That came out great, and I very much agree. "They make no mention of the beauty of decay."

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North American habitual embalming is a bit of a weirdness, anyway. Lots of other peoples mostly don't bother. It was popularized here by, of all things, the US Civil War. With so many corpses being shipped home to be buried, sometimes through the war zone, travel times and distances could be long and, especially in summer, really detrimental to the preservation of the corpse. In order that the families receiving their dead could bury something that at least nominally resembled their dear boy, embalming became routine.

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I've been meaning to check out the legality of "feed me to the fishies"

I've recently gotten it stuck in my head that I dont want to waste the food and wondering if it'd be legal to request to be fed to the bears or not.

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Yes -- and beautiful image. Architectural rant: architects who don't think about the fact that buildings exist in the natural world, subject to weathering processes from day one. So much high-end stuff gets built that looks sleek and computery on day one, and but rots gracelessly into disposability in a few years' time. Part of the world is its gradual dissolution; or at least the slow long symphonic dialogue with the wind and the rain. Not necessarily a battle -- the processes can be beautiful -- but ignoring them means your work is doomed. Rant over!

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