TV Show Seeks Terminally Ill Volunteer for Mummification 262
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by
samzenpus
from the wrap-it-up dept.
from the wrap-it-up dept.
Terminal illness got you down? Does your future seems bleak? Channel 4 and production company Fulcrum TV would like to brighten your day by making you the star of an upcoming documentary. They would like to offer you the chance to be mummified on TV and maybe even displayed in a museum afterward. An advertisement for the project reads: "We are currently keen to talk to some one who, faced with the knowledge of their own terminal illness and all that it entails, would nonetheless consider undergoing the process of an ancient Egyptian embalming."
Depends... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Depends... (Score:4, Informative)
I don't believe it - someone with mod points has never watched Futurama.
I thought that was a requirement before anyone could get a Slashdot ID?
Re:Depends... (Score:4, Funny)
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MILE
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Hell, these days most readers probably don't event know about 'X-Bender' (et al).
What with their Twilights and Miley Cyruses and whatnot...
Get off my lawn.
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And some of us watched Futurama a few times and didn't care much for it. Give me a Monty Python, Dr Who, Simpsons reference any time. Futurama? meh.
Please don't remind me of Katz.
Creepy (Score:2, Insightful)
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Pretty much the same as "Lets video tape a corpse decomposing in a grave"
Nothing but a sick, twisted idea here
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People have donated their bodies for medical research and education. Medical students dissect cadavers and I would bet that's been recorded and/or televised before. Is there something intrinsically creepier about using a cadaver to study mummification than human anatomy?
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No, but there's something creepy about it being a television show that wants the soon-to-be-deceased subject. I mean, it's not really that it won't be an interesting experiment, it's that it'll be done on TV.
I just hope the "TV show" isn't something like "Big Brother", where one of the contestants will now die on the show and be mummified and kept in the house. Though given "reality" TV shows in their current state, I wouldn't be terribly surprised.
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Because having you blood drained and replaced with embalming fluid and you body covered in makeup and posed like we do today commonly is perfectly rational.
Re:Creepy (Score:4, Interesting)
Because having you blood drained and replaced with embalming fluid and you body covered in makeup and posed like we do today commonly is perfectly rational.
It is rational. It gives people time to travel (sometimes long distances) to consol one another on the passing of a friend. The makeup, the embalming fluid, it's all there for the purposes of the viewing. The funeral is for the living.
Irrational is leaving a body to decompose and make the gathering uncomfortable for the sake of being the 'thoroughly modern nihilist' who doesn't follow those lame and old-fashioned traditions because they are soooo much cooler than that.
What the hell do you care? (Score:5, Insightful)
What the hell do you care? It's not like you're going to be lying there thinking, "Aw man, this really sucks!"
My family has approached me a few times about what I want to be done with my body when I die. My answer is always the same. I want what organs might be useful donated. After that, I really don't care. Bury me, cremate me, donate me to science, do whatever gives you what comfort and solace you need, because that's not me.
When my mom passed away, which is by far the single most gut-wrenching experience I've ever been through in my life, that thought was the only thing that got me through the funeral without totally falling apart. My mom was a lot more than just the collection of organic molecules that lay before me, and she's gone. I appreciate the body that lay before me; it was her "house" for 60 years and allowed me to see her, talk to her, interact with her, and love her. But the house was now empty. Sad, for sure, but it wasn't the loss of the house I was mourning.
So yeah, once I'm gone, you can pull my brains out through my nose and make gut soup for all I care. It was just my house, and I don't live there any more.
Re:What the hell do you care? (Score:4, Insightful)
After that, I really don't care. Bury me, cremate me, donate me to science, do whatever gives you what comfort and solace you need, because that's not me.
Assholes don't care. Here is an idea: Tell them what to do in writing same as you would communicate any wishes via a will with your possessions (whether a lot or a few). Otherwise, when you kick the bucket, your loved ones will be arguing over whether or not to spend $20,000 on a cemetary plot or leave you in dumpster behind Denny's. That corpse may not be "you", but it is your responsibility.
Don't forget to... (Score:3, Funny)
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Funny, mine is located lower still.. but hey - wasn't this an Asimov story ?
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No, but the Ancient Egyptians did think the brain was the "heart", responsible for emotions of "life" and the brain was just a mess of stuff they didn't fully understand the significance of. Some ancient Egyptian physicians knew there was something vital about the brain, in that if a clot appeared, they would drill the skull/etc, but they never fully understood it was the nerve center of life.
Sequel? (Score:5, Funny)
Terminally III?
Is that, like, the sequel to Terminally II?
Re:Sequel? (Score:5, Funny)
I prefer Terminally Ill: Revenge of Helvetica
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I prefer Terminally Ill: Revenge of Helvetica
Well, Helvetica does make me die a little on the inside each time I use it...
