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News & ArtsWednesday, October 28, 2009
Money We All Fall Down
Posted by Charles Mudede on Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 3:51 PM
HuffPo reports:
The world's largest retailer wants to keep its customers even after they die.The surprise for me is that Costco already sells discount caskets and Wal-Mart is playing catch-up.Wal-Mart has started selling caskets on its Web site at prices that undercut many funeral homes, long the major seller of caskets.
The move follows a similar one by discount rival Costco, which also sells caskets on its site.
Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark., quietly put up about 15 caskets and dozens of urns on its Web site last week.
Prices range from $999 for models like "Dad Remembered" and "Mom Remembered" steel caskets to the mid-level $1,699 "Executive Privilege."
And now for a line from one of the greatest poems of the 19th century, The Communist Manifesto:
All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.
3
I thought it was funny the one time I walked into a Costco in the Bay Area and right there in the front next to the entrance was a gigantic coffin display. I haven't seen that at any of the other Costcos I've been to. Considering how much effort they put into regional marketing, maybe it was an older or more death-prone part of California?
4
The best caskets are the Hello Kitty ones.
They had coffins at the first Costco, as I recall.
In the end, you're better off renting a box and having it returned minus a basic body bag, if you're going to bury a body. Or store them upright and save the land.
They had coffins at the first Costco, as I recall.
In the end, you're better off renting a box and having it returned minus a basic body bag, if you're going to bury a body. Or store them upright and save the land.
6
Did this..
"All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind."
inspire this...
"
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."
?
"All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind."
inspire this...
"
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."
?
7
Buying a casket through a funeral home is a rip-off. I'm glad that Costco and Walmart offer an alternative.
My parents want simple pine boxes. My grandmother was cremated and her ashes were mailed to the house in a small cardboard box. My father, being the sentimental mid-westerner that he is, buried her in that same box. He could have wrap it up in some wrapping paper at least! As for me, cremation and then placed inside a pretty box and set on the mantle.
My parents want simple pine boxes. My grandmother was cremated and her ashes were mailed to the house in a small cardboard box. My father, being the sentimental mid-westerner that he is, buried her in that same box. He could have wrap it up in some wrapping paper at least! As for me, cremation and then placed inside a pretty box and set on the mantle.
8
"Regal Wide Body Steel Casket
4" wider than standard sizes"
Walmart sells a casket for fat people. I'm trying to be mortified but it makes so much sense for so many reasons. Frankly I'm kind of surprised that it's just the one designed for fatties.
4" wider than standard sizes"
Walmart sells a casket for fat people. I'm trying to be mortified but it makes so much sense for so many reasons. Frankly I'm kind of surprised that it's just the one designed for fatties.
10
I want to be liquefied, except for my eyeballs, and put inside a crystal ball. Then give me to some gypsy or fortune-teller or something.
11
I want to be liquefied, except for my eyeballs, and put inside a crystal ball. Then give me to some gypsy or fortune-teller or something.
13
I don't want to be cremated because I wish to retain the option to rise and feast on the flesh of the living when the zombie apocolypse is upon us.
14
Personally, I've always wanted to be preserved in hot sand in a desert somewhere. When it comes to corpse disposal, no one ever thinks about becoming an archaeological curiosity.
17
I want a Dollar Tree funeral.
Funeral Director: “What other funerary services may we provide for the predeceased?”
Homer: “Oh, the whole deal. Coffin, tombstone, anti-stink spray.”
Director: Sir, we prefer the term casket to coffin and monument to tombstone. We have all the leading brands of anti-stink spray. Country Mourn, Mrs. Rotwell's, Stank-Off.
Funeral Director: “What other funerary services may we provide for the predeceased?”
Homer: “Oh, the whole deal. Coffin, tombstone, anti-stink spray.”
Director: Sir, we prefer the term casket to coffin and monument to tombstone. We have all the leading brands of anti-stink spray. Country Mourn, Mrs. Rotwell's, Stank-Off.
20
The funeral business has always been manipulative and shady. I'm glad that caskets are being sold w/o all the BS associated with the "funeral home experience."
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