It started in a Funeral Home in North Syracuse, New York and it has now reached Southampton. The manager of the English city’s crematorium, Trevor Mathieson, defended the decision to offer £75 webcasts of its ceremonies.
He said: “It’s not as if we’re Sky and broadcasting Premier League football. We’re not putting the services on to the internet for anyone to watch. It’s all about offering a better service to people who are bereaved”
Families who pay the £75 are given a user name and a password. This then enables the mourners to sit on their arses in a harlequin ‘Just Do It!’ T-shirt, praying that their processor doesn’t suffer a catastrophic failure and thus prevents them from marking the end of a loved one’s life with the lowering of a laptop’s screen.
For those whose technological needs are not fully met, they can also purchase a DVD for £50 and an audio recording (move over pod, it’s time for the CasketCast) for a mere £25. It is not known if the DVD includes ‘special features’ but it can only be a matter of time before we see a list of ‘Deleted Jewellery’, ‘Extended Tears’, and ‘The Burning of Teddy’ appearing on a disc entitled ‘The Cremulator’.
All of these exciting developments could have interesting knock-on effects in both this world and the next. As they view the climax to the tragedy, the couch-based bereaved may feel that their need for emotional catharsis is not fully met. This may cause the reappearance of ‘mutes’ and ‘professional mourners’. Not seen since the 19th century, (Southampton? Citation needed) these career choices for both the clinically depressed and obsessive face-clawers would enliven any webcast cremation.
Similarly, for those who believe in an afterlife, they may have to accept that the deceased’s preferred plane of existence remains the virtual world. Who would blame the freed souls if, on learning of the webcast of their cremation, they decide to outsource some of their interest in their surviving friends and play Second AfterLife instead?
Why would the Angels in Heaven bother trying to follow the lives of the living when it is presumably possible to simply set up an email inbox and flick through titles such as ‘It is What He Would Have Wanted’, ‘It Was a Nice Quiet Service’ and ‘Just Who The Hell Was That Guy Who Dad Left His Fishing Trophies To?’.
“The Kingdom of God is within you” – Henry Ward Beecher
He said: “It’s not as if we’re Sky and broadcasting Premier League football. We’re not putting the services on to the internet for anyone to watch. It’s all about offering a better service to people who are bereaved”
Families who pay the £75 are given a user name and a password. This then enables the mourners to sit on their arses in a harlequin ‘Just Do It!’ T-shirt, praying that their processor doesn’t suffer a catastrophic failure and thus prevents them from marking the end of a loved one’s life with the lowering of a laptop’s screen.
For those whose technological needs are not fully met, they can also purchase a DVD for £50 and an audio recording (move over pod, it’s time for the CasketCast) for a mere £25. It is not known if the DVD includes ‘special features’ but it can only be a matter of time before we see a list of ‘Deleted Jewellery’, ‘Extended Tears’, and ‘The Burning of Teddy’ appearing on a disc entitled ‘The Cremulator’.
All of these exciting developments could have interesting knock-on effects in both this world and the next. As they view the climax to the tragedy, the couch-based bereaved may feel that their need for emotional catharsis is not fully met. This may cause the reappearance of ‘mutes’ and ‘professional mourners’. Not seen since the 19th century, (Southampton? Citation needed) these career choices for both the clinically depressed and obsessive face-clawers would enliven any webcast cremation.
Similarly, for those who believe in an afterlife, they may have to accept that the deceased’s preferred plane of existence remains the virtual world. Who would blame the freed souls if, on learning of the webcast of their cremation, they decide to outsource some of their interest in their surviving friends and play Second AfterLife instead?
Why would the Angels in Heaven bother trying to follow the lives of the living when it is presumably possible to simply set up an email inbox and flick through titles such as ‘It is What He Would Have Wanted’, ‘It Was a Nice Quiet Service’ and ‘Just Who The Hell Was That Guy Who Dad Left His Fishing Trophies To?’.
“The Kingdom of God is within you” – Henry Ward Beecher
2 comments:
I want to see the out takes....
Lol.
Thanks for leaving a comment Simon.
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