. If there's a way she could cry out in indignation from beyond the grave, perhaps she would.

Then again, you've got her mouth.

Where, pray tell, does one put a skinjob (Blade Runner term) "out of sight for the evening?" Suppose someone goes to the wrong closet, or accidentally enters the second bedroom, or is one of those annoying partygoers like yours truly who likes to root through all of his host's belongings. What about our state of mind?

Gloria admits that having a dead body in the house isn't for everybody, and it's not without small problems, outside the realm of what unknowing visitors might or might not think of the family's actions. Though Preserve A Life has by all accounts done a marvelous job of treating Mrs. Dunlop's skin, stretching it over a fiberglass model made to fit her proportions exactly, and inserting glass eyes, with the option of leaving the eyelids open or closed, there are occasional rips and tears that have to be daubed with a special putty from the Preserve A Life Home Repair Kit. Additionally, a lingering, musty smell sometimes hovers about Mrs. Dunlop, an odor technicians at Preserve A Life say has nothing to do with death, but is a natural product of the skin of seniors, referred to by some as "that old person smell." Gloria often leaves potpourri near Mrs. Dunlop's body, or simply uses Glade air freshener.

No word on whether or not "Preserve A Life" plans to distill "old person smell" and market it to people nostalgic for the memories of their grandparents' homes. Why stop at merely causing focused and intense psychological damage to your children, after all?

Unfortunately, accidents are bound to happen when you mix household pets with delicious deceased relatives.

For instance, in early September, while Robert was out of town and Gloria was having the carpets cleaned, she leaned Mrs. Dunlop against the house in the backyard for the better part of a week, placing her under a tarpaulin.

"I was rushing around because school had just started and everyone was going in a different direction," she says. "You know how it is. Then I was all like, 'Where did I put Mother Dunlop? Oh, right, out back!' I probably shouldn't have sent Timmy back there to get her. But he was 12 and strapping for his age, and since all of Mother Dunlop's insides were removed during the Preserve A Life process, she's very light. I didn't think anything of it."

Unfortunately, there was nothing to prepare Tim for what awaited him under that covering. Seems Gloria had forgotten about the fact that the family's backyard is turned into a lake during irrigation, and the skin from one of Granny's feet had rotted away from the moisture. The other foot -- in fact, half the leg -- was gone. And just as Tim began to yell, Gloria saw the family's dog, Sparky, dragging something across the back lawn. It was Mrs. Dunlop's chewed-off appendage.

For this same reason, shallow graves and canines don't mix. Don't get me started on how many of my family's backyard BBQs have been ruined by lazy diggers and curious pets.

Getting over my initial revulsion to this article, I eventually became a little more curious about Preserve A Life's methods, and how many twisted ghouls families have opted for the procedure:

...since the 10-year-old Canadian corporation quietly transplanted itself to the Valley's sunnier climes last spring, setting up shop in an abandoned medical facility just south of Van Buren Street, 30 deceased have been humidermied at the facility using one of two methods: traditional taxidermy, wherein a human body is shorn of its skin and hair, the skeleton and internal organs disposed of (either through burial, cremation or tissue donation), and the remainder mounted over a mannequin made to order; or freeze-dried with the internal organs intact, the corpse drained of all fluid and consequently only a fraction of its original weight.

These human "replicants," as the 57 employees of Preserve A Life refer to them, are then hand-delivered to next of kin, and installed according to the family's wishes. Children have been posed on bicycles and skateboards, grandmothers in rocking chairs, and grandfathers playing boccie ball. One woman wanted her husband posed on his favorite Harley wearing a Hells Angels motorcycle jacket, while in the case of a lesbian couple, the surviving woman wanted her longtime companion dressed in a Frederick's of Hollywood French maid outfit, cut so as to reveal her buttocks and bosom. And in one of the most disturbing trends, some casualties of the Iraq war have even been mounted in full dress uniform, and posed saluting or waving the American flag.

Hey, look at that, the revulsion's back.

But how does one choose between freeze-drying and old fashioned taxidermy?

But there are drawbacks to both procedures. With freeze-drying, it's difficult to do realistic enhancements afterward, like breast or penile enlargement, because the implants cannot survive the freeze-drying process. Also, with freeze-drying, if the individual in question is obese, there may be some leakage of fat once the replication process is complete. And finally, because the skin is not "tanned" the old-fashioned way, vermin have been known to lay eggs in the dried flesh. "For some pests, like moths or cockroaches, a freeze-dried corpse is like a big hunk of beef jerky," admits [CEO Bryce] Cunningham.

That entire paragraph pretty much buried the needle on my internal "Oogh"-Meter, and I saw Nekromantik. Twice. Once on a date.

Before we go any further, I should probably clarify that I never really cared one way or the other what happened to my body after my inevitable death from autoerotic asphyxiation. At the time, however, there were few options: burial, cremation, and maybe as "Exploding Zombie #4" from some future horror flick. That being the case, I have to congratulate the alleged Preserve A Life company for finally coming up with a postmortem option I absolutely refuse to consider. In fact, I'm going to change my will to specify that any family member who attempts to "humidermy" my corpse will be haunted in perpetuity by my ghost until, Ju-On style, they jump out of a goddamned high rise.

For those who can't afford to have the entire body preserved, Preserve A Life offers a plethora of less expensive options. For $1,750 (discounts are sometimes available), you can have just the individual's head mounted on a plaque, and for $750, the limb of your choice. (One lady actually had her husband's right arm taxidermied, with the hand holding a removable ashtray.) A swatch of your loved one's skin can be treated and affixed to a pillowcase or a blanket, so that you can always have him or her next to you -- which Cunningham considers a bargain at $250. And ears, toes and fingers are dead cheap, from $50 to $100 to preserve. Cunningham says the most popular use of these "leftovers" is as key-chain fobs, which, he asserts, "make great conversation pieces."

That ashtray one's a pretty good gag, but all told it sounds like multiple offenses against various corpse violation statutes (assuming such things still exist...damn liberals). If that's not the case, can you just get someone's buttocks preserved and stuffed like a cushion you can kick when you get pissed off at all the debt they saddled you with by dying?

I probably shouldn't ask.

By now (assuming you haven't already chucked biscuits), you're probably wondering what other sorts of things are possible with your fully poseable upholstered mannequin.

For Leonard Scholl of Gilbert, verisimilitude was also a big part of having his new bride, Cynthia Scholl, humidermied. They'd only been married three days when Cynthia was impaled by a cast-iron pipe that had jostled loose from an 18-wheeler in front of them as they were making their way up the Pacific Coast Highway along the California coast. Driven by an intense desire to be with his beloved, Scholl gave Preserve A Life a call after seeing one of their ads, and they fulfilled Scholl's request to have the brown-eyed lass installed in his bedroom, wearing only her negligee.
...
"Our favorite time was Friday night. After work and dinner out, we would get comfortable, lie in bed and drink a glass or two of good Merlot before, well, you know. I still cherish that night of the week with her, and when I wake up the next morning, she's there beside me. As long as I can hold her hand in mine, I'll be happy."

There's more of the article, but my heart's really not into commenting on the rest of it. Maybe my attitude towards death and the afterlife are out of touch, but so be it. I'm not Egyptian. And, again, maybe the whole thing's an elaborate hoax.

Read it for yourself, by all means, but especially enjoy the pictures. I can't decide if my favorite is the woman rubbing the patch of skin sewn onto a pillow, or the little boy mounted on a scooter.

Thanks - for nothing - to The Thing That Walks Like a Man.