Just glancing over this “WORLD EXCLUSIVE” this morning:
Apparently, while the brain was removed for forensic tests, ”the examination cannot begin until at least two weeks after the death when the brain has hardened sufficiently to slice it open.”
(The family) faced the grim choice of waiting up to three weeks for Jackson’s brain to be returned to them or go ahead and bury him without it – which they have decided to do.
“It’s up to the family. They can bury him and then bury the brain later on,” said Dr Cyril Wecht, a former coroner and one of America’s foremost forensic pathologists.
The article ended this way:
Jackson starred as the Scarecrow in The Wiz, the 1978 musical version of The Wizard of Oz – playing the character without a brain opposite Diana Ross as Dorothy.
WT? …uh, I appreciate witty observations as much as anyone, but… geeez.
Clearly he’s not the only one a cranium short! . . .
I think this one is a heart short ;)
Burial ritual is so symbolic anyway (like all ritual) that I’ve always thought one should take great care with it, to be sure it’s expressing and reflecting what you intend. You can think about alternatives and plan it all out but then you too will experience it at the lizard-brained level in the moment, true even for us highly evolved brains. So you have to be a master of Story in advance, use your um, brain!
Interesting point. I wonder how much thought was spent pondering the casual suggestion, “(they can just) bury the brain later on.” Will they bury the brain beside the body? In an adjacent plot? At a different site? Should fans plan to “visit” Michael Jackson at his body burial site or his brain burial site?… My lizard brain needs to know :)
Or dig up the rest of his mortal remains to reinstall it in its fitting station? [shudder]
I have the memorial service running in the background (omg, he wasn’t a HEAD of STATE, not that even they get this level of tribute?!!) and a poised brunette (Brooke Shields maybe?) said in a eulogy that he “saw everything with his heart” rather than his eyes. So what if it had been his heart (or eyes, which competing symbology considers “windows to the soul”?)
You have to think all this through, write the story as if you were JKRowling instead of Sarah Palin.
My own Head of state crack got me remembering the first public, televised funeral ritual I ever saw — JFK’s. Jackie Kennedy was said to have planned out all the symbolism to the nth degree, and it sure had the desired effect on me, even as a little kid.
But this is getting (oh dear, sorry to day) pretty tacky.
:)
Apparently, I can’t resist the temptation to laugh afterall. That is very funny! [rofl - sigh]
I am deliberately not watching the news today. It’s all just too creepy.
Nance
I’m w/you, Nance. I only caught a glance this morning (at a dr. appt.). They were broadcasting the car (w/his body) on the freeway – which struck me as so reminicient of the infamous OJ freeway chase. I didn’t watch long enough to see if people were gawking from overpasses as they did w/OJ…