I kept forgetting to name this post. Now that's it's name.

I have absolutely no clue what the crap I was all worked up about in that previous post. Okay, maybe I kind of have an idea, but pretty much, I needed to srsly ctfo. It's late. I should have printed out my paper a while ago, but I didn't. Really I'm going to actually go to sleep after I write this, but I felt I should share some gems from the 3-5 pg. paper I'm writing for Magic, Science, and Religion that ended up being eight or so pages. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have selected the question on DEATH.  Actually, before I even started I made sure my teacher was okay with me using a lot of the same resources I cited in my previous paper for Medical Anthropology. She was like, "you should cite your own paper!" So I did. Several times. In this paper I cite me, Wil Wheaton, Christopher Lee, George Romero, and a dude from 1881. 
Anyway, here are a few bits that I am deeply amused by.


(No, this is not the actual title. )

Paper 2: BRAIAIAIIIIIIINNNNNNNSSSSSSSS

(I got this quote from my new osteology field guide by Bill Bass. I'm very excited to own a textbook by him. Very excited. Who is Bill Bass, you ask? GO LOOK HIM UP. HE IS ONE MY HEROS.)

“…At either end of the line bereavement by death tears the heart and mortuary customs are symbols of mourning. The mystery which broods over the abbey where lie bones of king and bishop, gathers over the ossuary where lie the bones of chief and shaman; for the same longing to solve the mysteries of life and death, the same yearning for a future life, the same awe of powers more than human, exist alike in the mind of the savage and the sage.” (Powell, 1881)


"Nowadays elaborately padded “comfortable” coffins are the norm, and one can buy crypts “with a view” (Harris 2007), as if purchasing condos for a relative. "

I included a chunk of my previous paper which I may have shared before because it contains the best footnotes EVER. Here are the footnotes:

"[1] He was actually kicked out of New York University’s medical school but occasionally practiced medicine and went by “Doctor” for the rest of his life. Iserson (2001) cites the reason for his expulsion as “his cavalier way of leaving corpses in inappropriate places,” while Mitford (1998) notes that “he was forever carelessly leaving [cadavers] around in inappropriate places.” The repeated use of the word “inappropriate” begs the question of what constitutes an “appropriate” place to mislay a spare corpse.

2Lincoln actually began to decompose during the trip, and required extensive makeup for public display."

Bad Pun #1)
"Ghosts serve as a medium between the terrifying reality of death and our desire to ignore it."


This is a poorly written sentence. I am not going to change it though.
"The classic desired food is brains, which is interesting when viewed in the context of the Haitian zombi whose soul/will (what we might call “the brain” of a human) has been stolen and may only return to normal life if that soul is retrieved. "


"In “The Day After,” (Wheaton 2010), Wheaton eloquently parses this trope into a few simple lines of dialogue..."


Bad Pun #2)
Though this mental separation makes sense within fictional worlds as a matter of survival (it’s easier to kill a “zombie” than a “human”), it can also be viewed as a reflection of creator and consumer’s uneasiness when confronted with this potent symbol of death “in the flesh”.  


The real meat of the paper, so to speak. BAHAHAHAHAHA! These questions came to me one night and I shared them with the twitters. ....Then I used them in my paper for class.

When a zombie is fully killed (past the point of resurrection), does it go back to being a dead human? Given infinite time and security (i.e. no danger of infection/ravening hordes descending/etc.) would characters bury the bodies of zombies the same way they would bury the bodies of slain human companions? How does one distinguish the bodies of dead humans from those of dead zombies?  Philosophical questions about zombies may seem silly, but they highlight the inconsistencies inherent in our insistence on separating ourselves from the walking dead. 

Last one:

"Instead forcing us to confront that the mystical realm of death and the terrifying reality of putrescence are one and the same, vampires allow us to imagine that we might acknowledge the inescapable reality of death whilst remaining perpetually sexy."


Be Seeing You.