Someone please post so I can go off topic without guilt.

Go ahead, John. My root canal is finished.

Did they give you good drugs?

||

At my mother's funeral my sisters argued whether to bury her in her very uncomfortable fancy dress shoes or in her favorite comfortable slippers. No one would see them -- at her instruction, she didn't even have a viewing. The uncomfortable shoes won.

How should we feel about this.

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You may return to your regularly scheduled douchebag science.

No, unless you count the anesthetic for the procedure. The shot in the roof of my mouth was the worst part. Apparently the whole "root canals are medieval torture" stereotype is a myth.

I would have gone the other way, but, you know, her feet aren't actually hurting, so I wouldn't sweat it too much unless she's been haunting you while bitching about sore feet.

Apparently the whole "root canals are medieval torture" stereotype is a myth. largely depends on whether you luck out with your dentist.

All of my relatives are either Irish or Italian and few cultures can rival them, I think, for pro-viewing attitudes. Well, the Lithiuanian nurse who took care of my dad when he was sick posed at the wake for a series of photos with his corpse. My mother tells me the nurse has books filled with such pictures: her with her husband, aunts and uncles, etc. So I guess the Lithiuanians have us beat.

When she was younger than six my mother had a traumatic viewing of a deceased aunt, and she swore all her life that she'd never that to anyone.

I've probably had 15 root canals. Two in one day. For $1000 I'd be willing to be a surrogate, were that possible.

Tripp sez once you've had a needle to the ball and another one to the other one a needle to the roof of your mouth is a piece of cake.

Think of it as a right of passage to manhood. Or a gesture of solidarity to the prisoners that the US tortured. Or another thing nobody wants to hear you whinge about.

As a man, though, think about it but say little about it. Besides, there is an upward limit of how many root canals one may have in a lifetime.

I'll take a root canal for the chance to sit back and listen to music.

8,9: When a fifth-grader died at my wife's school recently in a freak flag-football accident, his parents, Russian evangelicals, had an open-casket funeral. The part of me that shares oud's background thinks of that as routine funerary procedure, but given that a lot of the kid's classmates were in attendance, the other part thinks, holy crap.

TO prove libel you have to show that the accusations were false or made with a reckless disregard for the truth, right?

Might the defense just attempt to argue that the plaintiff is, in point of fact, a douchebag?

I will never understand open-casket funerals.

a fifth-grader died at my wife's school recently in a freak flag-football accident

Can't really get past this phrase.

I believe that Urban Dictionary Is the canonical reference here.

Douchebag

Someone who has surpassed the levels of jerk and asshole, however not yet reached fucker or motherfucker. Not to be confuzed with douche.
Rob:He kept hitting on my girlfriend at the party, he just wouldnt leave her alone!!
Sam: God, what a douchebag.

n. fr. "douche", fr. French, fr. Italian "doccia"

1. An object used for vaginal hygeine.
2. A student or instructor at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.

1. A vaginal cleansing is simply incomplete without a proper douchebag.

2. Only a douchebag would consider accounting a tough class.
by lLamaD Feb 17, 2005 share this comments

3. douchebag

A person with a shitty personality that needs to "take themself the fuck down" or "go home and get their fucking shine box." A douchebag usually assumes the form of a hair-gelling pretty-boy but can also be described as an overzealous, pompous, or vexatious asshole that most people wish were killed with a Mortal Kombat fatality.

Damn, i thought "Beverly Hills 90210" won the permanent award for most douchebags casted in one weekly television show, but then someone had to go make that show, "Friends."

4. douchebag

An individual who has an over-inflated sense of self worth, compounded by a low level of intellegence, behaving ridiculously in front of colleagues with no sense of how moronic he appears.
Your boss is a real douchebag!
jerk asshole dipshit moron assface

5. Douchebag

One who feels the need to over-editorialize in their Urban Dictionary submissions.

A hypothetical douchebag's Urban Dictionary Submission on "marijuana." Notice that only the first sentence is a definition:

Marijuana is a plant that lots of people smoke to get high. A lot of people think that marijuana is a harmless drug but that is not true. There have been many studies done on marijuana and it toally fries your brain. I heard this one kid jammed a fork in his eye because he was so "high" on the "dope chronics." I seen this thing on the TV that says that one smoking of marijuana makes you high for two months. Also my sister smokes marijuana and it made her totally stupid cause she is a tard. Don't smoke marijuana!!!

fag retard shut the fuck up just give me a defintion nobody gives a shit what stance on hippie culure is

6. douchebag

What used to be accurate on this site, was replaced by a bunch of people who defined it because they really had no clue what it meant. A douchebag is a pretentious, sugar coated prick, but with emphasis on pretentious and sugar coated. It's not an adjective for an asshole, because assholes call other people douchebags, and assholes are more often than not proud of being assholes.

A perfect example of a douchebag would be both Macaulay Culkin's and Seth Green's role in "Party Monster".

7. douchebag

An individual who has an over-inflated sense of self worth, compounded by a low level of intellegence, behaving ridiculously in front of colleagues with no sense of how moronic he appears.

Your boss is a real douchebag!

And 82 more

I will never understand open-casket funerals.

I'm not sure what my theoretical opinion was, but having been to those of my mom and her dad (sadly, in that order), I wouldn't want another kind. I wasn't present for either death, and it would be awful never to have seen them again. To me, closed casket=box in a room. I've seen boxes.

15: Yeah, pretty shocking. Apparently he was blocking a punt, got hit in the chest and died from commotio cordis.

13: Yay! An on-topic comment! I confess to loving Hot Chicks with Douchebags. It is like A Children's Treasury of Belmar, NJ on a Saturday Night in August. I lovelovelove these guys who pose for pictures by pulling up their shirt and pointing to their abs whilst making a pouty little moue.

Can't really get past this phrase.

I had the same reaction.

18: Wow.

18: When I was in college there was a lacrosse player who died from that. Really bizarre and tragic.

Might the defense just attempt to argue that the plaintiff is, in point of fact, a douchebag?

This would be a fun case.

