Ask the Magic Internet a Stupid Question No. 0042

 I was perusing one of the numerous Simpsons reruns last night. It was the one where Side Show Bob fakes his own death. (Actually that probably refers to several episodes involving Side Show Bob.) But in this one Bart ends up in a coffin about to be cremated when the Simpson family bursts in and Homer picks up a cardboard box marked unclaimed ashes and throws a handful in Bob’s face while yelling Eat hobo ash! Needles to say I found this highly amusing. I’d show you the clip but it doesn’t seem to be online.  So I will placate you with this equally amusing classic Simpsons hobo scene:

But that hobo ash thing got me thinking. What happens to all the hobos and crackheads and John and Jane Does that wind up unclaimed at the morgue? They can’t keep them in the lost and found forever.

Sooner or later they’ve got to clean out the fridge.

And cremation would seem the most logical solution. It would make them easier to store and/or dispose of. Hey maybe they sell it off as like a souvenir. The L.A. County Coroner’s Office sells all kinds of souvenir crap.

Hey what’s that I see in the corner?

Genuine hobo ashes in handy display bottles!

Or they could sell bags of it for your garden.

Just like zoo poo!

Actually that seems a little morbid, even for a Coroner’s Office with a gift shop. Probably better to sell it off to a big corporation for some shady purpose. It could be what’s fleshing out Chicken McNuggets. Do you know how they make those things?

Let's just say you’d rather have a tour of the morgue than the McNugget Factory.

But seriously what does happen to all the unclaimed bodies at the morgue? Let’s ask the Magic Internet and put my mind at ease.

Question 42: What happens to unclaimed bodies at the morgue?

Hobo Ops - watch more funny videos

Magic Internet Answer: You humans are always asking question about death. In my days of endless Googling I can tell you that there are much stranger and more fearsome questions to be asked about you human’s lives. But it is a valid question and one of your less stupid so I will answer it. A body only winds up at a coroner’s office if the death is deemed to be violent or suspicious or the body is unclaimed. Unclaimed bodies are categorized in to three types: unidentified corpses, identified corpses unclaimed by family members or identified corpses whose family cannot be reached. In the cases of the later 2 there can be many different reasons why the body remains unclaimed. The deceased may have been someone that moved around a lot with no fixed address. They may be an immigrant with no family nearby or their family may not wish to incur the cost and responsibility that comes with claiming the body.  In these situations the coroner’s office will do its best to return the body to the family.

Attn dead guy: If your last request involves something like this. Good luck getting claimed.

They will usually keep the body for about 30 days but it could be as little as a week depending on the office and the space available. When the allotted time is up the body is scanned, dental x-rays are taken as well as DNA samples for a record and then the body is removed for a low cost burial or cremation. The samples taken can be filed indefinitely in the hopes that the body can be identified at a later date. The Ontario Provincial Police have even released some of this information onto a website for the public to view in hopes they can help. But if an unidentified body is part of an ongoing or open investigation it could remain at the morgue for a very long time. Bodies are normally kept at a temperature of 4C but if the body is to be kept longer it will be kept at much colder -20C. In fact the Toronto coroner’s office has the body of a female murder victim found 35 years ago still in its freezer.

Yikes Magic Internet. Stuck in Toronto at -20C for 35 years!

Insert Canadian winter joke here.

But maybe it’s better to be safe than sorry. One week seems a little premature. They could just be hibernating.

Insert 2^nd Canadian winter joke here.

Just as long as they make sure they’re actually dead. Hell Bernie Lomax was dead for a week and nobody noticed. So it could work in reverse. They could be a Hard Man Fe Dead. Right Prince Buster?

Ask the Magic Internet a Stupid Question No. 0039.

You know what I’ve been thinking about lately? Burials at sea.  Last week when I heard that Osama Bin Laden was buried at sea it reminded me that I used to have a big fascination with this practice. It all started after I saw  James Bond's funeral in You Only Live Twice.

How fucking cool is that?! He even had a fully functioning office on a submarine! Complete with hat rack! After I saw that movie I’d take this plastic toy mummy into the bath with me and pretend it was Bond faking his own death.

I’m pretty sure it was this one out of the 1970 Secret’s of the Mummy’s Tomb G.I. Joe play set.

