Dragging the dead around?

The very concept of dragging a body around, for what ever purpose, seems like the sort of thing one might hear tale of in the dark ages. I saw an episode of Smoking Gun the other day in which two idiots in New York attempted to roll a dead body, in an office chair, down to a check cashing bodega where they wanted to cash the deceased’s Social Security check. Of course, the immigrant behind the counter at once suspected that something was afoul and called the law.

Today, Feathermaye shared a little short news item with me: where two women rolled a dead man down to Liverpool John Lennon Airport to catch a flight to Germany. Turns out it was cheaper than flying the guy home in a coffin! I was struck by the audacity of it all. Here were two similar stories, right out of the headlines, in which human’s tried to use the dead for some personal gain. What the hell is going on? I wondered…

At once, I was struck with a vivid memory of my first (and only) viewing of that classic comedy: A Weekend at Bernie’s in which two buddies spend a couple of days lugging around the dead owner of a very nice Long Island beach house, where a typical party ensues where drunks and stoners alike matriculate in and out for days on end. No one noticed that Bernie was actually dead. The buddies propped him up with a pair of sunglasses on his nose and he looked dead drunk, but the stupid smile that was frozen on Bernie’s face looked just about normal, to those who knew the man.

I laughed at a scene where they accidentally dragged Bernie behind a ski boat; the body flopped and spun back there, and people looking on cheered at Bernie’s incredible ski exhibition. My true amazement however, was a few years later when I noticed that they had actually made a Weekend at Bernie’s II. I have yet to purview this cinematic wonder, and seriously doubt I ever will, unless I end up stuck between to obnoxious people on a plane and that film, and a tight-fitting pair of earphones is the only escape.

But I digress…

The issue at hand is ‘respect for the dead’. What has taken place that we no longer value the remains of our departed friends? Sure, according to all we know, the dead are no longer aware of any of this foolishness, and by all accounts, limited as they are, they don’t care about it either. Still, to take a corpse anyplace, regardless of what one might gain by doing so, is rather morbid…isn’t it?

In both afore mentioned, strange-but-true tales, the dead victims were avenged by the long arm of the law. I guess I’m just waiting for the next tale, maybe one about a doctor who needs dead bodies with which he can… Sorry, Mary Shelly, for a moment I forgot you already tripped out and did that one.

Oh, bury me not, on the lone prairie…The old cowboy song pleads. Today, I guess you’d have to add: …and don’t drag me anywhere but the cemetery!