Please list all of the women with whom you have attempted to have sexual activity.

Did you call your mother on her birthday?

List the last five weddings that you have attended and the gifts that you bought the couple.

How much do you tip at restaurants?

Do you use the word "Bro" with people that you do not know?

Then, you get to bring in people who know him to testify on rebuttal for his reputation for douchebagness.

I'm not sure what my theoretical opinion was, but having been to those of my mom and her dad (sadly, in that order), I wouldn't want another kind. I wasn't present for either death, and it would be awful never to have seen them again. To me, closed casket=box in a room. I've seen boxes.

Interesting; I hadn't thought about it that way before. Obviously there's going to be a lot of difference of opinion on something like this.

I had heard once that truth is the ultimate defense in a libel suit, but might this potential case get bogged down in the difference between a metaphor and a simile?

Wow. I'd have to bone up on my English to understand that one.

And I have been to only open casket funerals, about ten or so for relatives. When you haven't seen your cousin in two years it is, well, not nice but, ummm, nice to see him one last time. I guess I am saying funerals are not pleasant but they are meaningful and fulfilling. Also, the decision of when to bring a child is a very important one to make and I condone allowing children to skip the funeral if that makes sense.

17: I agree. I was the pallbearer for a great high school friend during my senior year; he'd gone to another school for that year, and I hadn't seen him for a few months when it happened. It's very bittersweet to know you're seeing someone for the last time, but I much prefer it to never seeing the person again. The finality of it all, the impact of seeing the person you knew and loved lying there, was very cathartic even if it tore me up at the time.

I will never understand open-casket funerals.
. . . .
Interesting; I hadn't thought about it that way before.

One should never say "never"
.
In the open casket funerals I've been to, it's not like you're required to actually go up and view the body or anything, so if you sit halfway back or so during the service, you don't really see the corpse. Those for whom viewing the body is important get to file past at the end. Everybody wins!

I'm a little creeped out by the open-casket, too, but ultimately think PoMo has it right in 26. I took Rory to an open-casket wake earlier this year, her first of any kind. We spent an hour before either of us could approach the casket, but it helped to be able to say goodbye.

One should never say "never"

I still wouldn't say I understand it on an intuitive level, but now I can at least see on an intellectual level why some people prefer it. So, thanks.

There's definitely a cultural as well as a personal component to attitudes about this sort of thing. A lot of my attitude toward open-casket comes directly from the fact that Jews don't do it and the reasons for that. Same thing with cremation.

I'll never understand golden calf worship ceremonies.

Me neither.

God, you two are racist.

How could you go to an open-casket funeral and not look into the casket? Even if you didn't really want to and regretted it afterwards, the fascination of looking would be irresistable, wouldn't it?

A lot of my attitude toward open-casket comes directly from the fact that Jews don't do it and the reasons for that.

Really? My granddad did, and they were conservative.

33: And I didn't look at him. I didn't want any new weird memories to have to incorporate, if that makes sense.

33: No. The ones I've been to, only about half the people ended up going up to look at the body.

32: Shut up, honky gentile.

And the relatives on that side of the family are such lovely people that:

He died on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, so there were functions on Wednesday and on Friday. We asked around about joining some family for Thanksgiving, and everyone said they didn't have room. This includes my grandmother on that side, and two sets of aunts/uncles, and a few others.

We ended up eating Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant. That's when I wrote them off as family members.

I suspect that a part of one's reaction to open caskets may be a function of your beliefs on what constitutes never seeing the person again. For some of us, no disrespect intended to those who differ, an embalmed body does not feel like a "person".

Further to 13, 16 and 23:

The Petition actually incorporates the book's definition of douchebag as "a feminine hygiene product used for cleansing," and then asserts that the allegation that Plaintiff is a douchebag "is false at it pertain[sic] to the Plaintiff."

Not the angle I would have taken if I were Plaintiff's attorney.

For some of us, no disrespect intended to those who differ, an embalmed body does not feel like a "person".

That was exactly my feeling at the wake in February. It was her, but not really her. I'm not sure that the "chance to say goodbye" thing captures it so much as the idea that you visually are confronting the fact that this person, this friend or loved one, really and truly is gone. Personally, that makes a difference in my processing -- and is also why I skip the casket stage at wakes where I know the family rather than the deceased.

37: You should have said, "But look at me! I'm a stick! Just skin and bones! I must eat more! Let me come into your kitchen so you can make me something!"

eating Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant
different customs of course, but we do not celebrate for example traditional New year that year if someone died in the family
so if someone dies before some holiday it does not cancel celebrations in the family?
just curious

41: I said, "Make me a sandwich!" and they said, "Poof! You're a sandwich!" It was really heartless in a time of grief.

34: Some do. My family doesn't, though. It's mostly a matter of how you interpret the traditions.

38: Indeed.

One of these days we'll realize that the "hot chicks" designation is the equivalent of the "douchebags" designation and it won't be "hot chicks who date douchebags" ("why don't these women date *me*?") but rather "douchebags who date douchebags."

This comment brought to you via me feeling weirdly cranky.

The root canal story makes me feel better, though, about having spent at least $5k on various work on my own goddamn teeth in the last couple years. I guess it's just the age.

42: I think most families would have a more somber version of the holiday; i.e. kids would still get Christmas presents, but there'd be a generally sadder mood.

If we're back on topic, I suggest that if the topic be Douchesuits, these should be earnestly contemplated.

47: The good news is that you can finally get that drum set for Christmas that your father always vetoed...

47: I would think there would be an extra special Christmas with even more gifts and celebration than usual. You know, on account of the life insurance payout.

50: God, we're Jewish, M/tch. Why must you persist in being so insensitive? But yes, it was a lovely January Sales Bonanza since you ask.

I despise open-casket affairs but understand others' needs for visual closure. I am the sort of person who would much rather be left with my memories. I've been to enough funerals where the corpse looked nothing like my friend/relative to think that it's at best a gamble.