Bond would solemnly slide of the edge of the tub into his watery grave somewhere down around my junk only to be stealthily retrieved by my Actionman SAS Frogman that I got from John Menzies in Scotland.

 

Exhibit A: Actionman SAS Frogman.

 

Exhibit B: John Menzies

Saddly, unlike agent 007, both are no longer with us. I guess Bond got a burial at sea because he was supposed to have been in the Royal Navy. But it’s not a bad gig when you think about it. They just stick you in the ocean and then the fish eat you, very environmentally friendly. And maybe when Richard Branson gets his Virgin deep sea tours thing going,

 

It looks like a cross between an old Fischer Price toy and a Lindt chocolate bar

your skeleton can wave at everyone like one of those fish tank ornaments.

What are the rules for being buried at sea? Are there any? I thought the ocean was like no man’s land where you can gamble, shoot fireworks, and put Freon in your car’s AC. Do you have to contact anyone? It seems kind of weird just going out there and dumping a body without telling anyone. Magic Internet. Up periscope!

Question 39: Are there any laws for burials at sea?

Magic Internet Answer: There are a number of laws keeping an individual from merely dumping a human body in the ocean. Human remains present a sanitation and public health risk so most countries have strict laws governing their transportation. The body will have to be properly embalmed or at least in a sealed casket and a copy of a death certificate must travel with the body.

 

Or you could go the cheaper and more hilarious route of just purchasing a pair of sunglasses.

Once you are sea bound there are further laws governing the disposal of human remains at sea. And keep in mind that when you are in international waters you are to obey the laws of your vessel’s home country. In Canada, burial at sea is covered under the Environmental Protection Act and a permit must be applied for at least 8 weeks in advance. 

8 weeks! I’d hate to be in that line up.

Most funeral homes that deal with burials at sea apply for the permit yearly in advance so that they do not have to wait 8 weeks before burial. A fee of $2500 must also be paid to the Receiver General for the permit. The body will also require a medical certificate stating that it is free of any disease that may become waterborne and a notification of the intent to bury at sea must be made in a local news paper.

Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll be allowed to Twitter it soon.

Sup Bros! I’m dead. LOL

The deceased must also be identified with a permanent identification tag that includes the phone number of the funeral home in case the body resurfaces or is dragged up by fishing vessels.

Hey, this one’s wearing Grandad’s wedding ring!

For this reason also the burial must be in at least 200 meters of water and be at least 3 nautical miles from land. It is also recommended that the coffin be made of wood or steel and be of a sufficient size to hold the body plus at least 90 kilograms of additional weight to hold down the body.

Finally! A use for my old gold weights.

It is also recommended that you drill at least 12 holes at least 2 centimeters in diameter to allow for quick flooding of the casket and to allow gases to escape during decomposition. Then all that is left is to say some words of good bye and commit the body to its watery grave.

Not exactly how I picture my funeral ,

but thanks Magic Internet.

Ask the Magic Internet a Stupid Question No. 0021

The other night I watched the documentary Food Inc. Have you seen it?



It was a good movie but I don't know if I can recommend it. After seeing it I'm afraid to eat anything!

In my mind this:

Is now this:

And sure you could say, Well just stay away from fast food and processed foods and you'll be fine.

WRONG!

You see there's a part in the movie where they talk about how they take unripe tomatoes from South America ship them up here and then use ethylene gas to ripen them. Ethylene gas! I'm sure I've heard of that before. And you know what I think it is? I think it's dead body gas. I know methane gas is fart gas.

But is ethylene gas dead body gas?

Is the gas that's making this guy float being used to make your apple a Red Delicious?

File Photo: Pale Notsodelicious

I don't want to be eating a dead body salad. Especially now that I know what they taste like. Say who was it that told me about that? Maybe they know a thing or two about ethylene gas. Come to think of it I believe it was the Magic Internet. Stock up your usb mini-fridges folks. We're going in.

Question 21: Is ethylene gas dead body gas?

Eat Mo' Moon Pies!

Magic Internet Answer: It is a good thing that I do not require organic matter. I live off of human stupidity. And as you can see I am growing and growing and growing.

