Explain The Dead Thing To Me Again

My father used to say, “Live every day as if it's your last.” So does that mean I’d be picking out a coffin, a headstone, and talking to a mortician? Or that I’d wake up thinking Today is my last day on earth? Then the next day I’d get up and say what? “Shit, I just blew yesterday.”

I’d rather be cremated than have a memorial service but I was raised Catholic so that means that when I die there will be a wake, something I’m never going to be again. And why is it that when you go to a funeral, afterwards people ask you how it was. What do they think you're going to say? “Everyone loved my dress; I saw lots of old friends and met a really great guy.” It's a funeral; it's always going to suck.

And have you noticed that only the fabulous people die? He was always smiling and was such a beautiful person. Everyone loved him. Just once I'd like to hear, Well good riddance. Serious B.O., didn’t flush and never returned things. And when someone dies too young you always hear, She was a ray of sunlight, never hurt anyone's feelings and was loved by all. I guess that means I'm going to live to be a trillion. They say that when you die there's a bright light, ethereal music and all your dead relatives line up to greet you. So now you're trapped in eternity with people you didn't even want to spend Thanksgiving with? And apparently your whole life flashes in front of you. I’m going on the record right now that I refuse to revisit any of my exes, geometry and anything from the 70’s. So if anyone’s listening, please delete those items from my Instant RePlay Book.

Around children, parents use euphemisms for death because they don't want to upset them. When I was a kid my mother and father said they were putting my dog to sleep. And all I remember was that one night they went to his bed and I never saw the dog again. I didn't let my parents near my bed for weeks.

If you’re really ill, they have to put you on life support. Wouldn't it be smarter if we got life support earlier on in life, when we really needed it? Like we’d get $62,000 to pay off our subprime mortgages so we wouldn't have had that stress-induced heart attack and be intubated and lying on our death-beds in the first place.

I think the reason so many die during a disaster is that they save the wrong people. Women and children first. Then the elderly. I’m thinking specifically of the Titanic. They put the women, children, and old people in the rafts. And left behind the only group who had the strength to row them. The men. I can just imagine another ship passing by and their captain saying, “What's that noise? Crying kids? We're outta here.”

Everyone knows that you should only evacuate women and children first if there are spiders and bogeymen on board. And old people? How long will it take them to get to land when they can't drive faster than 18 mph on a freeway? I say we light them up and use them as flares. They're just going to get back to shore and run us over with their 1978 Lincoln Continentals anyway. I'm glad the captain had the good sense to go down with the Titanic. If he lived, what were they going to do, transfer him to the Hindenburg?

I don’t like all the phrases we use as a substitute for the word ‘died.’ He’s in a better place. If he was truly in a better place, wouldn’t we all be trying to get there? He’s gone to his reward. So that’s what you get for spending your whole life fighting with spouses, having stoner kids, working a shit job and paying bills? Death? They kicked the bucket. Unless you’re talking about Jack and Jill, fine. Otherwise? Dead. Dead. Dead.

Some people take ads out in their local newspapers to commemorate the anniversary of the death of their loved one. "For John: his first birthday in heaven.” It seems a little strange to me. How do they know which newspapers are delivered in heaven? And I’m not knocking heaven; it might be okay, although there's probably nothing on TV there either.

End of chat.