Dying For Attention

<p>The problem with dying these days is that everybody’s doing it. It is practically impossible to stand out from the crowd once you’ve breathed your final breath. In a <a title=”delightfully macabre article for <I style=” mso-bidi-font-style:=”” normal”=””>Live Science” href=”http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/071203-offbeat-burials.html” target=”_blank”>delightfully macabre article for <i>Live Science</i>
</a>, Heather Whipps offers some suggestions on how your death, if celebrated in a sufficiently ridiculous fashion, can out-shine your soon-to-be-forgotten life. As an added benefit, some of the options are <a title=”more eco-friendly” href=”http://www.livescience.com/environment/071130-green-deaths.html” target=”_blank”>more eco-friendly</a> than the traditional chemical-laden, bank vault-thick sarcophagus that so many choose for their final resting place (an idea <a title=”issue covered by Utne Reader” href=”https://www.utne.com/community/greenisthenewdead.aspx”>covered by <em>Utne.com</em>
</a> in August of 2006). <i>LiveScience</i> also provides a handy <a title=”top-ten list of the all-time weirdest ways of dealing with death” href=”http://www.livescience.com/history/top10-after-death-1.html” target=”_blank”>top-ten list of the all-time weirdest ways of dealing with death</a> to help with brainstorming. With this many alternatives, you might not even need your ashes shot out of a cannon. </p>
<p>–<a title=”Morgan Winters” href=”https://www.utne.com/bios/utne-reader-interns.aspx”>
<em>Morgan Winters</em>
</a>
</p>
<p>
<em>For a related article on virtual bereavement, read </em>
<a title=”Grief Goes Online by Joe Hart” href=”https://www.utne.com/science-and-technology/grief-goes-online.aspx”>
<em>Grief Goes Online by Joe Hart</em>
</a>
<em> from the March/April 2006 issue of</em> Utne Reader<em>.</em>
</p>