Fred, I think we have an eater

Good christ, but this is depressing.

Many families are unaware their relatives will need a special coffin until a funeral director measures the body and informs them. Some then face difficult choices. Grace Moredock of Evanston, Ill., said that in 1999, when her mother died weighing 340 pounds, the family could not afford an oversize coffin and opted for cremation. "Because of our faith and our religious belief we would have preferred to have buried her," she said. Ms. Moredock herself weighs 400 pounds and she said the experience had affected her own funeral plans. "I'd prefer to be buried," she said. "But I wouldn't say to my family, `You have to bury me,' because I wouldn't want them to be in a bind if they couldn't afford it."

When my friend Bill died a few weeks ago (yes, sadly, he died the day after I saw him, September 1, and it was tragic and terrible and I chose not to mention it here because I can't quite parse it yet) it cost $4500 to have him cremated. All of us, including Mary, his girlfriend, were shocked at how expensive it was, and in hindsight we wondered if the funeral parlor had somehow pulled a bait-and-switch. But what are you going to do when you get handed a bill and you know it's either pay it or not get your loved one's cremains?

Fuck. All the more reason to donate my body to science. Gut me for organs (leave the liver, if you know what's good for you), skin me and make chaps, render my tallow, put my brain in a jar and send it to Pinkie Masters' , hide my eyeballs in my mother's handbag.