For the Record ...A New Spin on the "Death Record!"

And Vinyly......a new spin on the "death record!"

Quirky, wierd and definitely unusual ... but still utterly cool, check out and Vinyly. Created by a UK music producer who realized he "might not be immortal" after his mother started working at a mortuary. andVinyly allows you to have your ashes pressed into an actual, playable record, simultaneously putting your oeuvre in the death metal and soul categories. Now actually, you won't be around to make this happen, so you have to have someone take care of this for you : )

How does it work you ask: ashes are sprinkled by a person of your choosing, and baked onto a 24-minute disk, which can either be left as simple pops and crackles ("the minimal approach"), or grooved to play your last will & testament; a favorite song; or a personal message in your voice. To make things even cooler you can have a tribute song penned by in-house bands House of Fix and Daftwerk (with full input concerning lyrics, etc), and commission an album cover from National Portrait Gallery resident dauber James Hague, who'll mix your ashes into the paint -- and create an album cover for yours truly.

The average ash-load can be spread out to thirty records, and if you dare, (I mean so desire) can even be sold under the in-house R.I.V. (Rest In Vinyl) label at stores around the world. You'll be traveling the world solo and won't even know it!

And Vynily offers lots of services; for example, don't want the full body job ... you can do body parts; they will even take pets cremated remains.

Source: Thrillist and AndVynily

The Death of Jumbo the Elephant ....

Did you know ..... P.T. Barnum's prize elephant Jumbo was killed September 15, 1885, crossing railroad tracks in St. Thomas, Ontario. The collision derailed the train, and 150 people were required to haul the elephant's body up an embankment.

Jumbo's death was a great loss to Barnum's show, but the loss was somewhat mitigated when both the taxidermied hide of the beast and its skeleton were exhibited together.

Vital statistics: height 11.5 feet, weight 6.5 tons, age 24

I guess it all comes down to money ....

Find other cool info over at Celebrity Morgue

Tombstone Tours to Kill Time

Looking for a quirky place to travel to this summer? Check out this great article by USA Today on Tombstone Tours. Here is some information about interesting cemeteries in Boston, New York, Indianapolis, Cleveland, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Paris. Some host tours about their history or landscapes, and some offer themed events around Halloween. (Check out the spooktacular photo to the left: This photo shows a mummified corpse in the Capuchins' Catacombs located in Palermo, Sicily, southern Italy)

John Wooden Dies ... So much more than a coach!

"Talent is God given.
Be humble.
Fame is man-given.
Be grateful.
Conceit is self-given.
Be careful."

RIP John Wooden

John Robert Wooden (October 14, 1910 – June 4, 2010[1]) was an American basketball coach. He was a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player (inducted in 1961) and as a coach (inducted in 1973). He was the first person ever enshrined in both categories. Only Lenny Wilkens and Bill Sharman have since been so honored.[2] His ten NCAA national championships in a 12-year period while at UCLA are unmatched by any other college basketball coach.[3][4] (Sources: Wikipeida)

More on Coach Wooden:

http://www.suntimes.com/sports/telander/2358108,CST-SPT-rick06.article

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/05/sports/la-sp-simers-20100606

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/news?slug=ys-woodenobit060410

Memorial Vase ... Gorgeous!

I love this! One of the newer vases to come out! Great for a wedding or just your table at home!

Memorial Vase
For a beautiful way to remember a loved one at your wedding, fill this lovely vase with flowers and set it in a place of honor during the ceremony and reception. The 8 inch tall, clear glass vase is printed with the words "In Loving Memory - these flowers bloom as a symbol of a life and love remembered" in white.

Dead Biker Departs on His Harley

David Morales Colon, 22, who was shot to death last week in Puerto Rico, had asked his family to avoid a traditional funeral when he died.

So morticians at Marin Funeral Home propped him up on his trusty Honda, and dressed the young man in his typical riding clothes, helmet included, on top of his beloved motorcycle.

"He loved his motorcycle. It made him feel free from his worries," a mourner said. "We all know he will be happy riding for eternity."

As you can see in the video below, the mortician positioned the body as if he were riding his bike all the way to heaven, though it appears to be little solace to the crying friends and family in attendance.

And yes, this is real.

Original Post at New York Post

Do Some MASSIVEGOOD ... You'll Feel Much Better

When we get asked to support causes, we do our best to get the word out. It takes people to help a cause and to make a change in this world. With that said, there's a new guy in town called MASSIVEGOOD. A coalition that was created by using the power of social media to help stop the millions of preventable deaths from HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. Their goal ....to help increase maternal and child healthcare in the developing world.

MASSIVEGOOD is committed to innovative spending on the ground and to do this; they are hoping that you will make a $2 micro-contribution towards major global health causes every time you buy a plane ticket, reserve a hotel room or rent a car.

Available in the USA since early 2010, MASSIVEGOOD has created a social network for those committed to building a healthier world. To ensure that all travelers can make a difference, leaders in the travel and tourism industry have joined with global health organizations to support MASSIVEGOOD in an impressive
private-public coalition. It’s an easy way to do good and connect with others that are doing the same.
Just click on the button.

