Digging Up The Dead

Yeah, I know, it's not big and it's not clever but, sometimes it's necessary. How would they make series like Crime Scene *some city in America* without it?. And people like to watch it and find out why a person is dead even though it's fairly obvious because if an elephant landed on your head it would hurt, at first, well microseconds and then you'd be dead. But this gives them the chance to make some pithy remark like "well I guess that was a fatal trunk call".

Then they get 50 minutes to explain why an elephant was able to fall from the sky and use lots of jokes about having heard of it raining cats and dogs but this is taking the piss a bit. Sooner or later, some bizarre reason will come to light about a tornado that ripped through a nearby town and scooped the elephant up and up and up but sooner or later the tornado ran out of power and then gravity took over and thus the elephant hurtled toward the ground like a really big, grey hailstone and Mr Unlucky just happened to be walking to the shop when SPLAT - and that's what happened. And then they can say something equally stupid like "Tusk, tusk - who'd have thought an elephant could fly?" and maybe a couple of direct rip offs from Dumbo like "I've seen a housefly and I've seen a dragonfly, but I've never seen an elephant fly". Cue theme music.

In real life (or real death) it's nowhere near as interesting. Dead people are dead - it's kind of the definition of dead, not alive anymore etc. So they put them in a big freezer, like frozen peas, except they're not peas, they were people, and they had feelings but peas only had roots, and leaves etc.

So, a true story to illustrate why death is not funny. Father Goth was a policeman and one of the first things they do is take you into the mortuary and show you a dead body and try to get you accustomed to the smell of death. One of the officers used to like to get put into the freezer, which is actually just shelves, not compartments as you would imagine. So he would get in alongside the really dead people and when the time came, the coroner would pull out said officer to show the new recruits their first dead person at which point PC Practical Joke would sit up and shout "BOO" which usually had the desired effect of causing people to scream or run away or something else (part of the fight or flight reaction).

Anyway, the first female officer had been recruited and PC PJ wanted to do the same trick. The other officers were extremely doubtful as to how good an idea this was but he insisted. So eventually, PC PJ is put in the freezer and lies their in the sub zero temperature alongside 5 or 6 dead bodies waiting to play his joke. Five minutes elapse and no one comes to open the drawer, then ten minutes and still nothing. PJ is starting to shiver now but another five minutes pass and still no activity. Finally after twenty minutes, the body next to him announces "Fucking hell, it's cold in here isn't it mate!!"

They eventually managed to stop PC Practical Joke from screaming but the effect was enough to put him on sick leave for 6 months.

Moral of the story - leave the dead alone, they probably earned it.

a luego,
S