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I prefer Terminally Ill: Revenge of Helvetica
A lot of people get that one muddled up with Terminally IV: Arial Strikes Back, because they're quite similar apart from some minor details.
Personally, I found them both grotesque.
Is there anyone not terminal? (Score:2, Insightful)
We can never satisfacto
Re:Is there anyone not terminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is like saying that solar power isn't a renewable resource because eventually the Sun will die in 5+ billion years. It may be technically true but not meaningfully so.
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It's technically true that everyone will die sometime, but it isn't really meaningful in the context of making a film about it in the near future, which I presume the story is about (no, of course I didn't read it).
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True. But, there is a difference between dieing at the age of 25 vs 90. If possible, I would like to live as long as I potentially can. Life is too short as it is.
Re:Is there anyone not terminal? (Score:5, Funny)
You prevent deaths with condoms, birth control pills, and poor oral hygiene - by preventing the lives from starting.
Don't forget to add personality to that list of prophylactics!
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Correlation is not causation :)
Re:Is there anyone not terminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
We all "know we are going to die"
Well yeah, obviously, but that's completely different to being told "two months".
Well, what's your diagnosis then? (Score:5, Funny)
I am "faced with the knowledge of my own terminal illness"
I take it you've been diagnosed with the dreaded Alive, Well and Happy Syndrome, caused by a complex combination of healthy diet, regular exercise, a low to moderate alcohol consumption, a lack of tobacco or nicotine intake, frequent sexual intercourse and a supportive social network.
Fortunately, it's in decline among US youth; see the article published in pubdot at http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/01/12/1337235 [slashdot.org]
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Yeah, everybody has to die eventually. I'm the exception that proves the rule.
Re:Is there anyone not terminal? (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of the quotation:
"Life is a sexually transmitted disease with 100% mortality rate."
Re:Is there anyone not terminal? (Score:5, Informative)
"Life is a disease; sexually transmitted and invariably fatal"
- Neil Gaiman, Death: The High Cost of Living
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We can never satisfactorily "cure" cancer or any other disease. "Curing" a disease is defined as letting you live long enough to die from a different one.
I know several people who are extremely happy to have been given the chance to die of something other than cancer.
Numbers show that millions of lives have been saved by antibiotics, but have they?
Yes, they have. If without them you would have been dead in days or weeks, but with them you successfully fight off the disease and are no longer in any danger of
Re:Is there anyone not terminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
We all "know we are going to die".
Not really, no. I'm serious. One thing that humans are fascinatingly good at is ignoring this "knowledge". There's some brain research that shows evidence of our brains actually being wired up so that we avoid facing this, on very low-levels. In other words: It's not a conscious decision, not even an unconscious one. Runs a lot deeper than that.
So, it's only true for broad definitions of "know". Yes, the fact is recallable from memory. But your brain goes to great lengths to ignore it, and almost always when you actually do recall it, it has about the same emotional impact as last year's sports numbers. Actually, for sports fans, less than that. But it shouldn't. Ever wondered why that is? Now you know. For some definitions of "know". :-)
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The more I think about my own mortality the more I view Religion as a coping mechanism.
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I think there's a big difference between "knowing" that you're going to die and "understanding" that you're going to die. Every one of us knows that our time is ticking down and that we will, some day, die. Most of us have had no reason to really grapple with our own mortality, and as such, don't really "believe" that we're going to die.
I think this is part of the reason that funerals are so hard on so many people. They come that much closer to the understanding how fragile life is and to the fact that thei
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Your definition of "disease" seems to be restricted to biological dysfunction that is caused by a foreign vector such as a virus, bacterium or otherwise communicable pathogen so you may be surprised to learn that although cancer isn't normally a communicable disease, there is a type of cancer called Sticker's sarcoma in canines that is communicable. Lab rats are often injected with other individual's cancer cells which artificially induces cancer in the animal for research purposes. Cancers in their vario
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Human one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_papillomavirus [wikipedia.org]
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HTLV-1 causes leukemia in 3% of infections however, Sticker's sarcoma is a case of the cancer its self spreading from animal to animal not a foreign pathogen spreading from animal to animal and indirectly causing cancer like HPV and HTLV-1 do. Cancer cells themselves are pathogens to a degree, it is just that normally most cancers are the result of mutations in various body cells instead of an infection of any sort.
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Entropy will get us all in the end.
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Maybe for you :-)
why terminal? (Score:2)
are the producers that impatient?
Re:why terminal? (Score:4, Informative)
Duh. Preferably you die the moment after you signed the contract so they can start making the documentary. Do you think they want to wait another 40ish years or however long you plan to live?
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Depends on who shoots that documentary. Basically, MTV or BBC?
