The New York Times Says

To be Happier, Start Thinking More About Your Death

Cold War Nihilism

Being Buried, or whatever

There are many ways of being buried.

Just read the story. People can be made into gemstones, dog treats, or have profanities on their tombstones.

And a quote:

"Franklin D. Roosevelt left a careful list of specifications for his own burial, including the instruction that 'the casket be of absolute simplicity, dark wood, that the body be not embalmed or hermetically sealed.' To this last detail Gore Vidal is rumored to have quipped: 'Being Franklin, he wanted to get back into circulation as soon as possible.'"

Other considerations might be artisanal fish food or donating your body to science.

Decomposition of the Body in Ivory

HERE is more information on the ivory sculpture below from the Museo di Capodimonte.


Morbid Anatomy provided some beautiful pictures of it, including this:

They are right in saying that these are based on memento mori in ivory such as this:

and these on the right:

But it was also based on these:

Fashioning the Recently Deceased

A very cool story via The Chirurgeon's Apprentice on one woman finding new, meaningful ways to dress the dead:

Drop dead gorgeous: fashion design for deceased

Deathly Art in Chicago

All images from the Art Institute of Chicago:

Mourning Rings

Many of these have tiny skeletons in enamel and/or paper under glass. Brilliant!

For more see the Yale Art Gallery

On the Valkyrie: With a Looney Tunes Review

So, there's some news on an actual depiction of a valkyrie at the British Museum

But most of us don't know much about valkyries beyond Wagner's Flight of the Valkyries and, of course, it's famous Elmer Fudd cover (and perhaps that mention on 30 Rock)

{Bugs Bunny is possibly the best drag queen ever.}

BUT "The legends of the valkyries – the ominous companions of the god Odin who descend on battlefields to choose which warriors will die – have been among the most enduring in Scandinavian folklore and literature. Later images, often inspired by Wagner's music, tend to be romantic creatures with flowing locks and voluptuous bodies."

And from Wikipedia: "In Norse mythology, a valkyrie (from Old Norse valkyrja "chooser of the slain") is one of a host of female figures who decide which soldiers die in battle and which live. Selecting among half of those who die in battle (the other half go to the goddess Freyja's afterlife field Fólkvangr), the valkyries bring their chosen to the afterlife hall of the slain, Valhalla, ruled over by the god Odin. There, the deceased warriors become einherjar. When the einherjar are not preparing for the events of Ragnarök, the valkyries bear them mead. Valkyries also appear as lovers of heroes and other mortals, where they are sometimes described as the daughters of royalty, sometimes accompanied by ravens, and sometimes connected to swans or horses."

Ancient Anatomy Specimen

 

 

See more HERE

Thanks JS!

Famous Graves

From The Guardian

The curse of grave-robbers dates all the way from the pyramids to the “resurrectionists” who in the early 19th century would supply colleges training future surgeons with bodies for students to practise on by disturbing the recent dead. So much so that some cemeteries built watchtowers or offered “mortsafes”, lockable iron cages to place over graves (still to be seen in situ in some Scottish kirkyards). Others opted for a warning on the tombstone, as may be the case with Shakespeare’s grave, inside Holy Trinity Church Stratford-upon-Avon. His dates (1564-1616) are followed by a verse that ends: “Bleste be the man that spares thes stones, And curst be he who moves my bones.”

A Hangman Talks Shop

From Slate's Vault

by Slinkachu, published by the Telegraph

Last Suppers of Death Row Inmates, in Ceramic

from the New York Times

And the site artist, Julie Green

Art, Death, and Censorship

On Sweden, Art, and Consent to Use Human Remains

Ask a Mortician about Zombies!

Funereal?

Vienna, Austria: A coffin inspired by René Magritte’s Perspective: Madame Récamier de David at the Funeral MuseumFrom guardian.co.uk
Photograph: Alexander Klein/AFP/Getty Images

It's Reanimation Wednesday!

Feeling tired in the middle of the week? Get inspired by dead things getting energized:

On attempting to zombify George Washington:

(This image is also available on Etsy. Time to decorate the parlor!)

On later experiments with electricity--the inspiration for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein:

http://showblogs.syfy.com/eureka/idealab/2011/10/moved-by-electricity-frankenstein-galvanism-paracelsus.php

A few notable quotes:

"A man by the name of Luigi Galvani discovered that bioelectric forces exist in living tissue. After experimenting with dead farm animals, Galvani decided to move on to dead humans. Galvani would take the heads of freshly executed criminals, stick wires into their ears, and send an electrical current through them, making the face of the head grimace in horrible ways. These were social events that the whole family would come out for."

"It was a definite advancement from the homunculus experiment in 1572 when a physician known as Paracelsus attempted to create a small human by filling a flask with semen and keeping it warm in composting horse dung for forty days. Once it began moving, Paracelsus planned on feeding it human blood until it was ready to be educated. Somehow the experiment failed."

Woman, again, as meat and clothes fashionably put together

Downright creepy image stolen from Bibliodyssey: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bibliodyssey/4053990647/sizes/o/