April 26, 2006

Vidstone. The personalised memorial stone featuring a video slide show (with sound) of the loved one's most precious moments. W. T. F.
  • I remember an episode of Max Headroom with something like that. Creepy. Of course, I find the gravestones with photographs creepy, too, so maybe it's just a hangup of mine.
  • I want the Leeroy Jenkins video on mine.
  • Fear of oblivion is a horrible thing.
  • Who said that?! arf!
  • That's why we have the personal valium known as religion
  • Vidstone: because other people want your life to flash before their eyes.
  • maybe I am still just a silly goth girl deep down inside, but i find this idea aesthetically displeasing. cemetaries should be quiet (and non-animated) places IMHO. I wouldnt want to be buried beneath a tv...
  • Two things... 1. I met Max Headroom 2. After the death of someone very close to me, I discovered that grief takes many forms. I volunteered on the Citizen Advisory Board of the local small town cemetery, we frequently dealt with what was allowed/not allowed in terms of monuments, displays, etc. People need what they need, they put what is right for them on the graves of the people they love. If it is a video, so be it.
  • I always wanted to have an entire jukebox with my favorite albums programmed in as my headstone. I also want my headstone to bear the legend, "What the Fuck Are You Looking At?" or else, "You're Next!"
  • HuronBob - you are so right. Expressing your grief is a personal thing - and it's different for everyone. While it may seem a novelty to us - perhaps for someone who has passed away and who loved taking videos it's a good thing.
  • Well, sure. Just beacuse it's creepy to me doesn't mean nobody should do it! I remember back when a good friend of our family died, the cemetary would only allow flat markers so that they could mow the whole place without having to trim around stones.
  • I can't wait for smell-o-vision
  • Funny, this reminded me of the gravestones in the movie Serenity. Then I saw that it was called the Serenity Panel. It looks like just a coincidence, though. As for being buried under a TV, there's some weirdness to it, but it seems the next logical step from flowers, then photos. Plus, it's really for the living, as HuronBob and gomichild said. I don't think I would want clouds on my video, though. That's just going too far.
  • It'll last five years before it breaks, then in another five years vandals will knock over the stone and steal the batteries, then digging down to your grave to swipe fillings, and in fifty they'll be bulldozing the last shreds of your corpse to make room for the next generation of "perpetual care" recipients anyway. RIP, indeed.
  • No one ever asks to be buried with a working cell phone...? TV = pfft. Think, people!
  • Will Jenna Jameson be getting a vidstone? 'Cause that would be rad.
  • The best part: they stick the cell phone in the box, and for DAYS after, every time someone who attended the funeral's phone starts ringing... Monkey's paw! Bwa!
  • yeah, but what happens when the video goes into reruns? FRESH CONTENT, that's what it's all about....
  • and H-B, how does one meet Max Headroom? Are you an avatar yourself? 2D? or did you meet Matt Frewer?
  • i want one of those granite slabs that covers the whole plot engraved with arthur murray dance steps for the 'jitterbug'. 'cause if you're gonna dance on my grave, goddammit, you're doing it right.
  • Best post of 11683!
  • You know those videos that circulate on the internet where it's a simple game or a pastoral scene at first, but then all of a sudden some guy in a Hallowe'en mask jumps out at you and screams and tries to make you pee yourself? I want one of those on my headstone. It'd be all clouds and Mozart and shit, and then...
  • "and H-B, how does one meet Max Headroom? Are you an avatar yourself? 2D? or did you meet Matt Frewer" ahh..ok, it was Matt Frewer...but he looked just like Max Headroom!
  • Monkeyfilter: It'd be all clouds and Mozart and shit
  • MonkeyFilter: Fear of oblivion is a horrible thing. MonkeyFilter: Just because it's creepy to me doesn't mean nobody should do it! MonkeyFilter: They'll be bulldozing the last shreds of your corpse to make room for the next generation MonkeyFilter: FRESH CONTENT, that's what it's all about.... MonkeyFilter: If you're gonna dance on my grave, goddammit, you're doing it right. ahhhh, that felt good
  • I'd like to be executed by firing squad, accidentally; then a mix up at the morgue - oops! Meanwhile, my body is being used for medical experiments in a community college in Nebraska and my hand goes missing. It turns up in Egypt, with only three fingers, being sold by a man who claims that the monkey's paw can grant el emptor three wishes. The guy takes it home (turns out it's my dear ol' da') and wishes for a bazillion ducats and, much later, that I come back to life (forgetting completely why he sent me to the firing squad). I come back and now I'm handless. All of this (from the moment of execution) is made into a reality TV show called "John Doe Millionaire" which airs for about ten copacabillion seasons. The running manifest will include the tear-jerking 200th season in which I hunt down my body on a trek into darkest America, the sweeps week in which bleeding heart celebrities offer themselves for hand transplant surgeries, and the heartwarming two-hour season finale in which we are reunited with ourselves. The weird thing is that one of us is still missing a hand. Then I die of hand deficiency. Then I get put onto that memorial wall where the names of others who have suffered the same fate as I are scribed and the video of my un-life runs ad nauseum, much like it did during its passage.
  • I think you could get Palmolive as a sponsor.
  • IC- Simpsons did it.
  • How come every time I think of something clever, The Simpsons already did it?
  • There was an odd movie that almost got no promotion and distribution (odd, as Robin Williams was the star) called The Final Cut; basically the idea was of a service for funeral wakes where a video with the deceased memories', taken from their brain, were played back in an uplifting collage. Of course, there was some editing done... A quirky film, full of Gibsonian touches and with a terrible ending but worth checking out for those interested in what happens at the end of the line. Yes, people have the most disparate reactions to a loved one's death. Ah, TUM; I have almost all MH episodes on Beta tapes. You bring a working Betamax, I'll bring the tapes and some chips, it'll be fun!
  • sexyrobot, I like your style.
  • Will Jenna Jameson be getting a vidstone? 'Cause that would be rad.
    When Jenna Jameson dies, thats when I stop masturbating. Until I can get to the vidstone at least. Will there be a queue? It takes longer with people watching. As for content, I'll have a time-lapse camera installed, continually rerunning the sequence of my decay from burial to the current moment, it'll be boring to start with, but the content will just get better.
  • hey underpants, you're soaking in it right now...
  • Ah, how could I miss this one? Monkeyfilter: I met Max Headroom
  • I want a lighted coffin with a webcam inside so that the in-headstone monitor displays live decomposition video, and a coin slot on the side so kids can make a wish.
  • i think it's kind of a neat idea... much more humanizing and interesting than just a boring rock with your name on it, at least.
  • Enh, let's just all go to The Body Farm.
  • Fes - do the cell phone folks have a special rate for "perpetual care?"
  • At least you'd know you'd never be roaming.
  • Only foolish peoples do not believe in zombies, TUMmy.
  • Vampires don't care to bite zombies -- they say zombies are too spoiled. When vampires find nothing else to eat but a zombie rotting to bits in the street the vampire often goes home to his coffin, for a lengthy lie-down on his native soil.