In the South, or at least in the town where I grew up, there's a strong element of going "to see how they looked," a lot of genuine curiosity about the physical appearance of the body. Do they look like they're remembered to look? Do they look "natural?" Did the funeral home do a shitty job? I consider it ghoulish and vile and for a long time it's tainted my ability to understand but if I set the emotion aside, I do understand.

As to Emerson's question, I would run the decision through the following questions:

1) Did she make specific requests regarding wardrobe? If so, follow them. If not:

2) Funerals are for the living, if you ask me, so did those planning the burial place a higher premium on thinking of her as dignified or as comfortable (assuming those value judgements are implied by the concern itself) when she was living? They should take that as an indicator of how to treat her in death, not necessarily for her sake but so the planners can feel good about the decision they make. If neither was a concern:

3) You/they should go with the slippers so you/they have something to smile or even chuckle about later on, a little secret you can all share to lighten the situation.

Viewing my Dad was bizarre. It was like seeing an idealized wax image. My dad was an active guy and never still, so it looked all wrong to see him peaceful.

Wobegonia: When our family was gathering on the sidewalk in front of the mortuary to go to the viewing, one after another three hunting hounds came out of a window onto the mortuary room and lookd down on us with their tongues hanging out. The mortician was a trophy and taxidermist, and after the viewing he showe us his trophy mountain sheep, deer, and bear. He hadn't aske us if we wanted Dad done up that way.

(Yes, I've told this story before. This is for the new people. Like a fruit basket!)

our funeral traditions are very strict, people ask buddhist priests (lam) about what caused the death and how to make the ceremony and some people if their zurlaga (path?) look not good for them that year to attend funerals, they are told to not attend even if they are immediate family of the deceased
how the priests can tell all that information i don't know, they ask usually the birth and death dates and read the religious scripts and tell what to do
children are not allowed to attend funerals even if it's their classmate died, they attend the meal after the funeral

51: SPLITTER!

"mortuary roof"

Do they look "natural?"

I heard this a lot at my dad's service. And I thought, "Natural? Well, he looks dead, which is pretty natural, given the past few days. But he's wearing make-up, which, not so much."

As for the lawsuit, who would be the defendant's expert witness? Perez Hilton comes to mind.

57: Bill Cosby had a routine back in the '60s (I think it was on I Started Out as a Child) which took off on this. The catchphrase he ridiculed was "Didin't he look like himself?"

||

Excel tips needed. This is a fairly basic question, but google isn't helping me nor is Microsoft's own help button.

I have a 2009 budget in one worksheet. I want to copy all of that budget into another sheet for the 2010 budget. In that sheet I want to add new info about the 2010 budget.

When I update the 2009 budget sheet I want the numbers to update in the 2010 sheet, but I don't want to have to import teh data cell by cell. Any suggestions? Feel free to e-mail me.

Thanks.

|>

At a cousin's funeral in May I heard a lot of people talking about how they wished they could see the body and because it's not actually all about me I managed to stop myself from asking whether that meant they didn't believe us and suggesting that if they'd wanted to see him maybe they should have called him the week before.

|

I'm sure that I just don't know the right search terms to enter.

|>

My grandmother's funeral might be the only one I've been to for someone close to me with the body present rather than an urn of ashes or a shrine of photographs, and it was open casket. I was 17 at the time. I never got up close to the casket and said my goodbyes, just hanging back by the door, and I've always felt a little guilty about that. I mean, it's not that I tried to step up there and couldn't bring myself to come any closer; as far as I remember, I just didn't try.

Obviously there's going to be a lot of difference of opinion on something like this.

Totally. As I say, I'm not sure I would've thought of it that way, either. It probably helped that the only previous funeral I'd been to was a GF's beloved great-aunt, and it was open casket - a sort of emotional dry-run for me, where this person wasn't a random stranger (we had met, and I'd heard stories about her), yet I wasn't at all close to her.

64 was me.

Do they look "natural?"

When I was little, we'd play this game where my dad would "play dead," then we'd jump on him, tickle him, etc. until he popped up and scared the crap out of us.

I was 4 or 5 when his dad died and went to my first open casket funeral ever. They did a good job. He looked very natural. So natural, in fact, that I apparently assumed he was playing the game and climbed halfway into the casket to tickle him back to life before some relative noticed and pulled me away.

I can still vividly remember the nightmare I had after that.

(So concludes this episode of Creepy Moments in the Life of Di.)

Sounds like an application for "Paste Link".

I've seen my fair share of corpses, and I'd just as soon not see a relative's, thankyouverymuch. The last open-casket funeral I attended was for a neighbor's 6-year-old daughter; she'd been born severely brain damaged owing to complications during labor, so she wasn't a kid I ever connected to in any ordinary way, but even so, a dead child is about the saddest thing ever.

BG, check you email for a file that shows it being done.

I've seen my fair share of corpses, and I'd just as soon not see a relative's, thankyouverymuch.

You must have very nice relatives.

But seriously, has anyone ever been required to view the body at an open casket funeral? It's always been optional at the ones I've been to. Or is the thought of other people viewing the body also disturbing to some people?

Thanks md 20/400

I tried to use paste link, but it couldn't handle it.

Paste Special didn't carry the formatting over.

BG is totally going to make this thread skip with all her pausing-and-restarting.

Iris came to the memorial for my grandfather. She was a bit over 3 and had just a hazy memory of him (it had been ~6 months since our last visit). She was quite curious to see him and not at all freaked out. She cried later, but obviously just at the concept of it all - "I'll never see Grandpa Paul again!"

AB commented at the time that it was odd not to see him smiling - he was always quick with a toothy, devilish grin - but it's not as if that has become my primary - or even a primary - memory of him. With my mom, it was different, but hey - it's Mom. Inherently more fraught.

I don't have particularly strong feelings about open casket either way, but I suppose that might change for immediate family, which hasn't happened yet. What was strange when my grandmother died wasn't the funeral, it was sitting with her and watching the pulse in her neck as it gradually slowed and then finally didn't quite make it all the way up. It's not really a bad image, just a surprisingly persistent one.

70: For me, it's mostly just the idea of you looking at dead people that disturbs.

