Courtesy of MLusk of Weather Records

The Dead Outnumber You : Ok Oh and those Semi-fortunate Bastards

There few things more interesting than a dead person.  This morning it struck me on my ride home from the beach (a not-too-hidden reference to the personally pleasant fact that I awoke at four this morning to surf chest high waves not far from other chest high waves) (this is not so much a boast as a rejoinder to the little nay-saying gnome somewhere west of my right ear, east of the left) (furthermore, getting up so early leaves me at this time of night very tired, tired enough to grind my way through one Coors beer, an ice cream bar and two vegetable tacos) (not a normal occurrence if any insurance adjusters are reading) (the beer and ice cream consumption, mind you insurance guy, not the healthy practice of surfing, which is never enjoyed in dangerous conditions, mind you) as I passed by many of the cemeteries that dot the boarder between Brooklyn and Queens (a circumstance of timing, fashion and necessity) (theirs and mine) (at some point the backyards of the churches of Manhattan were getting cadaverly crowded and there was some silly law passed at some point as to how many dead people could be buried in any given county, thus the borderline preference) that there were a very serious amount of nonexistent people in the five burroughs taking up an awful lot of space. Granted, their space occupation might be more economical than, say, the top ten percent of our city's money earners,  but at least the money earners are doing something. So I wondered to myself upon the legal implications of someone, no longer extant, having the right to that big stone mausoleum.  What use do they have for it?  Besides, their greatgrandchildren live in California now and don't even know their grandmother's maiden name.  So here we have this massive population of powdery bones taking up space purchased long ago on land that could rightfully be turned into a water park.  The kind with water slides.  Which is what ought to happen, mind you.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My grandparents are buried in one of those Brooklyn cemetaries, right near by horace freely. True story- the guy who said , 'go west young man'.
Grandpa Cooper was the last gentleman in my family.
In a few years I will seek to emulate grandpa but I am in no hurry.

Curran