If you are not a traveler and still want to participate, you can still give to the "cause" by donating directly on their site. It only takes a few minutes and you'll feel better about yourself when you do participate. It's a "real" coalition that has a real goal of reducing the prices of medications and providing affordable care for those who need it.

Affordable Memorial Stones and Benches

Spring is coming and so is touching up the yard, grave site or adding a memorial to your garden. Came across this great little shop called Exterior Accents that sells benches, plaques, stones and medallions that are very, very reasonably priced. Benches under 200.00 and stones under 50.00 I'm posting for those of you who are looking for an affordable memorial option! They sell other yard things as well .....

Personalized Forever Remembered Small Memorial Bench This memorial bench will provide a tranquil resting spot in your garden. Verse reads: "Forever remembered, Forever missed". Personalization will be centered on the cast bronze plaque shown. Up to 3 lines 18 characters or spaces per line maximum. Crafted of cast stone for a rich texture and year round durability. Sturdy support legs and weatherproof adhesive included. Easy assembly. 14"H x 29"W x 12"D. 89 lbs.

Death Leaves a Heartache Memorial Stone The beautiful verse on this garden memorial stone reads: "Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal." Crafted of cast stone for a rich texture and year round durability. 12" x 12" x 2.5". 16 lbs

The Cove ... Behind the Dolphins Smile - Dolphin trade and slaughter

Just watched the trailer for "The Cove"; a new documentary by actor, director and producer, Fisher Stevens. He produced "The Cove," an Oscar-nominated film that won the best documentary award from the National Board of Review in 2009. It's timely, with the recent horrific tragedy that occurred last week at SeaWorld in Orlando, Floridawhere Dawn Brancheau lost her life doing the job that she loved.

"The Cove" is a wide eyed view on the dolphin trade and slaughter. Fisher said, " I assumed like many others that dolphins and orcas enjoyed living at Sea World and other marine parks. They always seemed to be smiling, jumping merrily around their tanks, eager to put on a show for human spectators. However, when I met Ric O'Barry, my perspective changed. O'Barry was the man responsible for capturing Kathy -- the original "Flipper" -- from the wild and helping to create the language used to train dolphins to do tricks and flips. When Cathy died in his arms some years later, O'Barry realized the whole process of capturing and training dolphins was wrong."

O' Barry co-wrote the book "Behind the Dolphin Smile: A True Story that Will Touch the Hearts of Animal Lovers Everywhere" where he explains that the smiles you see on dolphins are not the reflection of happiness. In actuality, they hate to be enclosed in their holding tanks and are often not fed until it is time to perform their daily routines. During his time as a trainer, O'Barry learned dolphins had true feelings -- they would get depressed, stressed out, even suicidal. In some parks, the trainers have to give the animals Maalox and Tagamet. Read an excerpt here.

O'Barry realized that the dolphins, whom he made perform tricks for treats, had just as much right to their lives as he did to his. Instead of feeling clever, he felt that he’d been callous. From that moment on, O’Barry dedicated his life to freeing dolphins that are held hostage around the world. Instead of working for the billion-dollar dolphin captivity industry, he now liberates exploited dolphins – he “un-trains” these intelligent marine mammals and returns them to their natural habitat.

The Cove is also going to take you to Japan where they capture, slaughter and trade dolphins.

Check out the trailer and info page and their blog on how you can help save the dolphins.

Source: CNN

13 Bizarre Will Stipulations

Came across a funny (but serious) article over at Mental Floss by Ethan Trex on 13 Bizarre Will Stipulations. Worth the read so you can shake your head in disbelief ... but don't get any ideas!

Such as: T.M. Zink, an Iowa lawyer who died in 1930, must have had some pretty bad experiences with women. When he died he left his daughter a measly five bucks, and his wife got nothing. He stipulated that the rest of his $100,000 estate be put in a trust for 75 years, then used to create the Zink Womanless Library. The library would have no feminine decorations, no books or magazine articles by female authors, and was required to have “No Women Admitted” carved into the stone over the entrance.

or, Heinrich Heine. The German poet left his entire fortune to his wife, but with one catch: she had to remarry “because then there will be at least one man to regret my death.”

and my favorite (kind of gross) S. Sanborn, a 19th-century New England hatter, left a rather macabre bequest to a friend—a pair of drums made from Sanborn’s skin. The friend received further instructions to go to Bunker Hill each June 17th and play “Yankee Doodle Dandy” on the drums.

Ashes to Portraits ... Not the Mona Lisa .. but still Mom : )

Very interesting concept. Check out Ashes to Portraits. Using some of your loved one's cremated ashes combined with a special mixture involving oil paint, a professional artist will create a one-of-a-kind portrait that will be a beautiful remembrance that willl also be a part of them.

They do people and pets.

Howl about this?

What's that? A collection of 35 pups howling along with the Law & Order theme music? Detective, we have another dead body on our hands. It looks like his heart just gave out.