Di always tells 66 to men in bars, which explains a lot about her take on the other thread.

it was sitting with her and watching the pulse in her neck as it gradually slowed and then finally didn't quite make it all the way up. It's not really a bad image, just a surprisingly persistent one.

Wait, what? You could see the pulse in her neck?

73: I hope it's not disrespectful to relate this to my dog who died a couple years back - a virus turned into hypoglycemic shock turned into internal bleeding, and so they called us into the hospital to be there when she was put down. Her sides were heaving, then less and less so.

Jesus. I'm going back to the fleshlight thread for some levity.

74: But I cast that creepy leer on everyone, not just the dead.

Huh. I share oudemia's background, which means that I think of open-casket as an unquestioned norm. Closed-casket would make me speculate about horrible mutilations. I don't think I have strong feelings about open-casket as a good thing, just I'd find anything else surprising.

77: Same story when the batteries on my fleshlight died. "Her" sides were vibrating, then less and less so. Bah!

76: Very much so. Kind of an inflate/deflate sort of thing.

BG, you will probably have to reformat the columns/cells for currency and such. I had to in the example I sent. The "=CELL$" syntax only grabs the value.

77: Eh, the dead pretty much stay dead whatever we do or say, so respect or disrespect doesn't really enter into it.

79: I'm now speculating on what a Surprise Funeral would look like.

"Guess what? I didn't really bring you to the chapel because I left my wallet there. Uncle Joe's dead!!! SURPRISE!!!!1!!"

Closed-casket would make me speculate about horrible mutilations.

So my mother was right! When I tried to suggest going closed-casket for the wake, my mother said, "No! What will everyone think? They'll think your father's been mutilated."

70: Most were my mom's, uh, patients; a couple were at funerals of non-relatives; one was lying on a train track in China, and when everyone in my very full car rushed to one side to see it being dragged out of the way, the train tipped alarmingly.

We almost always lived some distance from my relatives, and the kids weren't expected at funerals. My dad was cremated, and in retrospect I'm much happier having my last visual memory of him being the last time I saw him.

70
But seriously, has anyone ever been required to view the body at an open casket funeral? It's always been optional at the ones I've been to. Or is the thought of other people viewing the body also disturbing to some people?

I'd be very surprised if the last option there was the problem. No, my guess is simply that peer pressure doesn't have to be intentional to be present, and doesn't have to be present to be perceived. And if you're the sort of person who gets self-conscious easily, doing or not doing anything differently from the crowd would be a problem.

I'm now speculating on what a Surprise Funeral would look like.

Concrete overshoes.

88: By the time the concrete set, I don't think the outcome would be much of a surprise.

I can understand the need to view the body from the standpoint of forcing home the point that the person is really no-shit DEAD. Getting to see them one last time strikes me as a little creepy on some level, though. The lump of pickled flesh in the coffin isn't the person you loved. It's just the heavily processed leftovers. It's less of them than a photograph.

When my Dad died in Botswana we had a fun little clash of cultures with the funeral parlor. Tswana tradition dictates a funeral that reflects the social and financial status of the dead person running into substantial fractions of the family's annual income in the case of a patriarch, but my Dad was a very humble guy who would have been disgusted at the thought of being interred in a huge expensive coffin, with a big wake and an ornate headstone. All that money would be far better spent on food for hungry kids in his view. It took over an hour of back and forth between the funeral director and me and my BIL before we finally got him to accept that we just wanted a simple box and a cremation. I think he was convinced we must have hated my Dad, but the result was a coffin that looked like a packing crate - exactly right for the Old Man, something he would have picked for himself.

I've been to only one funeral in my life, on the New England Anglo side of my family. That was closed-casket, which my family prefers - I think it's a combination of being neither very publicly emotive nor very traditional.

The major funeral in my family I didn't attend was, I believe, either closed-casket or cremation-complete. That was on the Jewish side.

90: You should have gone with a Folger's can.

From an 1885 magazineon Google Book Search:

The earliest New Englanders had no religious service of any sort at a funeral; they followed the corpse and filled the grave in silence lest they should "confirme the popish error... that prayer is to bee used for the dead or over the dead." But eulogistic verses, or ingenious laudatory anagrams of the name of the deceased, were often pinned to the bier, and by degrees some towns deviated from the general practice by having suitable prayers at the house before the burial of the dead, or a short speech at the grave. Another custom, probably confined to New England, was that of presenting to friends at the funeral suitably serious books as memorials of the occasion. Funeral sermons there were, but they were not preached at the time of burial.

92: F is for Folgers.

90.2 is very striking and seems like a wonderful outcome given that all the family members were on the same page.

The thread drift as a whole is now making me think, sacrilegiously, of that priceless scene in Charade where a small procession of men attend Audrey Hepburn's husband's funeral and try to jab/poke/startle the corpse to be sure he's dead.

But on a more substantive note, Di's you visually are confronting the fact that this person, this friend or loved one, really and truly is gone makes intuitive sense to me, and perhaps I'd feel differently about an open casket if, heaven forbid, it was someone I was close to but hadn't had the chance to see at the end enough to feel like I "knew" they were dying.

But seriously, has anyone ever been required to view the body at an open casket funeral?

Not at the funeral, no, but the receiving line at the visitation traditionally runs past the open casket. Maybe it's just visitations that I hate - and I do hate them with a passion. My cousin's thing, which was my most recent Really Upsetting Death Observance, was technically part visitation and part memorial service/funeral. Receiving line, potluck, minus body, plus church service.

But it looks like they had open caskets too:

It was understood that every person must have an opportunity to look at the dead, and indeed there are many persons living to-day who would consider themselves defrauded if such an opportunity were refused. I have heard a ghastly story of a woman who some eighty years ago was burnt to death. Contrary to all modern ideas of propriety, her poor remains were, according to the custom of the time, exposed to view at the funeral. Two elderly women persuaded several young girls who were averse to the painful sight to go and look, adding the remark which then, as now, supplemented any especially unpleasant requirement, "It is your duty to do it."