Re:why terminal? (Score:4, Insightful)
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planet earth took years and years to film. i'm not suggesting this will be anywhere near as good as planet earth, just that production companies have plenty of time on their hands. it's not like someone is going to scoop them.
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Why does the person need to be terminally ill? why can't it just be someone who agrees to be mummified following their death? are the producers that impatient?
Yes! Even if you've got some 100-year-old heroin addict, it could be years before they drop, and by then everyone involved will have lost interest and the body will either be buried boringly or go to, like, science or something stupid like that.
;-)
Re:why terminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they're looking to cash in on the morbid fascination of seeing a sexy, healthy-looking person who died of some non-obvious disease (such as certain cancers) get stripped down and cut to pieces.
It's much less can't-look-away horrifying if they're cutting up an 80-year-old. Who'll want to buy ads in THAT half-hour?
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Dear Potential Corpse (Score:5, Funny)
Hello,
Commiserations on the news of your imminent demise. At Channel 4, we believe that the most appropriate way of dealing with this sad news, and the undoubted grief of your nearest and dearest, is for you to submit your corpse to be messed about with on national television for public "infotainment". The documentary we are producing will take just as sensitive, informative, and considerate an approach as the famous documentaries "The Boy Whose Skin Falls Off", "The Woman Who Never Grew Up" and our other televised equivalents of old-time circus freak-shows.
We've set up a 24 hour hotline, just in case you really are that close to popping your cloggs, and look forward to working with your mortal remains soon!
best regards,
Channel 4 Public Relations.
I don't see what the big deal is (Score:3, Funny)
Being mummified on live TV isn't all that different from what kids are doing with Facebook these days, anyway.
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Ya know, braggin' rights and self promotion is kinda pointless when you're ... well, dead.
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OTOH it's quite an easy way to be remembered for a bit longer and by a somewhat larger group of people; even have encyclopedic records about oneself, for example.
That's the best any of us can hope for anyway, after death.
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What is next live executions? (Score:2)
What is next live executions?
any ways are there laws saying that assisted suicide can't be done in states in us or other areas.
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they aren't going to assist a suicide or murder anyone, they just want to sign on someone who will flop over dead very soon to meet T.V. season taping schedule. So if you just got diagnosed with lung cancer, forget it, they don't want you. If you were diagnosed with lung cancer 12-18 months ago and are breathing and fed from tubes, and have to hit the button on your morphine drip every 15 minutes to somewhat lessen the agony, then yes, by all means give them a holler.
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they aren't going to assist a suicide or murder anyone
Why not? Assisted suicide live on TV? Think of the ratings!
Re:What is next live executions? (Score:5, Funny)
Why not? Assisted suicide live on TV? Think of the ratings!
Why not turn it into a game show where you get to pick a vowel? We can call it "Hangman".
(I'm so going to hell for that)
After the game... (Score:2)
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Why so boring? This [wikipedia.org] is the way ahead.
Quick plot: You get a million if you survive for a week while some nutjobs try to kill you. Problem: The network fixes the game to make sure you can escape them for a week. Then they make sure they finally get you, saving a million.
Think of the ratings!
(and yes, I'm aware that Running Man has a similar plot. But this one was done earlier and it looks way more "realistic". Greed > liberty!)
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I remember a not so recent Dr. Who episode that revolved around "deadly" gameshows (that weren't so deadly... but I don't wanna spoil for those that didn't see it yet).
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they aren't going to assist a suicide or murder anyone
Why not? Assisted suicide live on TV? Think of the ratings!
Nah, reality shows like "cops" have that niche stiched up.
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A while back there's been a documentary about assisted suicide, they investigated where it was legal and not, non-profit organisations aiding people who wanted euthenasia.
It ended with following someone who decided to helped to die, he said bye to his girlfriend, and drank some suicidemix provided with the help of the non-profit.
After he drank this, he's lays down on his bed, his speech gets slower and after a
Terminator III for Mumification? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Terminator III for Mumification? (Score:5, Funny)
I died inside a little. Urrghh.
WAIT! Hold on! Lemme get my camera first!
Mummy! (Score:2, Funny)
I volunteer! I expect to return to terrorize the world in a few hundred years though.
Wait, what do you mean life doesn't count as a terminal illness ?
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Brutally said, it's because you don't die soon enough. Basically, the "terminally ill" part is in there because it would probably not be too good an idea to simply say "we make you a mummy TV star if you off yourself damn right now". Not so much because of the outrage, but rather because they only need ONE specimen and wouldn't know what to do with the surplus.
Be a good mummy, now... (Score:2)
Fox Network (Score:2, Funny)
... and all that it entrails (Score:2)
Anyone else read it as entrails?
...or do you want nana to meet Chuck Norris? (Score:2, Funny)
Again? (Score:2)
Are those guys back in business again?
