Planning Death
by Ted L Glines
Death is expensive. We should avoid death if at all possible. That is my advice. It costs too much to be buried and all that. I have told my own people, when I expire, they should simply wrap my body up in a garbage bag and toss it into a nearby dumpster. Once my spirit has departed from this husk of a host body, I will not receive any benefit from flowers and eulogies, and a $10,000 funeral will be wasted on me. If you did not send me flowers in life, please do not waste them on me in death. And an expensive padded casket only supports a rotting body which turns gunky before the worms can come in.
Dying in America is very expensive -- so expensive, the saying goes, that no one can afford to do it anymore.
The average funeral in the United States costs $6,500, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. The true sum can easily reach $10,000 once a burial plot, flowers and other costs are included, the AARP says.
Maybe it only costs less than a thousand dollars to be cremated. I have $2,200 in my bank account. I could afford that. Problem is that I do not have a living relative who has stated any need to have a pot with my ashes in it in her/his house. Why would you want for your “pot” to sit on some relatives mantle ... anyway?
You needn't go into debt in order to honor the dead, however. In many parts of the country, a loved one can be laid to rest with dignity for less than $800, by choosing cremation and using creativity. Even those who favor a traditional funeral and burial can save hundreds or thousands of dollars by taking a few simple steps.
Whatever your preferences, consumer advocates recommend three steps above all others:
Plan ahead. Talk about death with your spouse and/or parents. Know what they want and commit those wishes to paper. Do they want to be cremated shortly after death with no ceremony? Or do they want a large funeral with a choir -- but absolutely no fancy headstone? Lack of communication is costly.
Lacking a spouse or parents to advise me, I can see no need for my rotting host body to be in any way lauded via funeral celebrations of any kind.
"There's more psychological baggage surrounding death than any other emotion or life experience -- even sex. And that's why we pay a high price," says Karen Leonard, a researcher for "The American Way of Death Revisited," the update of Jessica Mitford's landmark 1963 muckraking exposé of the funeral industry.
I will not be worth more after dying than I am right now. You never sent me flowers when I was alive. Please do not waste your money on flowers after I am gone. I will not be there to be impressed.
Know your rights. The Federal Trade Commission's "Funeral Rule" requires mortuaries to present a price list of services to consumers before showing them products such as caskets. A new FTC brochure that summarizes your rights is "Paying Final Respects: Your Rights When Buying Funeral Goods and Services." Another detailed but very readable overview is the FTC brochure "Funerals: A Consumer Guide."
Shop around. Many survivors also don't shop around for deals because they consider bargain hunting an affront to the dead. Getting fleeced, however, is hardly a tribute. Even a few quick calls to compare prices once a relative dies can be worthwhile.
How can anything be an affront to any dead person?
Bargain hunting? Spare me your marketing ploys. I lived my life. I died my death. And I do not give a potter's “damn” what happens to the dead meat which was my host body. May it rot in peace and give sustanance to needy worms
|
|
Progress
by Ted L Glines
Coming home from work this morning, I found myself listening to a program about the people who live on the island of Crete. This program was broadcast on National Public Radio and carried by the official radio station of Texarkana College. Do we care about the people on Crete? Maybe about as much as we care about the polar bears. But, what I heard startled me. I do not startle easily.
The island of Crete is part of Greece. Back during WWII, Greece was under the hobnailed boots of Germany. For four long years, most of the food produced in Crete was taken away to feed the German soldiers fighting on their many fronts. During those four years, many people on Crete died of starvation. The survivors, obviously, did not. With the end of WWII, the Allied Powers brought food into Crete. There was much celebration as this relief was received. On Crete, here is what we found.
The people on Crete were not suffering from malnutrition. They were healthy. How? Why? The answer, as always, was simple. Being an island, fishing was as natural as breathing to these survivors. Also, they had the vegetables, fruits, and herbs that they grew on their own lands. Perhaps those who died of starvation had not had access to growing their own food or to fishing. City people. And there was a religious factor as well, since the people on Crete were devout Catholics; for one hundred and eighty days out of their year, they were not allowed to eat meat products. No meat or eggs or milk products. The fats that they ingested were largely from olives and olive oil, which was used in everything they cooked, and this is considered to be “good” fat.
That was 1945, many decades in the past. Heart attacks were almost unheard of on Crete. The people were healthy and moving into an era of peace and progress. One of the people interviewed was a man who was 90 years old. He sounded as bright and alert as a teenager. Alzheimer's Disease? Cancer? Diabetes? These maladies were basically unknown on the island of Crete in 1945. AIDs was not even a science fiction nightmare.
Over the intervening decades, much progress has come to the island of Crete. They have been given the benefits of malls and fast-food outlets, and pharmaceutical resources are present to cure all of their ills. Their life is fast-lane and is much the same as what we experience in America today. About 50% of their females are obese, and about 40% of the males. About half of their children are obese. And the corridors of their hospitals are lined with heart-attack patients waiting to be treated. Alzheimer's is prevalent, as is cancer in its many forms. AIDs has come to the island of Crete.
Did I mention polar bears? Scientists predict that global warming (our spray cans did that?) and the resultant depletion of sea ice will reduce the polar bear population to almost zero within the upcoming fifty years. Do we care about those people on Crete ... or the polar bears? Could be that we need to start paying attention to the downside of national/corporate progress.