The Journal of American Folk-lore (1894)

that priceless scene in Charade

I just want to note how much I love that movie: a lot.

Back to death and dying, when my sister died it was very sudden and completely out of the blue so I hadn't seen her in a few months. I still did not want to see the body. (That didn't prevent me from having to stand next to it for a few hours at the visitation, which I've made plain I intend never to do again for any member of my family.)

Looking for clips from Itami Juzo's The Funeral, I came across a news clip concerning an unfortunate leakage-related funeral incident.

Who are you people?!??!?

A nice discussion about douchebags turns into a discussion about open caskets??

Receiving line, potluck

"Boy, that sure worked up an appetite."

98: My wife had exactly the opposite reaction when her sister died--she was very unhappy that she wasn't allowed to view the body until he had been all processed and prepped.

100: The other thread is about sex, will, so we had to. It's the old eros-thanatos thing.

"he" probably was trying to be "she" but should have been "it"

100: Was this thread ever about douchebags, save for a few stray comments?

100: It is, of course, Emerson's fault.

I will never get enough of that website.

A lot of my immediate family members have requested to be donated to science. According to my medical student friends, the deceased's family can choose to have a little ceremony with the body and the med students... "oh you, who are about to cut up our dearly beloved, let us pray."

107 shouldn't remind me of the scene in Animal House where Dean Wormer is meeting with the mayor as a janitorial type prepares to remove the dead horse from his office, but it does.

Like oudemia, I love the website. It is like an RSS feed of the best of people watching at the Jersey Shore.

It is like an RSS feed of the best of people watching at the Jersey Shore.

You may need to get out more.

You may need to get out and have your picture taken with hot chicks more.

Was this thread ever about douchebags, save for a few stray comments?

Yes, but I can't name names out of respect for the deceased.

106 is too much.

This one is nice for the chick who is - I think - mocking the 'bag facial expression.

Why did this never get made into a book?

Ogged?

101 made me giggle a lot.

All the skeezy Iranian guys on that site make me sad. It's just a big cultural misunderstanding, people! Their mothers bully them something awful, and so they're acting out! They mistake slick hairdos and sequins for status, but don't worry: they'll be shoehorned into playing paterfamilias soon enough.

ooooooh Jackmormon must be in a pic!

My honey is not at all douchey, thank you very much.

98: Robust, sorry to hear about your sister. My sister's death was sudden as well. If you don't mind my asking why did you not want to be near the body?

For my sister I was the first pall bearer on the right, for honor, or something like that. I felt no honor, though, just shame that I had not prevented her death, which was stupid, of course, but, you know, feelings, what can you do?

120: That's nice, JM.

Over-Literal Apo.

107: Mine, too. My mother informs me that their post-cadaver-dissection ashes are to be bunged into the same columbarium as my grandparents.

If the Biophysicist predeceases me, I intend to keep my share* of his ashes in a biscuit tin on my night table, and compare future sex partners unfavourably to him, in flagrante.

* His children have been told to keep his ashes in their car trunks and use them in case of snow.

We put our dad's ashes on the vegetable garden. Symbolism!

Di should make a bid on UNG's ashes. Probably Will can do the legal work for her.

Probably it can be prorated according to the length of the marriage, like social security.

If you don't mind my asking why did you not want to be near the body?

Oh, I don't mind at all. I don't want to push my views on people but I also think people need to be less bothered by being asked about things like this because I found out much later that everyone else in my generation agreed with me but nobody would say anything and it would have been nice not to feel alone. At any rate, as to your question, I didn't want to look at her body because I didn't think of that as her anymore. I wanted my last memory of her to be the last time I'd seen her alive. Instead, at a time of tremendous emotional frailty I had a pretty deep imprint of something other than how I wanted to think of her. When my cousin died this year I said, fairly pointedly, "I am glad there is not going to be a casket, open or otherwise, because I refuse to stand next my dead cousin while everyone in the county walks by with a magnifying glass."

I guess that, really, I would rather have been left with a choice. Other people needed to see her for their own reasons, such as those described above, and I think that is also completely valid. Different people grieve in different ways and I don't think anyone should be forced to grieve in any particular way or to see or not see what they do or don't want to see. I guess what I'd really like would be to see our rituals of public mourning retooled so that there is an acceptable method of showing respect that doesn't come with a lot of preconditions. I was coerced by family into a private viewing of the body, coerced by tradition to stand around next to it for a few hours while strangers examined me and my emotions - at least, that's how it felt - and constantly heard comments about "So and so went to the memorial service but not to the visitation," said in tones suggesting that Person X had somehow done a disservice to us when, really, I would much rather have been wherever Person X was during the visitation.

I have a theory as to why visitations are important to those who attend them for reasons other than pure voyeurism, and it's that when someone dies those who knew them have this urge to reach out and touch their life one last time and, in their absence, their families and close friends are their lives and thus strangers spent hours and hours hugging me, shaking my hand, telling me who they were and how they knew her while I nodded and failed to comprehend a word they said. I don't begrudge people that desire but I don't like being the object of it and I think anything that spotlights the bereaved is something I'd just as soon skip.

A friend of mine's mother died a few years ago after a years-long battle with cancer. At the end she made all her own plans, including that she be cremated and at the memorial service there be a portrait of her from when she was healthy. Her theory was that everyone who loved her would rather remember her that way and everyone who showed up because they wanted to see how she looked could go fuck themselves. Her response every time someone asked whether she was sure she didn't want a lavish funeral was, "If a bunch of bitches want to come stare at me they can do it while I'm alive."

125, 126: Wouldn't the slayer statute be a problem?

Interestingly, given how otherwise traditional-Southern my family is in grief, my parents have - after experiencing this with the death of a close friend of theirs - decided they want to be cremated and have a very, very small ceremony of a dozen or so people and have told me where they want it done and how. Everybody else can have their own memorial service, as far as they're concerned. I've told them that I find this a tremendous relief.

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re: 3

I've been in and out of (mostly in) hospital this past 2 weeks [surgery, that had complications] and I can testify that medical staff here treat the good pain killers like they are made from diamonds. Mere dental work ... pfft.

