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Post by Rue on Jan 25, 2003 22:42:05 GMT -5
When I die I honestly either want to be put in the woods just the way I am or cremated and flung somewhere. Both illegal, right?
Nialle, I didn't freak out. Actually, earlier today I was wondering what would happen if Gen and I got in a car crash or something. Gen's a good driver, but it was just one of those thoughts. And I figured I'd tell Chandra to send you an e-mail about it, so you'd get it really quickly. But then I thought I could just put a letter on my wall in case I die, so she wouldn't think I'm too morbid.
When I die... no one's allowed to get really upset. Like, you can cry and get upset, but not for prolonged periods of time or anything, okay? I'll still be kissing your foreheads even when I'm dead.
(Okay, maybe we are really morbid. )
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Post by coldmercurywitch on Jan 26, 2003 8:54:39 GMT -5
we may be a morbid lot in part, but i think we also show great life management skills. the fact that we are thinking about death and what we would like to become of us when we reach it shows that we plan ahead and think about the furture in realistic terms.
i think one of the biggest mistakes people make is to not think about the possibility of dying younger than you would like to.
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Post by En on Jan 26, 2003 12:47:40 GMT -5
You know what? I suspect that it isn't morbid at all to know how we want to die, or be dealt with when we're dead. Every culture in the world prior to the industrial age was much calmer about death than any of the modern ones I know. Death was like pooping and eating and sex and growth spurts. It was just something people do.
Modern industrial trans-national culture, by which I mean any culture that has been affected by Hollywood mentality seems to think that the entire point of life is to have your first love. Nearly all adolescent literature deals with falling in love for the first time, and certainly the body projects that women are forced to undergo (and men to) seem to be aimed at making them look the age they looked when they first fell in love. Our films fall into two classes: comedies/romances, which end with the boy and girl getting together, and tragedies, where they die instead. All of our literature about death is either 1. romantic tragedy, 2. ghost story or X-file stuff, 3. murder stories or mysteries, 4. losing a beloved parent/grandparent, which of course makes the grieving person realize that s/he has to get hitched and live happily ever after right away.
It's so stupid. Why does our entire culture revolve around romantic love?
There are so many kinds of love. I have a different kind of love for each of my siblings (including Rue) and for each different group of people I work with or play with. I just had the utterly bizarre experience of falling in familial love (I met these two wonderful older people whom I am going to beg to adopt me as their grandchild). There's the love I have for my dead great-grandfather, and the love I have for my old teachers, and the love I feel for stuff I've worked hard at and accomplished well. And my love for my fictional characters. Why aren't there many books to teach me about the human experience of those loves?
Anyway, my point was that because we live in the Cult of Romantic Love, of course we are supposed to think that talking about death is morbid because who should want to think about death when the important thing is thinking about falling in love?
But death really is just a bodily function. And it's just good love for those you're leaving if you prepare well for the disposal of your earthly remnants. I can tell you from experience that NOT leaving a will can rip your family apart. Of course, leaving an idiotic will can too, but anyway. It's not morbid. It's just good common sense to know what you want for the end of your life as well as for the parts that come before that. That's my point.
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Post by KoNeko on Jan 26, 2003 13:17:59 GMT -5
We do have problems here in Australia about burial grounds and such though. An awful lot of Aboriginal tribes and clans were completely wiped out, and so the locations of their sacred burial sites went with them. There aren't meant to be hundreds of towns and cities where parts of them are built on top of these forgotten burial grounds, but it doesn't bother people because they don't know about it. Aboriginal people have also been here in Australia for 60, 000 years, so we have no idea how much land we have built on that was sacred. [/quote] Yeah Ele, the problem with that is that when the first Europeans came to Australia, they didn't formally recognise the land as "belonging" to the Aborigines. In fact, (and this is going to sound really primitive and stupid!) Aborigines were not even recognised as people, but as part of the native fauna. The Indigenous people of Australia had their own customs, and ways of recognising land ownership, and they were sometimes nomadic, so the Europeans thought, "hey, none of that falls within our form of land ownership so therefore nobody owns our land". Wrong. And that's why there are now so many native title claims springing up everywhere and cases like Wik and Mabo happen. Rue, how come it's illegal to get your ashes thrown somewhere? Don't people do that all the time? I wouldn't mind getting cremated (as many of my ancestors did before they were buried and had their bones dug up by wild dogs and whatnot ) and having my ashes scattered across the South China Sea and Indian Ocean. Just because that's the stretch of water in between my two homes.
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Post by Motley the Mercenary on Feb 2, 2003 11:04:55 GMT -5
that's a really cool idea koneko. *is moved*
i think it's illegal to scatter your ashes in the us because dead bodies don't always burn completely and anyway there'd be such a pile of ashes all over places like graceland and national monuments and beaches it would get gross
there isn't enough "morbid" talk, i think. people would probably handle death a lot better if they talked about it more. and i don't just mean talking about losing people they love, i mean silly stuff like the addams family and mortician jokes and stuff. it's no different from guys talking about sex or girls talking about their periods. we need to know that death is normal.
i don't know how i want to be... disposed of? whatever... i think i'd like to be buried just because i want to have a family and i'd want them to be able to go someplace to remember me if they wanted. or maybe cremated, i just don't know yet. a lot depends on what my future wife would want too.
