Sunday, August 26, 2012

Because this is not a decision you want to leave to your "Loved Ones"



I don't know, maybe it's just me- but the guy talking about what his family is going to do with his dead body as he turns raw pieces of meat on the grill is a pretty sketchy way to start this ad, don't you think?

A lot of Life Insurance ads focus on the "rising funeral expenses" which, I guess, could actually cripple a family's economic stability unless handled through the purchase of bigger and bigger insurance policies.  Seriously?  I don't get this AT ALL. Why do funerals "have" to be such a terrific financial burden?  What does this asshole at the grill want, a fricking pyramid?  A Viking funeral complete with oak casket entombed in a burning, 40-foot replica of a Nordic exploration vessel?

Hey, Earth to Survivors:  Your loved one is dead.  Stick him in a pine box, drop him into the ground, and decorate the plot of land above his rotting corpse with a simple granite slab.  Better yet, go the cremation route- we take up more than enough space while Among the Living, the least we could do is vanish completely once we go on to our Great Reward (Oblivion without Cell Phone Service, is my guess.)

Mr. Grillmaster apparently has crappy Life Insurance, or he's afraid that his dependents won't think a lavish send-off is worth dipping into the pot, so he's gone the extra step of handing another company even more money for Funeral Only Insurance.   This strikes me as an Almost Awesome way to give the Finger to your family when you die- oh to be there when the attorney explains to them that you left Wife and Two Wonderful Kids $300,000 to replace your income- but you also purchased a $10 million funeral, with music provided by the London Symphony Orchestra and two virgins who will play-act being sealed up with your now-worthless body  in the marble tomb which can be seen from space.  Oh, they'll be weeping all right, and wondering how much the 200 Extras paid to stand around crying and touching handkerchiefs to their faces cost.

You know, maybe I'll make a few calls tomorrow and make some changes to my own insurance plans.  To hell with beneficiaries- I want every penny I leave spent on the biggest, showiest, most traffic-stopping sendoff I can afford.  To hell with having my ashes scattered into the ocean or on the hill behind my boyhood home- I want them encased in lead and attached to a high-orbit satellite named after me, where they can look down on my Loved Ones.  Serves them right for outliving me, the selfish bastards.

5 comments:

  1. "A Viking funeral complete with oak casket entombed in a burning, 40-foot replica of a Nordic exploration vessel?"

    Agreed. Anyone who wants this has their priorities messed up. Viking funerals have fir caskets. My god, people, get your heads on straight!

    I definitely want to be cremated. I don't care about taking up space. I'll just be damned if I'll let any of the pricks on this planet get any use out of my body. They shit all over me while I was alive, who knows what they'll do to my corpse...

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  2. Me too- cremation all the way. When I was married to a fellow Catholic and expressed my desire to be cremated, she told me "no way, I'm not staying down there by myself, you're going in the hole." As it is, I'll probably end up sitting on a shelf for years as my siblings procrastinate on scattering me about.

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  3. Let's not forget their partners in this "let's go bankrupt to do 'right' by a cadaver" nonsense: the undertakers of the world. They're the ones who inflated the cost of what should be a simple process in the first place.

    As for the means of disposal, let's just say that the worst day of my life was being berated because some bitch said I was a bad person for not wanting to gawk at my Dad's remains like a damned buzzard. Although I'll be beyond caring, I don't want to subject other people to that dilemma.

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  4. My will is going to consist of two things:

    1. An order to cremate my body.

    2. A list of people whom I hate, whose eyes my ashes will be blown into.

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  5. I'm with you guys on the cremation thing--I just hope I can get my family to buy into it. Some of them are of the "Oh nooooo, we can't BURN YOU" school. I try to explain to them it's not me they're burning...just the empty shell...the nut once inside it is gone. I swear, if they pump me full of embalming fluid, prop me up in a casket and have people gawking at me saying I look better than I did when I was alive, I'll haunt them for the rest of their days.

    Then again, some people seem to take their cues from Steve Martin: "Now when I die, don't think that I'm a nut/Don't want no fancy funeral, just one like old King Tut!"

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