I wasn't in that much pain, tbh, and was mostly fine with the stuff they gave me. But there were some other poor buggers around me who seemed like maybe codeine and acetaminophen wasn't going to cut it.

Everything okay?

I was surprised how easy it was to walk out of the pharmacy with a largish bottle of Vicodin prescribed for someone else. Probably helps to be respectable-looking, but I was fully expecting to need to throw a tantrum.

re: 132

Yeah. Still getting treatment but I am home, and feel OK.

134: Glad to hear you are ok.

133: I've been surprised by that, too. Several years ago CA was nearly immobilized by sciatica and I had to go pick up his scrips, including a big bottle of vicodin. In IL, all I needed to do was sign a book.

133: Of course, the person the Vicodin was prescribed for is pretty damn pissed off.

136: Frequently, but more often at her boys than at me.

From previous threads here I get the impression it's MUCH harder to get strong pain killers here in the UK.

Even in hospital the options were basically, pukka full-on morphine (injected into your cannula) if you were in really severe pain, or codeine/acetaminophen. A few people were getting tramadol [wikipedia says its marketed as 'ultram' in the US?].

138: Which is nuts, considering that we're the ones with the War on Drugs.

My niece-in-law "sprained" her ankle while she was visiting and managed to get my bottle of spare Vicodin, which she finished off in about two days. She was known to be a connoisseur of various buzzes.

Although what I've read suggests that heavyduty painkillers are still underprescribed in the US. Which means the situation in the UK must suck.

Wait a second, I'm having a conversion event. Socialized medicine is the devil! All hail the free market!

re: 139

Yeah.

Although they do give proper diamorphine (i.e. heroin) in the UK for really severe pain [end stage cancer and the like].

138: My dog had an infinitely refillable tramadol prescription.

My mom was recently in the hospital and they were very happy to shoot her full of morphine if she copped to any pain.

re: 141

The impression I got was that people with mild to moderate pain were served reasonably well by codeine and acetaminophen, and people in really really severe pain severed reasonably well by morphine. But my impression, perhaps wrong, was that some of my fellow patients sort of fell in the middle.

One of my wife's jobs when her sister is in the hospital is to be the Pain Management Nazi when the nurses want to get lazy.

143, con't: But of course we had a family friend among the nurses who is very much of the opinion that folks in the hospital shouldn't ever have to be in pain.

92: The box was pre-cremation so the preacher had a prop for the memorial service. Post cremation a Folger's can (or preferably a Ricoffy can, which is the local equivalent) would have suited him just perfectly. If the family had property that was likely to stay in the family long term I'd have dumped his ashes in a hole and planted a fruit tree on top. Apricots, his (and my) favorite.

Aren't doctors also finding that if you allow pain to set in, that it can be much more difficult to treat it down the road? One of my uncles is an anesthesiologist; he always recommends that as soon as anything starts to hurt, you should take three times the recommended pain-med dosage immediately.

[Happy to hear that Ttam is okay. You didn't get any opiates for SURGERY though? I just got 20 Vicodin for back pain, and my doctor is notoriously stingy with the prescriptions. A friend of mine has a doctor who dashes off scrips for Oxycontin like it was going out of style. Lucky bargee.]

I've only been to one open-casket funeral, in fact, as far as I can remember, every other memorial service I've been to has been for someone who was cremated after death and the ashes were not present. Interestingly, the open-casket job was for a friend of the family who came from a long line of Ivy League, East Coast WASPs. And, he'd had cancer on and off for like 15 years at the time of his death. So while he looked stiff and waxy, most of my memories of him were of a once-athletic person now frail and sickly. So it wasn't that much of a shock. The really messed-up thing in that case was that his family invited his ex-wife to the interrment, but banned his long-time (like 10 yrs or so) girlfriend from attending. Tolstoy was right: People are hella fucked up about death.

re: 148

Yeah. The nurses did ask at their regular obs whether people were in pain, and they did encourage people to take their pain medication even if their pain was mild and a couple of times I was told it was better to take the pain killers early rather than late. There wasn't anything negligent going on in the sense that they were shirking.

I just got the impression that some people weren't getting quite enough pain relief. Of course, it's hard to tell for sure.

re: 149

I had one dose of morphine immediately after I came round from the general anaesthetic. I think I may have had another about an hour later.

After that, codeine and acetaminophen. Nothing stronger.

People are hella fucked up about death.

I guess I think of codeine as pretty heavy-duty, but I'm a lightweight when it comes to painkillers. I was prescribed codeine for a really bad case of poison ivy when I was a teenager once, and it made me so blissed-out I forgot to eat for three days.

And then there was the great wisdom tooth extraction in law school -- I got a tooth pulled and popped a couple of codeine tablets, and then remembered I was on call in Labor Law class that afternoon. I don't really remember the class, but I had people coming up to me and commenting on my performance for days afterward -- apparently I was quite disinhibited in a passionately aggressive legal argument kind of way.

151: Oh, well, that's still kinda messed up, but not quite as bad.

152: Yeah, that one pretty much implied itself. If I have to listen to one more whiny stockbroker I think I shall go mad.

Re: the post, the guy in my office who most fits the mode is deeply, deeply closeted, probably to himself as well. It makes for some interesting conversations. Esp. since his brother works with us too.

Codeine is moderately strong, yeah.

Not as strong as vicodin and the like (if wikipedia is to be believed).

re: 154.1

As I said, the pain killers I received were enough for me. So I wasn't complaining about it.

Taking pain killers before the pain even begins has turned out to be the magic bullet for my menstrual cramps. If I take nothing until the pain starts, I am up in the middle of the night with a shrieking womb, and the NSAIDs do nothing to make it subside until about six hours later. If I take two Aleve at the first sign of blood, it hurts not at all.

The medicos are too Puritan about pain relief. Pain is good for you, no pain no gain, etc. Buy all the Afghan poppies they want to sell and be more liberal about pain relief. Two birds with one stone!

