wrong_body epitome of incomprehensibility Maybe I'm alone in thinking this, but this punishment seems a bit harsh to me: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/funeral-home-wrong-body-cremated-report-1.4569208 A funeral director had his license revoked for mixing up two bodies: one was supposed to be cremated, the other embalmed. Now, fired, sure; but losing his license? I don't know. Does this seem unfair to other people? I tried looking at it from the POV of the people involved, which is not something I can truly do, of course. Anyway, this is where my thinking put me: while it would be really stressful at the time, especially in the unreal stage of grief when everything seems fucked up, later it could actually be a blessing, a thing for the family to get together and laugh about. The people who died will likely be remembered longer, and it will be a story to tell. That got me thinking about the larger picture, which is that people are weird about death. Death is weird, I guess, but why the supposed sanctity, sanctioned here by capitalism? There are rituals around it to bring people together, to remember those that passed away, but the funeral industry is an industry and not some sacred thing. I hope I can get organized enough to put in my will that I want my dead body donated to McGill medical school or something. Serious. And if anyone wants to, they can do a memorial service. No coffin thingies. 180313 ... e_o_i I talked to the partner of a creative-writing-class friend who's a funeral director and he seemed to think this was worth someone losing his job over. He also couldn't see the funny side, though M. (the friend) and I could. "Wrong body" would also apply to a sci-fi story idea I had: a young woman decides to save her dying friend by undergoing an experimental brain transplant procedure that would allow her to take on her friend's consciousness as well as her own, essentially fusing both minds into one. It goes wrong, or differently, when the main "I" of this person is neither of these girls, but someone from another universe who was obsessively making up an imaginary language called "English" for her alternate-world novel and trying to build a culture around it. So... I start writing this story. I haven't gotten to the parallel-world part yet, but I have written a couple of pages about how the girl and her parents have had a frustrating time getting the Quebec Ministry of Education to recognize that she has the academic credits of two people. It's doubly difficult because this brain surgery is banned in Canada, and it takes a lot of bureaucratic delays to get paperwork from the States that the Quebec government will accept. ...There's material for a sci-fi tragicomedy in there, if I could only focus on the interesting parts or make the boring parts shorter. My work is seeping in too workily: I have to tutor students for an education exam. 180416 ... unhinged pain from all sides assaulting neurons taking up all the space; breathing seems voluntary. always restricted. i have to focus on exhaling. shallow breath keeps the nervous system alerted. always alerted. always fighting, struggling. this isn't the way it's supposed to be right? 180417 what's it to you? who go blather from