Digital Dying By: Justin Nobel

by Justin Nobel

A man in Taiwan paid a stripper $160 to perform a 10 minute striptease beside his father's coffin. "Stripper funerals" in rural Taiwan and China have become so popular that local authorities are cracking down on the events, which they see as "obscene".

Cai Jinlai and his son Cai Ruigong had a bet; if Jinlai lived past 100 his son would hire a stripper for his funeral. He lived to 103, and Ruigong followed through on his end of the deal. He paid the equivalent of $160 for an adult dancer to perform a ten minute striptease in front of his father's coffin.

In farming villages across rural China and Taiwan, stripper funerals have become commonplace. Local folks believe that the number of mourners who gather for a funeral indicates the worthiness of the deceased. Also, the more people who come to the funeral, the more luck will befall the surviving family and offspring. Strippers are a surefire way to draw mourners. In some towns in Jiangsu, a province in eastern China, the events have become nightly spectacles, drawing the entire town out. Sometimes rival funerals occur, and strippers compete to see who can attract the best crowd. “Some strippers even take off the trousers of male viewers and persuade them to join in the dancing, while others bathe in public or perform nude with snakes,” reports one Chinese newspaper.

MEET THE WORLD'S FOREMOST TAIWANESE STRIPPER FUNERAL EXPERT

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by Justin Nobel

Earlier this year a New York City comedy club held a mock funeral for actress Sarah Jessica Parker. Around the world, mourners gather to remember things as abstract as city services, web browsers and political freedom.

On a winter morning in New York City a handful of mourners gathered underground. They dressed in black with black armbands, hung their heads low and listened to a bagpiper. A bushy wreath of bright yellow, green and red flowers framed a handsome photo of the deceased: a green circle with a white G in the middle. This corpse was not a person, but the emblem for the city's G-train subway, which hauls thousands of commuters to work each day but is not as well-used as other lines; its services are being curtailed because of budget cuts. “The G Train has been on life support for years,” said one state assemblyman, “Now we stand here at its funeral.”

The event, which took place on the platform beside the G-train tracks was a mock funeral protesting the cuts. Some of the world's strangest funerals don't bury men or women, but instead mourn the death of things as abstract as city services, web browsers, Hollywood stars and political freedom. Read the rest of this entry »

by Justin Nobel

The latest funeral trend involves packing cremated remains into fireworks. The best known example is Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, whose ashes were blasted from a 153 foot tower he had designed with a friend decades earlier. (Photo by Justin Nobel)

On Independence Day, about 200 people gathered at a remote lake in north-central Florida to see an old friend explode. They ate barbeque and corn on the cob, some took canoe rides. As dusk settled, they sat on the grass and watched the sky. But their firework display was far from the typical small town American July Fourth event. Packed inside the casing of several dozen fireworks were the cremated remains of local man Tom Moore, who had died days before, at the age of 70. “For those who knew him, this is most appropriate,” said his wife Ann. “Don't all men love something that goes bang?”

These days, the dead are put into diamonds, flown to the moon and made into jewelry; practically anything seems to be fair game. The latest trend involves placing cremated remains in fireworks. Read the rest of this entry »

by Justin Nobel

Walter Hudson weighed 1,200 pounds, the fourth most obese human in medical history. His daily diet included, two boxes of sausages, 12 eggs, four hamburgers, four cheeseburgers, three ham steaks, two chickens and four heads of broccoli. His massive coffin required 12 pallbearers.

Walter Hudson was the fourth most obese human in medical history. By age 12, he weighed 200 pounds and by age 33 his waist measured 119 inches (a Guinness World Record) and he weighed 1,197 pounds. His daily diet was as follows: two boxes of sausages, a pound of bacon, 12 eggs, a loaf of bread, four hamburgers, four cheeseburgers, eight portions of fries, three ham steaks, two chickens, four baked potatoes, four sweet potatoes, four heads of broccoli and 36 pints of soda. He made headlines when he got sandwiched in his bathroom and was unable to move, it took nine men to get him out. Hudson died in his sleep at the age of 47, just weeks after he announced plans to be married.

COPING WITH THE DEATH OF A SPOUSE

As the world has become wealthier it has become fatter and this creates problems for the afterlife. Morbidly obese corpses often can't fit into mortuary refrigerators or crematory furnaces. Traditional coffins were once tapered and widest at the shoulders, but to accommodate a general increase in body-weight, most present day coffins are cigar-shaped, wide throughout. Some coffins have become so large they can no longer fit inside a hearse or in a standard grave, forcing families to buy two plots in the cemetery. Indiana-based Goliath Casket Co. specializes in oversized coffins; a normal coffin is about 28 inches wide; Goliath's biggest is more than 50 inches wide. Such coffins can be too heavy for pallbearers to carry. “If the worst comes to the worst, we will keep the family away and the coffin will be taken in on a truck,” a British cemetery manager told a reporter. “It is not the most dignified way out.”

But many morbidly obese lose their dignity long before the die. Often, they live sad and troubled lives, and die premature and chilling deaths. Read the rest of this entry »