A while ago, while my wife and I (among others) were visiting my aunt and uncle (and their two kids), my uncle blindsided me with his big, post-cremation, what-to-do-with-my-remains idea: He wants me to "draw something" using (get this) his remains...Aaaaand I think he was kind of serious about it...No, my uncle is NOT mentally unstable...No, I am NOT making this up...

Perhaps I should explain...

You've no doubt heard by now about the (dubiously morbid) practice of manufacturing LifeGems. According to the company's website, a LifeGem is a certified, high quality diamond created from the carbon of your loved one as a memorial to their unique and wonderful life. The LifeGem provides a way to embrace your loved one's memory day by day.

Let's cover that crap ONE MORE TIME, shall we? the friggin' CARBON of your loved one...

You see, after your "loved one" is cremated, you're (usually) left with this "pile of ash" which you have to take care of. Now, you COULD be all TRADITIONAL and NORMAL and crap and just keep these "ashes" in an "urn" or something and display them prominently in your home...Yeah, you COULD do that, or, you COULD give them ashes up to the friendly folks at LifeGem...These ghouls wonderful people will, in turn, "harvest the carbon" from said "pile of ash," purify it and, eventually, compress it into an artificial diamond which you can then display to accessorize those "sassy pumps" that you picked up last week...Yeah, sure...Sounds perfectly normal to me...

"Oh, that's so lovely, where did you get it?"

"It's mom."

"Oh, your mom left it to you?"

"No, I mean It's actually mom. It's made from mom. mom mom mom."

"You're sick in the head, you know that?"

"No, seriously, look close, you can almost see that familiar gleam that once resided in her eye! now, that gleam's on my finger FOREVER...I'm thinking about making earrings from dad."

"Get away from me, don't you talk to me!"

"JUST LOOK AT HER! ISN'T SHE BEAUTIFUL? COME BACK! she didn't mean it, mother, she didn't mean it..."

So, as if that crap isn't bad enough, there's this artist fella' who resides in the Houston (Texas) area who has taken to producing paintings which include (in the pigment, I assume) "human remains." More specifically, he utilizes unclaimed human ashes, post cremation, to give a "human connection" to the paintings. After finding this out, I had reason to pause and think...I'm now not sure which would be MORE morbid: purchasing a haunted friggin' painting made from some crack addict destined for the Potter's Field or simply breaking off a chunk of the Sedlec Ossuary to take home as a souvenir...Either way, the shenanigans which I've typed about up to this point, if nothing else, run contrary to something which I've always believed to be true...

You shouldn't fuck around with the dead...'Cause they'll get ya...

Anyhow, back to main point of today's tale, my uncle the pencil...Yeah, so my uncle decided (at some point), probably after hearing about some of the things we've just talked about, what modern technology (and, perhaps, a lack of respect for our dearly departed) can do for your earthly remains, He decided that he wanted to have HIS carbon harvested, made into pencil graphite (or something similar) and then presented to me so that I could "draw something."

Talk about pressure...Draw what, exactly? A guy holding a giant hot dog? I'm gonna need some direction here...

You're probably assuming by now that he was just "kidding" and you MAY BE right...Maybe...I'm still not sure...He sure sold it as if he were serious...The question I should ask, though, is obvious: Do I want THAT kind of responsibility?..The answer: Probably not...What if I screw up? I don't want to have to ERASE any of him...What would happen every time I sharpened him? Would he scream? I mean, yes, I do draw pretty much all friggin' day...I doodle on scrap paper while I'm working on other stuff, I draw when I'm bored, I draw specific things as part of my job, I'm truly never without an opportunity to draw...That said, I don't often draw anything COHESIVE and I've never had to draw anything using a formerly living thing as my media...On a regular basis, I usually just "draw what comes to mind" (you see them, they're the goofy sketches I include at the top of every post) and, as you may already know, my mind ain't all "normal and stuff." What this all means is that, if I WERE to be presented with a pencil that happened to be manufactured from the "harvested carbon" of someone whom I knew, I'd most likely feel such a great responsibility to NOT draw something stupid that I would simply lock up and fail. Either that, or I'd forget about the pencil's signifigance after a while and...oh, I don't know, use it to keep score during a euchre game or something...

"But, if you used it to draw a PORTRAIT of the person it were made out of...Wow, THAT would be cool."

Yeah, maybe so...Talk about a conversation piece! I guess that it's POSSIBLE that I could even be assisted with such a project by "unseen hands," or guided along by the "spirit pencil lead" to get a great result but, when it's all said and done, I still don't think that it's a responsibility which I'm ready to take on...No, in fact I believe that morbid tributes such as that should be better left to the professionals...Well, them and those nutty Czechs...

Labels: 'de paranormal, lame stories, misguided rantings, spooky shit