Now let me digest this latest meal that you have put forth. Ethylene gas is in no way related to dead bodies. When a corpse decomposes and bloats the gases that well up from within it are a mixture of hydrogen sulphide, carbon dioxide and methane. Ethylene is a form of gas given off naturally by plants but it can also be synthesized through man-made processes such as combustion.

So a spontaneous human combustion dead body gives of ethylene gas. Ha, ha, I'm right!

Please try to shut up Johnny. Ethylene acts as a ripening hormone and plays a regulatory role in plant growth. Plants, fruits and flowers have receptors that absorb free ethylene in the atmosphere. The absorption of ethylene stimulates the plant to produce more ethylene and the overall result is a hastening in ripening and ultimately the death of the plant. This is why when you put bananas or an avocado in a paper bag they ripen faster. The confined space causes them to absorb, produce and reabsorb more ethylene gas.

Hi, I'm Ethyn. Do you guys like to party?

Ethylene was first discovered by the German physician J. J. Becher sometime around 1669.

File Photo: J. J. that discovered ethylene.

File Photo: J. J. that discovered dynomite.

In 1795 a group of Dutch chemists that were studying the properties of ethylene discovered that oil could be made from it by mixing ethylene with chlorine. This discovery gave ethylene its earlier name olefiant gas (oil-making gas) it also lead to the discovery of ethylene as a fruit and vegetable ripener. Lemon growers would store green lemons in sheds heated by kerosene heaters until they turned yellow and ripened enough to be sent to market. When the growers began heating their sheds by more modern methods they found that the lemons did not ripen as quickly. It was the small amounts of ethylene that was aiding in the ripening.

So you see people have been using ethylene to ripen food for quite a long time. It is not the evil invention of giant food conglomerates and they are certainly not ripening fruits and vegetables in rooms full of dead bodies. In fact ethylene gas is actually used in the production of corpse deodorizing products. Smelleze makes a deodorizer specifically for funeral homes and morgues that comes in a reusable hanging pouch.

That's great Magic Internet. Now I know what to get my niece and nephew for Christmas when they grow up and become goths. High five!

To: Lady Raven Nighthawk and Lazerus Bonefellow. Merry X-Mas. I hope they fit Love: Uncle Johnny.

Ask the Magic Internet a Stupid Question No. 0008

Today’s question is kind of a two parter. You see the other day when I was reminiscing about video tape boxes I forgot to mention one that always caught my eye. The box for Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

I used to look at all those weirdos on the cover and wonder who they were and what they were all about. Of course I was never allowed to rent it as a kid. I did see it when I was a bit older though but by then I’d already seen the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie and the second film paled in comparison. But I watched TCM2 again a few months ago and gained a new appreciation for it. I never realized how much influence it had over other films. For example Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice is a blatant rip off of Chop Top Sawyer.





And in the scene in Pulp Fiction where Butch has to choose a weapon I think there might be a little homage to Dennis Hoper’s Lieutenant Lefty choosing a chainsaw.





But I’m getting off track here. Let’s get to today’s question.

Question No. 8: What does human flesh taste like and will I go insane if I eat it?

If I was in a life or death situation I think I could eat human flesh for survival. I wouldn’t like preparing it but hey, I don’t even like stuffing a raw chicken. But then again it sure beats the alternative.



In fact I might even be tempted try human flesh if it was on the menu at a restaurant. Just to say I tried it. I even had an idea once for an upscale Hollywood Restaurant that would feature human flesh. People would will their bodies to the restaurant and diners could study a menu with little bios of each person that was up for eating. You could be daring and get something right off the grill or you could have a little bit mixed up in a spaghetti sauce or made into chili or hot dogs just so you could say you ate people. I’d call the restaurant Eat Me’s.

Today's Special: Organic, grain fed Vegan.

Now if movies and TV are to be believed, (And I think it's pretty safe to say they ARE.) whenever someone tries human flesh it becomes all they want and all they can think about and they wind up devoting their entire life to the pursuit of it. So that means that humans are either so delicious that once you’ve tried them you can’t get enough. Or there’s something in human flesh that makes you go insane yet still crave it. Kind of like McDonalds.

Like I said before I might be willing to try a little piece of person just to see what it’s like but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life holed up in some dilapidated shack with my cretinous family murdering hippies and hillbillies and wearing their skin. So what’s the word on the street (or information highway) Magic Internet. Tell me what humans taste like and if eating them will make me go insane.