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Post by En on Feb 2, 2003 19:27:36 GMT -5
*giggle fit* I just watched an X-Files episode a couple of nights ago where Mulder and Scully went to some podunk town with no proper morgue, so they had to go to the funeral parlour to see the murder victim. And Mulder was like, wow, there are a lot of coffins for sale, for a town of 300. And the mortician says, "Repeat customers." ;D
I do love a good morbid joke
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Post by KoNeko on Feb 3, 2003 10:22:19 GMT -5
*bows* Awww, thanks Motley. I've got this thing with really strong familial ties. Don't know why though, because I'm not really that close to my family.
Hey En, which ep of the X-files was that? I watched the first couple of seasons and then it kinda got silly.
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Post by En on Feb 3, 2003 12:18:17 GMT -5
Bad Blood, season five. If you want I can give you a list of episodes worth watching, I know them all like the back of my hand through the 5th season. Just tell me which ones you like from the first two
Why do family ties matter to some of us so much? And so weirdly? Like, Motley wants to find his heritage, and that's cool. And I have a heritage in Ireland, though I could strangle most of my immediate relatives (weirdly enough... except my siblings. Now how many people can say that they'd be happy to move to New Zealand with all their siblings, every single one, and leave their parents, aunts and uncles behind?). Which is a little bit like what Koko's saying, about feeling strong family ties but not necessarily being that close to the actual family. What is it? Why do we connect along blood lines?
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Post by coldmercurywitch on Feb 3, 2003 13:15:47 GMT -5
knowing our bloodlines gives us a sense of identity. it gives us a place to say we came from. it gives us history and culture and something to be really proud of. i love my family heritage and the bloodlines that i was born from and i'm glad that i know about them and have them to look at and say "i came from there". but, like you Nialle, i would happily say goodbye to all my immediate family, bar my siblings, and never see them again.
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Post by KoNeko on Feb 4, 2003 11:08:42 GMT -5
See, that's another thing. It looks like we only want to sever familial ties with people that are not immediately in our generation. Like, brothers and sisters seem ok, but parents and their ilk seem to drive everyone nuts.
Ele, I think that's right about history and culture. It's not like we'd say, "yeah, we hate our culture and where we're from" because it's so far in the past that it becomes romanticised and the stuff of legend.
Hmmm, En, I watched the X-files ep from Season 4 today (I borrowed the DVDs from my friend who has every single episode!) and watched Teliko (spelling?)- you know, the one about the albino guy that had to eat pituary glands to maintain a particular pigmentation? I think I liked the earlier cases more because they were seperate from the gigantic conspiracy thing at the end of the series, and at the end of most eps M&S would get to the bottom of the case and could find and explanation for it one way or another. So I found the Eve 12, liver fluke and Tooms ones more... acceptable, in a way. It's a closure thing- being a major sceptic I need the tangibile ending.
So yeah, any viewing suggestions? ;D
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Post by coldmercurywitch on Feb 4, 2003 11:20:38 GMT -5
actually, i think main reason i'd take my siblings with me is because they've had to go through alot of the stuff i have with my family, and i don't want them to have to put up with it for 18 or more years like me. if they do, they'll end up with head problems like me.
i stopped watching the x-files after thr first few seasons because i couldn't find the time for it with school and all, so i really need to catch up on them.
suggested veiwing: Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040: Very cool anime series. Gundam Wing: An other cool anime series, one I think Bush should watch to see what war turns into! Lain: This one was recommened to me by dear Andy. He's pretty obsessed with it, and I haven't had a chance to see any episodes, but from what I've read about it, it's bloody good!
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Post by En on Feb 6, 2003 15:50:56 GMT -5
*notices how many older siblings feel this way, about wanting to take care of the siblings... instead of taking care of the parents? *
Oo, KoNeko, I'll make you a list when I get home tonight. Definitely. There are some great ones in Seasons 3 and 5, you just have to know where to look ;D
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Post by KoNeko on Feb 7, 2003 7:35:43 GMT -5
Hmmm, I'm an older sibling as well I have a similar feeling towards my little sister (even though we're only one year apart). And I don't know if it's how I feel about my mum or whatnot, but if she bugs me, I'm at the age when I can threaten to put her in a shonky retirement home. I know, I'm horrible.
Thanks Nialle! ;D I've just recently come out of the X-files nerd closet. I watched all the episodes as they aired but the early eps are the best. ;D I'll have to grab the sets of DVDs for them (as I borrow them from my friend who lives on the other side of the city) but yeah.l Thanks heaps.
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Post by En on Feb 8, 2003 11:56:45 GMT -5
See, now, Mulder and Scully are sort of druid-like. Because they are asking questions about things that can't be otherwise explained, and even though they don't have answers all the time, they use their special training to try to find them. Scully is a healer-druid and Mulder is a historian-druid (he has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of those X-Files).
Anyway, Koko, one more question, do you prefer 1. monsters or weird science, 2. religious mysteries, 3. comedies and/or 4. tragedies? *nerdily begins categorizing the non-conspiracy episodes into these four groups*
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Post by KoNeko on Feb 9, 2003 11:29:14 GMT -5
*mentally lists episodes from the early seasons that she liked*
Hmmm, I think I'm leaning towards the weird science ones, as I really liked Tooms and the Liver Fluke guy *even though they were kind of gross*. Well, maybe not "liked", because I'm a real wimp when it comes to these things, but they were the memorable ones. I also liked ones like Kadish from Season 4- you know, the one about the Jewish Golem? Does that count as a religious mystery? I can't remember any of the comedic ones, so I'll rule that one out.
*giggles* Neko says that I'm the Scully to his Mulder- he's really into all the mysterious stuff in the X-Files and I'm sitting there watching them and questioning why they are doing things in such an impractical manner and how certain things come about. I'm a real sceptic when it comes to these things.
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