149: I just got 20 Vicodin for back pain

!?! I get nothing for back pain. Nobody's even mentioned it -- just anti-inflammatories. Huh. (Actually, I understand this, understand why, but still.)

My ankle surgeon prescribed so much Vicodin that I was convinced that the post-surgery pain would be unbearable. It wasn't. Two years later, I still have 47 pills left. [And that's after a dental bone graft that left me with a black eye and tremendous bruising. That really did hurt. The dentist was not forthcomng with pain meds.]

When my father died we had him laid out at home, on a bed, and waked him there. The tradition is that someone stays in the room all the time and one or two people will sleep there overnight. The next evening the body was put in the coffin and brought to the church (the removal of the remains, in official Catholic terminology). The coffin was closed before it left the house.

I get nothing for back pain.

Doctors are more likely to prescribe big painkillers to men, because it's assumed that they underreport their pain.

Mao Zedong should have been among the corpses mentioned in 86. We regret the omission.

I got prescribed percocet for a nasty tooth thing a few weeks back and it kicked my ass in. I was useless and floaty for a week.

Doctors are more likely to prescribe big painkillers to men, because it's assumed that they underreport their pain.

Seriously?

Well, I figured they weren't doing it because I was all grown up and all, and needed to learn to manage recurrent pain (that is, you can't really pay close enough attention if you're masking the pain), but ... it does seem a bad practive overall, giving painkillers to men in such circumstances. They'll hurt themselves further.

I'm agin* it.

* Spell that however you like.

re: 158

Ditto. My doctor just recommends I buy some ibuprofen for back pain. Which touches it not at all.

I should note, if it's not clear, that the back situation I'm talking about is a chronic condition, not a passing thing. So I suppose an ongoing painkiller prescription would be a very bad idea.

In contrast, when I broke my foot a few years back, I immediately had a prescription for something or other post-surgery. Different scenario.

my mom underreported pain, so my sister had to phone up the MD and scream at him.

163: Percocet is like magic. Happy, floaty, pain-free magic. Though I've realized over the past week just how much ibuprofen/acetaminophen/naproxen actually do, when I've gone to work without them.

Strong opiate painkillers strike me as dangerous, usually because when I take the recommended dosage, I sometimes find myself suddenly gasping for breath, like my brain forgot that respiration was something it was supposed to do.

Depressed breathing is one of the common side effects of opiates.

It's really weird, mostly because I don't feel starved for oxygen, until I gasp like I've just come up from under water.

You don't really need oxygen, Cala. That's how they get you.

According to my medical student friends, the deceased's family can choose to have a little ceremony with the body and the med students... "oh you, who are about to cut up our dearly beloved, let us pray."

"... make us truly thankful. Amen. OK, Bob, do you want to carve?"

The French are your boys for liberal amounts of pain relief. I broke a bone over there and they gave me three different sorts, each strong enough to mollify a water buffalo who has just been informed that his preferred electoral candidate is, having been elected, planning a legislative programme almost entirely consisting of punitive taxes on water buffalo - "zis one, after meals, and zis one, one time in a day, and zis one, when you have any pain, or when you want" - and I spent the next week in a happy daze.

(They also assured me that all three were perfectly OK to take with alcohol; but I did not believe them.) Break a bone in the UK, though, and they slap it into a cast and that's it.

Re: funerals: My mom's funeral was closed casket, since we're Jewish, but I definitely understand the desire for closure/finality/acceptance that someone said above you can get from an open casket. For me, the tradition of the family shoveling the first dirt into the grave serves the same purpose.

Re: painkillers: my wife was prescribed percoset and motrin after her c-section, and didn't finish either. (There was no problem with her mom running up to CVS to pick up the prescription, which surprised us a little.) When she stopped taking them, there was about half the bottle of percoset left. She asked, "should I just throw these away?" and an entire roomful of people shouted, "Are you crazy?"

But yeah, all of the doctors and nurses were very good about encouraging her to take the meds at even the slightest discomfort because once it gets bad, the meds don't work as well.

I have to take tramadol for pain but it doesn't get me high at all, just as well or I don't think I could take it properly responsibly. codeine and vicodin are about the same, with percoset and percodan a hefty step up, and demerol is just the greatest thing this side of real live heroin. and all those times you took some percodan and thought, jesus, what's a big vein full of heroin got to be like, then, the answer is: awesome. otoh, I just met a new NA person today, still in the hospital in withdrawal, all yellow with hep c and shaking and miserable...didn't really feel like I was missing out.

Huh. I hadn't thought about that. What do people recovering from a narcotics problem generally do about the kind of pain you need narcotics for? Take them and try to quit again when the pain quiets down, or deal with the pain some other way?

LB,

In general people who are genuinely recovering from a narcotics problem will have relinquished control of their 'fixes.'

So as far as the people are concerned, if they score some more 'fix' for whatever reason they are not recovering.

But let us say they are under a Drs care. Then it depends on what kind of Dr they have. The punishing kind or the caring kind. If it is a recovery Doc they will try other means of pain control while weaning the addict from his narcotics. AFAIK they pretty much have this down to a science now.

weaning the addict

I was thinking of someone who was through the weaning process -- in recovery and clean for a year or two, and then in a car accident or something causing acute morphine-level pain. What would standard practice be? My sense is that you'd take the painkillers, and worry about the addiction issues later, but I don't know.

If one is clean for two years I'm pretty sure one's opiate receptors have returned to a normal amount.

Also, opiates taken when there truly is pain do not cause the growth of more opiate receptors - so no tolerance or addiction result from that.

BUT it is not easy to precisely adjust the pain meds to the pain, although they have found that allowing the patient to self-med with an IV after surgery results in less opiate usage overall and easier recovery.

And again, AFAIK, it takes about a week or so for your brain to grow more opiate receptors. Your brain begins adjusting right away with strong opiates, but I think it takes a week or so for it to have completely grown the new receptors. I dunno if this happens quicker if you've already been through the addiction/recovery cycle.

Pain is an odd thing - different people feel it differently, and in general it is not very easily controlled when it gets out of control. I don't think they yet know why that is.

