When my maternal grandmother passed away, we had a wake after the service that was half family reunion, since a lot of the folks in attendance hadn't seen each other in years or decades. Lots of fondly-remembered stories and laughter. Unfortunately, our reverend took away the wrong impression of how relatively joyful the proceedings were, and his funeral service for my grandmother's sister a few months later was practically a stand-up comedy routine. Funny anecdotes might have been fine for a small gathering afterwards, but there were a lot of appalled people in that cemetery.

Huh. I just realized that we had a death in the family last week—an exceedingly elderly cousin of my grandmother's. I think I only met him once back when I was in school.

I was at a British estate some years ago, which has been converted into a conference/festival space in Devon, and was touring it in the off-season just to see what a British estate used to look like. We were wandering the gardens and turned a corner, and whoops! Under a pine tree was the old family plot. The oldest gravestones we could read were from 1745, but there were quite a few we couldn't read.

Do American churches do the get-buried-inside-the-church thing at all? I see it all over Europe (and really enjoy the dotty social history to be garnered when it's done in a small town), but I can't remember having seen it in the US. Did I just not notice, or is that Not Done in the US?

Oh no. Poor minister and poor beloved gathered who were appalled.

You just can't plan for life!

Dennis Miller did a speech at the Software Publisher's Association meeting in Montreal yonks ago. He joked about a particular award and was met by frosty silence.

Him: Hey, it's not like this is a memorial award.
Us: ...
Him: God! At least the guy didn't kill himself...
Us: ...
Him: Please tell me the guy's wife isn't here.
Her: ...

At that point, he looked like a balloon that had been harpooned. He slumped his shoulders, mumbled something about how nobody told him and wandered off the stage. I felt really bad for him. Of course, that was nearly 20 years ago...my feelings about him have changed.

I love cemeteries -- my family often goes for a walk in the fancy old one in Boston. When I was in the Bahamas, running away from the Tourist Attractions, I ran across an old colonial cemetery and it was really cool. The guy mowing the grass thought I was a little odd, though.

My grandmother had a viewing, which I thought was fairly horrific, but I wasn't close to her at all, so it wasn't personally upsetting.

My dad was cremated. We had a short service at the funeral home, played the Brandenburg Concertos, and I thought about punching the minister. But I didn't. My aunt & brother spoke, and probably someone else I've forgotten. After that I guess five of us went to the cemetary briefly, and then people came to our house to help eat the tons of food we'd accumulated.

If I could have skipped the whole thing, I would have. I understand the whole "it's for the survivors" thing in theory, but... for me, all of that was a series of hurdles I had to get over before I was finally allowed to be alone for a while, which was what I'd wanted the whole time.

I have to link to this article because it involves monkeys and pants...

Police: Men smuggled monkeys in pants; also leopard cubs, orchids, birds of paradise

The title makes it sound better than it really was.

Police: Men smuggled monkeys in pants; also leopard cubs, orchids, birds of paradise

But no hippos. Still and yet, hippo dignity is denied.

Weird. I was just reading about a probably-smuggled slow loris, except it was in Japan.

Speechless: [link]

Interview-ma? I'm lining up interviews thanks to some judicious re-writing of my resume, and it would be nice if someone wanted to employ me.

t dusts off her Ann Taylor