Bring out your dead

I have a little more than your regular passing interest in dead people. A little less than a necrophiliac.

Like I mentioned before, I'm reading Stiff by Mary Roach. I just came across something called Bodyworlds, The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies. A man named Gunther von Hagen invented a process known as plastination, where, simply speaking, human corpses are plastified. He then poses them, dresses them or doesn't, and adds them to his art exhibition. I think it's absolutely fascinating. He gets the bodies via donations -- not donations to science, donations to him. According to the book, there are 3,700 people on his list, just waiting to die so they can be propped up in a museum. If you're not squeamish (And I'm not, but this made me stop eating my lunch immediately. Consider yourself warned), here's the official site. I showed it to Jake, who apparently is not as fond of the not breathing folk as I am. And that's okay. Most people aren't. I suspect Mary Roach and I would have a grand time together, though.

When I was in high school, I took Cosmetology classes. I took them, not because I wanted to be a hairdresser in a salon, but because I thought it would be cool to be a Desirologist, someone who works in a funeral home and does hair and makeup. Then I decided to be a journalist instead. Which later became something else, and then something else after that. But it started with the dead people. Is that weird?