Coffin Quilts ... Pretty Unique

This is pretty unique. Check out Mary Kenyon's Tattoo & Coffin Quilts! Need a unique gift? Or just looking for something different? Then you want to look at her quilts. They specialize in Custom Quilts.

Know someone graduating from Mortuary School ... this is the gift!

P.S. These quilts are for the living : )

Cat-astropic! Woman Creates and Sells Goth Kittens

Do you believe this? Incredible.

This is absolutely pitiful. Where people get their ideas, I'll never know. But, it does make me mad to even look at this. The stupid little bars look way to heavy fort his kitten's ears.

You know how some people like to dress their pets up like children in cute little sweaters and tshirts; or put antlers on them and pretend they're reindeer during the holidays?

Well, Holly Crawford of Wilkes-Barre, PA found a stray cat last year and decided it would be cool to pierce its ears with barbells; and pierce its neck with a bar. Enter the "Goth Kitten." Then she got the bright idea to sell her animals online for hundreds of dollars a pop. The kittens came equipped with such fabulous features as pierced ears and submission rings implanted into the napes of their necks.

PETA caught wind of her advertisements and sent word to Luzerne County animal rescue people. Her home was subsequently raided and she was charged with animal cruelty. PETA, calls Crawford's methods "barbaric." But Crawford says she took the same precautions with piercing that she would with a human. And since she's a dog groomer by trade, she had no intention of ever hurting the animals.

Some cats were pierced on the backs of their necks; which for cats, the nape of the neck is an especially sensitive area the mother cat will take in her teeth to get her kitten to submit to her -- not an area you'd want to puncture with a 14-gauge bar. I guess by "heal properly", she means she watched the piercing site for pus; because the emotional scars on these animals, which a vet says were "maimed and disfigured", will more than likely never go away.

Even if Crawford didn't intend to hurt the animals, she obviously didn't consider their well-being before going through with these procedures, or know much about a cat's nerves. Any piercer will tell you that correct placement of piercings in humans is essential -- same would go for any animal. And it's highly unlikely these kittens were begging for the needle, or even sat quietly while Crawford was driving a bar through their ears.

She's pleaded innocent and is expected discover her fate this week.

Source: True Crime Report; Care2

When Oscar Comes Calling, Shut the Door Quick!

For the last five years, Oscar the cat has been sniffing out death. Literally.

Dr. David Dosa, who published the news of Oscar's abilities in a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007, said he never intended to make Oscar sound creepy or his arrival at a bedside to be viewed negatively. Dosa said he hopes his newly released book, "Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat " will put the cat in a more favorable light as well as providing a book to help people whose loved ones are terminally ill.

"After the New England Journal article you got the feeling that if Oscar is in your bed then you are dead, but you did not really see what is going on for these family members," said Dosa, an assistant professor of medicine at Brown University. "I wanted to write a book that would go beyond Oscar's peculiarities, to tell why he is important to family members and caregivers who have been with him at the end of a life."

Dosa said Oscar's story is fascinating on many levels.

Oscar was adopted as a kitten from an animal shelter to be raised as a therapy cat at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, which cares for people with severe dementia and in the final stages of various illnesses.

When Oscar was about six months old the staff noticed that he would curl up to sleep with patients who were about to die.

So far he has accurately predicted about 50 deaths.

The Telegraph reports:

The tortoiseshell and white cat spends its days pacing from room to room, rarely spending any time with patients except those with just hours to live. If kept outside the room of a dying patient, Oscar will scratch on the door trying to get in.

When nurses once placed the cat on the bed of a patient they thought close to death, Oscar “charged out” and went to sit beside someone in another room. The cat’s judgment was better than that of the nurses: the second patient died that evening, while the first lived for two more days.

When death is near, Oscar nearly always appears at the last hour or so. Yet he shows no special interest in patients who are simply in poor shape, or even patients who may be dying but who still have a few days. A hop onto the bed, a fastidious lick of the paws, then a snuggle beside a nursing home patient with little time left. Oscar's purr, when keeping close company with the dying, is so intense it is almost a low rumble.

Dosa suggests Oscar’s unique ability could stem from an ability to detect ketones–distinctly odored biochemicals given off by dying cells. This isn’t as crazy as it sounds; after all, some dogs have been trained to sniff out cancer.

Dosa said his main interest was not to delve further into Oscar's abilities but to use Oscar as a vehicle to tell about terminal illness, which is his main area of work. where people go to die."

"The first time I met Oscar he bit me. We have warmed over the years. We have moved into a better place," said Dosa.

"I don't think Oscar is that unique, but he is in a unique environment. Animals are remarkable in their ability to see things we don't, be it the dog that sniffs out cancer or the fish that predicts earthquakes. Animals know when they are needed."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_books_cat ; http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/oscar-cat-with-the-purr-of-death/2007/07/26/1185339167772.html

Doctor Doctor Give me the news!

A little scary. The staff at the Wellcome Library in London have scoured the shelves for the weirdest and most wonderful objects in their collection, the ones that made even them scratch their heads when they first set eyes on them, such as the Anaesthetic inhaler, (UK, late 19th century.)

"Just breathe." : )