Jae Rhim Lee - My Mushroom Burial Suit

Death is not exactly one of the most pleasant topics of discussion, but it is an inescapable and universal aspect of life that we cannot avoid indefinitely. In the West, we tend to think that the appropriate thing to do with the bodies of the dead is to either cremate them or bury them in a coffin that's virtually hermetically sealed. Herodotus tells us that the Callatians used to make a meal out of their dead begetters.

Of the three choices, and despite its apparent gruesomeness, I think the Callatians have the best argument in their favor (assuming their relatives did not die of disease). Cremation is not environmentally friendly (to say the least, since it requires massive amounts of fuel to burn, and ends up releasing all the nasty chemicals that have accumulated in your body over the years into the air that the rest of us have to breathe), and burying the dead in sealed coffins guarantees that our bodies will benefit a bunch of maggots that will not themselves contribute to further the cycle of life (since they're also stuck inside the stupid box), and that's no way to live... err... die... end... whatever...

I personally favor donating one's body for organ transplants, or to science for research. Jae Rhim Lee thinks that if you want to do your part to be environmentally friendly, even after you die, you might be interested in her mushroom burial suit, which contains toxic-gobbling mushrooms and other interesting goodies.



Oh, and did I forget to mention you'd go out making a fashion statement? :)

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Embed this blog on your site