My sense is that you'd take the painkillers, and worry about the addiction issues later

I.e., pull a Rehnquist.

that's pretty much it, with a focus on telling your doctor about your past problems and being honest with your NA people or whatever.

The UK/French attitude to anaesthesia; I think you're right (and certainly, there's nothing like the culture of prescription druggery the US seems to have). But hold on a minute. When my grandfather died, getting on for 17 years ago, I recall my dad had to dispose of a huge jar of liquid morphine he'd been allowed to keep in the kitchen. I mean, it looked like a demijohn of the stuff.

Frankly, I'm surprised the local junkie never found out, because his place was an opiate pharmacy by the end; as well as the giant morphine pot there were months' worth of pills of various kinds.

But then, I recall my mother getting some sort of dental crisis in France and being issued with a) injectable painkiller for the actual treatment, b) a huge bottle of pills of some sort of heavy duty analgesic, possibly codeine or comparable, and c) yet more analgesic in a spray form to squirt on the gum, or perhaps huff right into your fucking windpipe, depending on your problem. And when I took my scoutmaster for stitches in a French doc's surgery, they gave him a bag of fairly heinous substances too.

Whereas, when my leg was threatening to explode in northwestern Australia, I got absolutely no pain relief whatsoever. Just the antibiotics (for which I was truly thankful). Come to think of it, the time I scorched my face on a Victorian radiator, I got flamazine (for which I was truly thankful) but again, nothing for the pain at all.

the tradition of the family shoveling the first dirt into the grave serves the same purpose

In some parts of Ireland the male relatives fill the grave in completely. There's something moving about seeing the solidarity of the sons and their uncles working together, and the wordless drama as another cousin is signalled to and he takes off his jacket and takes up a shovel.

Broken bone plus no prescription pain meds really, really sucks.

re: 183

I carried the coffin at one of my cousin's funerals and I definitely felt touched to be asked to do so.

Of course, it being Glasgow, there were (literally) only 4 men in the family even remotely hale enough to do it, but I still felt honoured to be asked.

127:

Robust,

The coercion or pressure sounds ghastly. You are totally correct - people each need to mourn in their own way, and nobody should ever think better or worse about any of it.

I know at my sister's funeral one cousin simply went to pieces, over and over, and she never even knew my sister very well.

Still, years later, I found out she was mostly grieving over private matters that were just triggered by my sister's death. Some of my cousins have had pretty tough lives, which I suppose is why three of them, younger than me, have preceded me into the ground, and it is part of the reason I have a certain familiarity with funerals.

Speaking of which, I never knew until preparing my will with my wife that Catholics don't get cremated? And the Jewish no open coffin thing? Who knew? Not me. So I'm still learning.

Speaking of which, I never knew until preparing my will with my wife that Catholics don't get cremated?

Speaking for my family, every Catholic funeral I've been to has been a cremation.

So I don't know where you are getting this Catholics-don't-get-cremated thing from. Maybe it's a US thing?

I think it was only okayed for Catholics within living memory, and some more old-fashioned Catholics still don't hold with it.

People don't realize that "The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out" is a formal part of Catholic doctrine, not just a bit of folk culture. Cremation cheats the worms and leaves you stuck in purgatory a bit longer. (To say nothing of the renegade heretics who arranged the cremation).

re: 188

That makes sense. Although my grandparents were both cremated and they were both born in the 19th century [or maybe 1900 for my grandfather, I forget].

Looks like the Inquisition the Holy Office Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith officially rescinded the ban in 1963.

184: depends on the bone. Once it's properly immobilised it's fine. The problem is with something awkward like a rib or a clavicle.

I was thinking of someone who was through the weaning process -- in recovery and clean for a year or two, and then in a car accident or something causing acute morphine-level pain. What would standard practice be? My sense is that you'd take the painkillers, and worry about the addiction issues later, but I don't know.

There's a fantastic subplot in Infinite Jest on this, and the notion of "standard practice" in this context.

My dad, for the first 21 years of his recovery, was completely absolutist about this, and would not permit himself any narcotic, or anything beyond ibuprofen/tylenol. Resisted getting a few helpful procedures, including knee and wrist surgery, because of this for many years (wasn't even willing to be doped up for the procedure). He finally relented a bit last year, when the knee surgery became urgent enough. He wasn't worried at all about relapse, he just really didn't want the least bit to do with the bad old days.

ttaM,

I certainly can't speak for any Catholics, US or otherwise. I just know what I hear from my prim-and-proper staunch-Catholic small-town-banker in-laws and their ilk here in MN.

I don't mean to put them down cause they really are a fun bunch to be around. They also seem to be some of the few people I have ever met who actually know what the immaculate conception refers to, so they are good to have on the phone-a-friend list.

191 - emir.

1963 eh? That makes sense. News travels more slowly up here in the frozen North donchaknow.

IIRC in the Iliad burial is regarded as rather dishonourable. You have to die a good death to be cremated - there's one character whose name escapes me who dies dishonourably - suicide? - and so he has to be buried instead.

Bill Hamilton (the inclusive fitness theorist) always said he wanted to be buried in the Amazon jungle, in a shallow grave so the beetles could get at him. He liked beetles.

The other funerary anecdote I wanted to share was the interrment of my grandparents' ashes in the cemetary of the small Wisconsin town my grandmother's family comes from. My grandmother's younger brother dug and filled in the graves (they died about 10 years apart, and my great-uncle was in his late-70s when my grandmother died). It seemed very fitting to us, and he really wanted to do it, but it's become an internal synecdoche for bleakness and loneliness for me since then. 'Course, he'd been to war and seen action and been to who knows how many burials at that cemetary, but the finality of saying goodbye to your oldest sister (almost a surrogate mother in his case, due to my great-grandmother's early death) -- it seems like such a singularity. Where do you go from there, even with your wife and kids and grandkids and vast extended family all around? Where does your store of bonhomie and grit and love get replenished from? It's not the sort of thing I could ask him of course. I guess I'll see him at T-day next week. But that's its own story of familial discomfort.