I care. You care. We all scream for I scream ...
Silly Things
by Ted L Glines
There's nothing I hate worse than shopping for food. I'd rather be slapped up along side the head with a shark ... than go shopping for food. I never get what I intended to get. I always get the same ole boring things. It's a good thing I'm not on a diet (or on a budget) because everything I get could be called “expensive junk food.” But that's not the worst of it. After shopping for it, bringing it home, sticking it all in the frig, then I eat the blamed stuff and end up having to go shopping for food ... again. I think I will quit eating. That should solve the problem. But, that's not what I wanted to talk about this morning.
Women. There is something wrong with women. You ever noticed that? At 15 years old, her life is full of golden promise. Only two more years of high school. Then it's off to college to get her degree in Master Financial Mogul, guaranteed to earn the big bucks and live a life of luxury and grace. Then what happens? Before she hits 17, she manages to get pregnant. And her fella, seeing she is pregnant, takes off with some skinny blonde bimbo who is not (yet) pregnant. There go the “Mogul” dreams. Instead of looking forward to a life of upper-crust wining and dining, pleasure cruises to the islands, our unfortunate young lady is getting large and uncomfortable, and she is looking down the gun-barrel of a life on Welfare, diapers, food stamps, WIC, and Housing Authority strictness. She has joined that growing crowd of women who are labelled “Single Women with Children.” Yuk!
And, if the future which has turned from dream to nightmare is not bad enough, she is spending her mornings with the taste of vomit on her tongue, her back aches, her breasts ache, and she is getting kicked in the tummy. Does this sound like a good-hair day? But darned if she doesn't go in for her Ultrasound and she is emotionally hugging that little embroyo for all he is worth. Does that make any sense to you? This kid is totally wrecking her life ... and she loves him!
The trouble with women is really simple. They like men. And we all know that the brain of a woman is different. Somewhere in her fluffy brain is an organ which secretes silly-hormones, and she will self-destruct in a heartbeat when a man barges into her life. Most men (except for the ones reading this, of course) (heh, heh, heh) are single-minded. They know what they want, and she has got it. She stands about as much chance as a lamb dropped into a school of piranha fish.
She likes men. That problem suggests its own solution.
Henceforth, we will segregate all the females to the eastern half of the United States. All the men will be kept in the western half. Down the center is a very tall wall with guard towers. At the age of 30, after the women have risen to upper Financial Mogul status (which they will because they are smarter than men), the totally-empowered women will be allowed to go through the central Wall Gate to take their pick of the not-so-empowered available men. I feel sorry for ego-twisted males when that happens.
Yep, that would work. “Life According to Ted” strikes again!
Animal Child
by Ted L Glines
In justification of the title, may I say that some American Indian beliefs say that a human being has two souls. The first soul, the animal soul, possesses the child from birth to about the age of four years. According to them, this first animal soul stays with the human throughout all of life. At four years of age, the human soul enters to take a commanding role in possessing the human being. So much for the title.
Some people remember those first four years of childhood. Studies indicate that most of us do not, and this has always puzzled me. Why would we not remember a time in our life when everything was bright and new and exciting? Sometimes painful and often scary. Big creatures handled us and made strange noises. The big creatures smelled like food and love. Other strange big creatures came around. They smelled different, but they might be food and love, too. We learned to smile and laugh because it made the big creatures give food and love. New objects were everywhere. Bite them. Slap them. Some objects slapped back, and that was scary. Screaming always gets results. Everything was new and dramatic and good, unless it slapped you, and then it was bad and scary and screams were automatic. These first four years see-sawed between awed wonderment and dire trauma. Why should this time period be absent from most memories?
Two souls? An animal soul? Maybe an animal soul will not produce long-term memory. Maybe an animal soul will only replicate actions which produce good results. Maybe an animal soul has no need to store memories of good/bad/indifferent feelings. Actions bring reactions and these reactions program the animal soul toward further “good” actions. One action at a time, the animal soul gains control in manipulating its environment.
It is interesting that many individuals have an affinity for some particular animal. I have always thought of the condor as my animal friend. The condor is the largest of the flying birds (15-foot wingspan), with a face so ugly that not even a mother could love him. For your livingroom, a parakeet will be a better choice. Way back, when CB radio was the way we communicated, “Condor” was my “handle,” and this carried into the Internet era where my ID became “Condor,” and “CondorWings,” and “CondorWings13,” and (most recently) “CondorProtector.” One can browse the endless Internet sites and find people with animal (or mythological creature) names. One of my favorites (of course) is a very dear friend who goes by the name “DragonBlue,” a wonderful lady in Arizona who supports poets and poetry. I could cite many.
I only remember two events from those first four years. I must have been an early toddler when I saw a huge black creature towering over me. I am sure this event had some screaming in it. When I see this memory-event, I see a black dog. But, as a new toddler, I screamed. And the other remembered event was, looking up into the blue sky, seeing two specks hit each other, a bright flash, black smoke, and things falling. That is all. Other than those two events, I remember nothing from my first four years.
Why is it, do you think, that we tend to remember little or nothing from this most remarkable short period in our lives?