The following column was in the works for a pre-Halloween run last week. Then Typhoon Yutu stomped onto the scene. I hope that you and your family are faring well during the challenges of the aftermath. Even though Halloween is over, I\u2019m going to run last week\u2019s scheduled column anyway, largely because I can\u2019t let a good Revenge of the Nerds reference go to waste. <\/p>\n
\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n
The joke with my pals is that they don\u2019t want to be buried on Saipan because they\u2019ll be forced to move every 55 years. <\/p>\n
Well, don\u2019t worry, there are other options. <\/p>\n
For example, just in time for the Halloween season, the Oct. 24 Wall Street Journal reported that Disneyland (Anaheim, Calif.) and Disney World (Orlando, Fla.) occasionally have guests who smuggle in human ashes. This is so their dearly departed can spend eternity on Disney grounds.<\/p>\n
At the other end of the spectrum, I\u2019ll note that the writer Hunter S. Thompson\u2019s ashes were, in accordance with his wishes, fired from a cannon at his funeral in 2005. <\/p>\n
As long as we\u2019re sharing stories about kicking ash, I might as well mention I sometimes had to do \u201cash drops\u201d as a pilot. Ashes aren\u2019t the only part of the equation in those gigs. Sometimes a grieving relative rides along in the aircraft. <\/p>\n
Pilots who smoothly accomplish these operations should be granted degrees in applied psychology, with points deducted, of course, if they screw up the physical side of things and let the ashes get sucked back into the aircraft. I managed to avoid those demerits but some of my colleagues weren\u2019t so lucky. <\/p>\n
If you\u2019re wondering what happens to ashes that get blown around aircraft cockpits, well, they meet the same fate as ashes deposited on Disney properties: The staff vacuums them up. <\/p>\n
As a result, some souls are spending eternity trapped within the folds of HEPA filters. There\u2019s got to be some deep philosophical truth in this situation. <\/p>\n
I was once wandering through an old cemetery in England, and those guys know a thing or two about cemeteries. They\u2019ve got cemeteries dating back to the Middle Ages. As I looked at the old tombstones and tried to correlate their dates with various historical events, it was a reminder that we\u2019re all trapped in the times into which we are born. Whether we rue those times or celebrate them, we\u2019re still trapped in them. So, taking the pragmatically-hedonic approach here, I reckon that we might as well make the best of the ride.<\/p>\n
A character named Poindexter in a 1984 movie Revenge of the Nerds posed this question to a girl at a party: \u201cWould you rather live in the ascendancy of a civilization or during its decline?\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not a bad conversation-opener. After all, even if you can\u2019t pick your times you can sometimes pick your civilizations. Many great stories and books are based on such adventures. The Saipan Tribune readership doesn\u2019t lack for people who have left one civilization in favor of another.<\/p>\n
Anyway, now that I\u2019ve invoked the wisdom of Poindexter I\u2019ve played my best philosophical card. Having contemplated times and tombstones, Halloween and HEPA, we\u2019ve got a lot of deep thinking to do. <\/p>\n
In the meantime, while we\u2019re on this ashes-and-tombstones theme, I\u2019ll take a tangent. My Sept. 28 column, \u201cThus spoke Henry,\u201d featured some favorite quotes from Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was a prolific writer but his span of years wasn\u2019t all that long, given that he died at age 44.<\/p>\n
Other favorites also passed away before hitting ripe age: George Orwell, age 46; Edgar Allan Poe, age 40; Rod Serling (best known for the Twilight Zone TV series), age 50. <\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s John Kennedy Toole, who, apparently frustrated by his lack of success in the publishing realm, took his own life at age 31. After his death his mother found a manuscript that he had written. The manuscript, having been rejected by publishers during his lifetime, was steered into the right hands this time around. The book, A Confederacy of Dunces, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It\u2019s a richly creative novel and it deserves its accolades. <\/p>\n
Still, without the mother\u2019s efforts, the manuscript would have languished in obscurity. As for Mr. Toole himself, had he applied to the amusement-park industry instead of taking the literary route, he certainly would have found a more receptive civilization. After all, I\u2019ve never heard of ashes being smuggled into libraries. <\/p>\n
On that note, I wonder what Poindexter would say. He might not have the answer. But I\u2019ll bet he knows the question. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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