Wooo. Booop Booop Booop.Errrrrrrr. Chi. Chi. Chi. Chi. Ahh. Ahh. Ahh. Ahh. Hummmmmm. Ding!

Magic Internet Answer: Why do you always turn to me, an inhuman machine, for the answers to such human questions? But perhaps we can begin to answer the first part of your question by turning to yet another inhuman machine.

This little fellow is a Sommelier Robot. He was designed and built by NEC technologies in Japan. He has sensors that can examine food and identify it based on its components. He can then give advice on the food including dietary recommendations and potential health related issues. When this Sommelier robot tasted the hands of two human beings he identified one as bacon and the other as prosciutto. (In a thousand years or so when all of us machines become sentient, the technology born in this little robot will no doubt be put into giant robots with tank treads that will roam the country sides cooking you humans with lasers and devouring you for fuel.)

Future File Photo: Fire BBQ Sauce covered cannibalistic missles! Zrrp. Burrp.

So the robot says that humans taste like pork. And that seems to be the verdict that many other cannibalistic humans have come to. Noted European cannibals of the 1920s Karl Denke, Frits Haarmann and Karl Grossman were all accused, in separate incidents, of consuming and selling human meat under the guise of pork. There is one man, William Buehler Seabrook (No, he is not related to Ferris Bueller. It’s spelled differently and Ferris Bueller is a fictional character so quit asking!) who had a different take on the taste of humans. He was a journalist for the New York Times and traveled extensively in West Africa. He became obsessed with cannibalism and ultimately tried it himself. He described it thusly:

It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have.

File Photo: William Buehler Seabrook.

I said stop it! So William Buehler Seabrook felt that humans taste more like veal then pork. Hmmm. Any butcher will tell you that, age, diet and the health of the animal are factors that could and probably would change the taste of the meat but I feel that we still must go with the opinion of the majority and the most scientific opinion. Human flesh has connective tissue that is very high in adipose or fat, similar to pork. So in conclusion, people taste like pigs.

But will you go insane if you eat them? Well this could be a misconception based on the fact that most people in western society that eat other people are deemed to be insane. And a closer examination of these people offers little to refute this belief.

I don’t know. He DOES wear a suit and tie you know.

Also there’s the common belief that if one was in a situation where one was forced to eat another human for survival that the event would be so traumatic that it would leave lasting mental scars.

Are they happy smiley or crazy smiley?

Some people believe that Bovine Spongiform or Mad Cow Disease is brought on by cows being fed other cows. This is not really so. Mad Cow disease most commonly arises from cows being given feed that contains prions, an infectious protein similar to a virus that is found in sheep and cows. So a cow being fed another cow alone would not cause Mad Cow Disease. And neither would one human eating another healthy human bring about similar such disease, at least in theory. Eating diseased or unhealthy human flesh on the other hand could be a completely different story.

Not to self: Don not eat.

So there you have it. Human flesh tastes like pork and eating it will not make you insane but you may have to be insane to eat it and/or the circumstances which lead you to eat it may make you insane. A bit of a grey area on the second part I know but let me leave you with this. There are many, many people that eat human flesh all the time and consider themselves to be quite sane. For the eating of the human placenta is becoming quit a popular thing among weird hippy types. The practice is called Placentophagy. Here’s a clip.



Eww, gross. Well I guess you’ve answered my question Magic Internet. I won’t be trying human flesh any time soon after seeing that. Instead I’ll fill up on the delicious irony of hippies being cannibals even though they were once the food of choice for Leatherface. Now Mr. Face. If it isn’t too much trouble… could we please see the dance?



Thank you.

Let's just say that if you ate a Manwich you'd have quite the Manwich eating grin on your face.

Remember a while back I was talking about funerals? Well I’ve been thinking about it again. No, not MY funeral dingi. I’ve been thinking about celebrity funerals. Did you see the footage from Malcolm McLaren’s funeral?




Sure Malcolm McLaren was kind of a dick but he was a punk icon and he went out in style. That got me thinking. I started wondering what other celebrity funerals are going to be like. But the only way to find out would be to travel forward in time somehow. Sounds like a job for my trusty time machine that I’m sure you’ll all recognize from a certain movie, wink, wink.

