New Deathstination: Noah Purifoy Desert Sculptures
The amazing art of Noah Purifoy as it sinks and rots gently into the desert where it lives.
Happy Holidays from the Order
…and the most morbid 2012 to you and yours.
Crafts 4 Morticians: Christmas Edition
It’s the day after Christmas. Here I am in Hawaii with very little to do other than stare blankly at my mother’s cat and inject leftover pie directly into my veins.
My father was up in the attic a few weeks ago and found an old box of My Little Ponies from the late 1980′s, when I was but a five year old pony wielding lass. These ponies… ummm… have seen better days. Hawaii is damp and humid and wrapping ponies in plastic in an attic for 20 years has yeilded My Little Leprosy Ponies and My Litte Decomped Body Ponies.
Aren’t they marvelous?
If you’re a relatively happy adult there is something satisfying about bag of dirty, decayed childhood toys. Acceptance that you are no longer the creature that played with them. The Roman Empire of childhood has crumbled. Unlike the kids who die and their parents keep their rooms as immaculate shrines, you have grown into another being all together, without simple fantasies that life ever stays the same.
If you’re doing it right, this song should be playing in your head.
Anyway, long story short, I took all the My Little Despair Ponies and put them on a dead plant and made a festive Christmas tree! If you’re Jewish, feel free to attach them to menorahs, etc as a craft modifcation.
Happy Holiday Season from the Order of the Good Death!
For the Death of Jeanne
This is Jeanne.
My friend Usha got her as a Christmas present. I didn’t get, like, ANY early 20th century pictures of dead people this year. I checked way in the bottom of my stocking, too (where pictures of dead people are sometimes hidden).
Jeanne is actually a relative of Usha’s. Family lore is that Jeanne died of fright when the German’s invaded their home during World War I. This was back when taking lovely post mortem photos of the dead was still in fashion.
Of course, we couldn’t put “died of fright” on a death certificate. But we could say that perhaps she has a heart issue or aneurysm brought on by the sudden horror of a German hoard stormin’ the family home.
Two Major Fun Thangs in Deathland
Man, Wednesday, you are exciting.
This morning I did an hour long interview with NPR in Connecticut. The host was Colin McEnroe who was dapper and funny. The other guest was writer Mary Roach, who is at the top of the popular death culture game. To be on air with her (as if we were equals) was totally batshit bonkers.
Second major fun thang: my first original video for Jezebel.com “Death by Fame.” Jezebel has been hugely supportive of Ask a Mortician, and their readers are exactly the type of women (and men!) who I am looking to reach. I’ll write more on this video later, but it’s a Hollywood Death Tour.
I’m flying home to Hawaii tomorrow for the holidays (thankGOD, at last you have come tropical vaycay in the bosom of my island home!) but I promise to keep shooting you death acceptance bon mots via FACEBOOK and TWITTER and hopefully this blog as well.