Don't believe them folks, they say you will be preserved for all time and eventually resurrected so you sign up and pay them a fortune, then you get fucking ripped off by those stonemason bastards who are all part of some secret price-gouging club. You get the procedure, get settled in for 'eternity', then some asshat comes along after a couple of millennia, digs you up and uses you to power his steam train!
That's not right. I, for one won't get burned like that again.
All I can say is... (Score:5, Funny)
And in other news I am seeking terminally ill (Score:2)
volunteers who are willing to undergo the process of zombification so I can have an army of the undead to do my bidding. I'll bet that my reality show is going to be way cooler than Channel 4's pathetic "mummy" reality show.
Do I get my own pyramid, too? (Score:2)
No?
No deal, then.
Dr. Bob Brier did this in 1994 (Score:5, Informative)
I remember watching this done on a modern human over 10 years years ago on discovery networks... it was very cool.
from his wiki article:
"In 1994, Brier and a colleague, Ronald Wade, director of the State Anatomy Board of Maryland, claimed to be the first people in 2,000 years to mummify a human cadaver using ancient Egyptian techniques. This research earned Brier the affectionate nickname "Mr. Mummy" and was also the subject of the National Geographic television special of the same name."
Won't be hard to find somebody (Score:2)
A friend died of a stroke a couple years ago and donated herself to a med school. Said she always dreamed of being a skeleton in the corner at a med school.
Hee hee (Score:2)
Re:Not a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
It's for science!
No, it's for "science."
Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
So it's not just me that sees shows like Mythbusters as an intellectual version of Jackass.
I'm pretty sure that was their intent, so no, you're definitely not the only one.
Or, as Teller once put it when asked about their greatest achievement on "Bullshit":
"Our greatest achievement is presenting skepticism to people with the assistance of obscenity and naked breasts and genitals."
I'm sure Adam Savage would give a similar answer; just replace "obscenity and naked breasts and genitals" with "explosions and goofy antics".
Re:Good. (Score:5, Funny)
Trite as it seems to quote XKCD (#397 [xkcd.com]), it is appropriate as always: "Ideas are tested by experiment. That is the core of science. Everything else is bookkeeping."
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I'd prefer if they didn't replace the first with the second, but added them together.
MMmm.. Obscenity, naked breasts, genitalia, explosions, and goofy antics.
THAT would be a good show.
[Penn] "Today we're going to be blowing up this fucking thing, and to help us, is the Swedish bikini team, without their bikini's. Fuck this is cool."
[Teller] [nods acceptingly]
[Adam] "Wow, how did we land this gig."
[Jami
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So it's not just me that sees shows like Mythbusters as an intellectual version of Jackass.
Yes, except for the intellectual part.
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I take it you didn't watch their most excellent deconstruction of just about every "we didn't land on the moon" myths? Or the recent one where they achieved an 10% fuel efficiency increase by adding golf ball-like dimples to the body of a car?
Science isn't just theory, science is also getting out there, getting your hands dirty, and seeing what actually happens.
I used to agree with you, then I actually watched more of the show.
As usual, XKCD: http://xkcd.com/397/ [xkcd.com] At the time, I disagreed with this comic. No
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Ehhh... there's a certain amount of stuff that needs to be done to interest people in science. We have a culture where being smart is a bad thing. Little ways we can fight that is good... the MythBusters started out ok, until they started warning about the science content. Warning? WTF? There should be a "Now pay attention to this next bit!" tag, not a fucking warning.
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When is the last time the theories on preparing Egyptian bodies for mummification were tested? We've seen documentation of the procedure on pyramid walls and we've seen the mummies themselves, but how do we know that the proposed mix and administration of chemicals are correct?
Performing the procedure will tell us more about it. So what if it's also a gimmick for raising ad revenue?
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Nah before death. I mean the whole liquefying the brains while their alive, and watching it; is fun the whole family.
I hereby volunteer Bill Gates for this one (Score:3, Funny)
When you're making a TV show that needs a mummy army, just let me know
Season 2 (Score:3, Insightful)
Staring the most famous politicians of the world!
Then do a follow up season with dictator leaders, soap opera celebrities, ..
another volunteer? (Score:3, Funny)
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Actually these costs are really cheap for wealthy people, you would think that a lot more of these rich people who die of old age (lots of them around and many more rich baby boomers are in the pipeline.
That was the most frustrating thing I've tried to parse all year. Tell me son, have they already liquefied your brains?
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Call me old fashioned but i was thinking the exact same thing. Mummification? What's next, televised executions?
Then again, i'm sure someone has tried to do this in Texas.
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to television network greed ....
Capitalism blame fail: Channel 4 is a 'public service broadcaster', a non-profit UK government organisation. Think of an advertiser funded BBC and you're there.