In the wake

The big week for celebrity deaths has flushed a few of my latent ideas on related subjects to the surface. To the best of my recollection, these are some of the utterances that were heard in my home as I learned of the passing of McMahon, Mays, Fawcett, Jackson, and others.

1. Michael Jackson's golden casket.
What a waste of money! Once lowered into the ground no one is going to see it, even Jackson, himself. If his estate gets low on funds, can they exhume the body and swap it out for something more affordable like a Tupperware coffin ? People waste too much money of funerals. Personally, if someone bitches about the low quality of my casket, that's their problem. My survivors will appreciate the extra inheritance.

2. Billy Mays
He was a fixture on my most punchable list. When he was on the Pitchmen show, I began to realize that he was just a guy trying to make a living and the grating demeanor was his shtick. I already miss the fellow. Sorry, pal.

3. Why are we mourning people we don't know?
The past week, many people lost mothers, fathers, wives, children, and close friends. Spending more time making things to place on a celeb's memorial than you do honoring your own is fundamentally wrong.

4. The news coverage of Jackson was deplorable.
I felt sorry for his close family (Except for that sleaze ball father of his) to have to endure the public spectacle. ...and it continues.

5. I do not believe that
what happens to your container (body) after you die is of any importance. It can be disposed of any safe manner with no consequence in any possible afterlife. If it comes to pass that you get more life and your body back at some point, some physicists agree that matter and energy can be reconstructed to a previous state. Being eaten by a shark or preserved in Lenin's tomb, or vaporized in an atomic blast makes no difference.

6. Al Sharpton
I thought the hyperbole of Michael Jackson's super powers got a little out of hand when he was credited with somehow advancing civil rights and racial harmony in the country and around the world. This is total bullshit! His performances had wide appeal, but he didn't get into vigorously pushing for the social and political changes that have made life today a bit better than the days of old. This is not a knock on MJ. He was a flat-out great entertainer and made many people happy for a number of years. That's what he did. The remoras like Al Sharpton sicken me with their self serving and demonstrative accolades. The man will not champion a cause that advances all of humanity. Instead he lurked in the shadows waiting for an opportunity to exploit a popular Black man to pimp his narrow political agenda.