Funny notes about death and religion

Because this blog can get a bit heavy at times, owing to the combination of my personality and the topics involved, it’s useful to keep the lighter side of death and religion in mind, or at least in view.

Or, perhaps, ‘in hand.’ Here’s an artist who can create a ‘lifetime’ of usable pencils from the cremated remains of your loved one.

Thanks, BoingBoing

Also from BoingBoing, a lovely sculpure of famed messiah candidate has been prevented from receiving a public exhibit after a few rabid and humorless folk protested over the fact that the medium was innapropriate – the medium was chocolate. Given the symbolism embedded at the core of Christianity’s central ritual of communion (“This is my body; take and eat”), I’m confused about the objection. Would it have been appropriate if it were made out of bread and wine? Is it the fact that chocolate is just too ‘sinfully delicious’ that makes this particular sculpture offensive. I mean, whatever you thought about ‘piss christ’, at least it makes sense to me that people might get upset about representing their lord and savior using the medium of urine. But chocolate? C’mon.

UPDATE: Once you take note of something, it keeps showing up. Keith Richards has been getting a lot of free press lately for claiming (apparently ‘in gest’ – get it?) that he once snorted some of his dead daddy’s ashes mixed up with cocaine. [BB] And James Doohan, “Scotty” of Star Trek fame, is finally making that extra-terrestrial voyage, in a mission apparently solely dedicated to ejecting dead people’s ashes into the void. [BB]