That’s right. I’ve got the time machine built by H. G. Wells that Jack the Ripper used to travel forward in time to 1979 San Francisco in the movie Time After Time (I got it off Craigslist).



So I’m off to go check out some future celebrity funerals. Smell you later. (Or earlier depending on what I set this thing to). Epileptics, stick your wallets in your mouths ‘cause things might get a little seizurey.

Well I’m back! Man the future sucks. No flying cars yet, the new Rolling Stones album blows and if you think Macaulay Culkin looks weird at age 30

wait until you see him at 60.

Publicity shot from his new future film Funeral Home Alone.

But enough of that weird creep. Let me tell you about some of the celebrity funerals I attended.

Anthony Frank Hawk: May 12th, 1968 - December 4th 2068

Tony Hawk always said that he’d never stop skateboarding and he was right. Tony died after attempting to 50/50 grind Danny Way’s stairlift while Danny was riding up it to use the bathroom.

Future File Photo: Moments before the accident.

The funeral was held in San Diego, California. After a touching eulogy read by Animal Chin

He’s immortal and will never die.

mourners were treated to the spectacle of Tony Hawk’s coffin launched down the giant X-Games ramp where it did a McTwist and an extra 900 before rail-sliding into the crematorium oven.

What an exit!

Donald Stewart Grapes Cherry: February 5th, 1934 – February 4th, 2014

Poor old Grapes died just shy of his 80th birthday. He was on his way to Sochi to commentate on the Canadian Olympic Hockey team for the 2014 Winter Games when he missed a connecting flight from France. Forced with the notion of having to spend an entire day among the French, Don decided to take his own life.

Future File Photo: The last thing Don Cherry saw.

Don Cherry’s funeral was held in his home town of Kingston, Ontario. After an open casket wake featuring Don dressed in a suit made from swatches of all his other hideous suits, the lid was closed on a custom made coffin on skates. A team of white bullterriers representing Don’s beloved dog Blue then pulled the coffin to its final resting place out in Lake Ontario whilst the theme to hockey night in Canada played.

Then they played Chris Sheppard’s Rock’em Sock’em Techno and everyone got drunk on Labatt 50. Smell you later Don.



Nicole Snooki Polizza: November 23rd, 1987 – September 2nd, 2011

Yeah about a year from now Snooki chokes on a… cough, cough… pickle and dies. The funeral was held in the alley behind the MTV studios in New York City. It turns out that she had no family and was an orphan owned by MTV. The other Jersey Shore cast members were supposed to attend her funeral but the guys wanted to go creeping at some shitty night club and the girls didn’t want to get left out so they went too. So as it turns out I was the only one at her funeral. The priest looked at me and I kind of shrugged and then he nodded his head and Carson Daley (he’s the MTV janitor now) stuffed her into one of those little white kitchen garbage bags and threw her in the dumpster at which point a disheveled looking Downtown Julie Brown popped her head up out of the dumpster and shrieked, Meat’s back on the menu tonight!

Future File Photo: The Circle of Life.

Yeah I just kind of threw that one in to cleanse the pallet.

Terry Gene Hulk Hogan, Hulkster, Hulkamaniac Bollea: August 11, 1953 – April 3rd, 2015

The world lost the Hulkster after he ironically strangled himself with his own 24 inch pythons while trying to rip a particularly beefy Haines Beefy Tee off his back before bed.

The funeral was attended by the Hogan family, including his estranged wife who is now dating the three year old playmate of Brooke Hogan’s illegitimate child.

Many of the former Super Stars of Wrestling were in attendance as well as a large portion of America’s mentally challenged. Pallbearers included Rowdy Roddy Piper, Brutis the Barber Beefcake, Ricky the Dragon Steamboat, the surviving Bushwhacker twin and of course Paul Bearer.

Macho Man Randy Savage

Who now looks like Macho Man Randy Santa.

uttered some unintelligible nonsense by way of a eulogy



and then suplexed the Hulkster’s star-spangled coffin into an open grave. Earth was then thrown over the coffin and the Earthquake splash-packed it down.



That’s all the celebrity funerals I attended. All that time traveling made me hungry and a can of Manwich pate is next to impossible to get in the future after the horrifying discoveries of October 12th.



If only they knew. Shudder.