Happy Easter!

Got a post from the "250,000 Atheists" guy on Facebook this morning. He's a little bummed there are only 3093 members of his group. But who knows how many people are lurking, afraid to put their names down.

His post cheered me up. This holiday always depresses me. Maybe it's the unremitting news coverage of the middle east (oh, dear! when will there be peace in Jerusalem?!). Maybe it's the universal coverage of the Nazi Pope walking the stations of the cross. Anyway, it bugs me, and this Facebook post about the "zombie and the giant bunny" (I visualized Frank from Donnie Darko) cheered me up. So I sent him a little story to cheer him up:

A few days ago, I was at a high school career fair. I had a chat with another "presenter" at a nearby booth. The guy was a distinguished old dude in a nice suit, standing in front of his display, an open, satin-lined, stainless steel casket. I don't know if he was going to offer kids a chance to test the thing out, or just tell them how cool it is, being a funeral director. I think the idea is a little odd, especially when you look at the whole embalming process. It replaces the bodily fluids with a 37% formaldehyde solution. Not at all green, to put it mildly.

I asked this gentleman, what's the split between embalming and cremation these days? He said, the percentage of cremations is always highest in towns with a college or university. I asked, "do you mean that embalming correlates with less educated, more old-time-religion-y places?" He said he didn't know, but last year a couple of local Greek Orthodox people chose to be cremated, and their CHURCH WENT NUTS! In a moderate-sized New England town, WITH a college. So there you go. Still waiting for the last trump, and they've heard solid rumors it's right around the corner. So keep those corpses fresh!