Taking your toys with you

Unsurprisingly or surprisingly? (I don’t know which is worse in this case) many people want to be buried with their mobile devices, (MSNBC via Infocult)

It seems that everyone under 40 who dies takes their cell phone with them,” says Noelle Potvin, family service counselor for Hollywood Forever, a funeral home and cemetery in Hollywood, Calif. “It’s a trend with BlackBerrys, too. We even had one guy who was buried with his Game Boy.

So I would take my laptop if I could be sure that they had free wifi down under…

See dead people's books

LibraryThing is a fun site which allows users to put their libraries online which helps comparisons and recommendations based on users libraries. The new project launched by LibraryThing is really cool it puts online famous people’s libraries, the project is called I see dead people’s books.

Try it out and browse the libraries of Sylvia Plath, Mozart, W.H. Auden, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, John Adams or Thomas Jefferson. Lots of new old libraries are on the way – this is a cool idea I like this bibliophile voyeurism.

For more information about the group involved:

I See Dead People’s BooksDescription: A group for those interested and involved in entering the personal libraries of famous readers into LibraryThing as Legacy Libraries.
If you’d like to join a Legacy project already underway, please use the contact information listed below, or contact jbd1.
If you’d like to start a new Legacy project, visit the Cataloging Guide and learn how to get started. Also see the wiki page for more info.
Questions? Comments? Additions? Contact jbd1.
NB: This is an LT standing group, so there’s no need to join. Just jump right in and participate!

But is it art?

This is just plain silly. The Telegraph reports that a convict who may get the death penalty has agreed that if he is sentenced to death he will give his body to art. The body will be deep-freeze-dried and turned into fish food. Visitors to the exhibition will then be able to feed goldfish with the ex dead con.

The artist says:

“..it is not his story that is as important for me as the system that exists in a society such as America’s in such a vulgar and primitive way, the system, of killing people like this. I wanted to raise awareness of the fact there are people killed legally in our Western civilisation.”

Is it only me or does this all just feel like a publicity stunt to increase the ego, reputation and through this economic value of the artist?

photo Secret Life of Wanda by tomanthony (CC by-nc-nd)

but did anyone ask what the fish want?