ALWAYS WEAR GLOVES

So I am kinda the defacto IT guy around the firm I work for. Pretty much means I am the one that is supposed to keep the "network" up and runnin. This entitlement also allows me to be the guy that sees most of the e-mail before anyone else and the one that sets the filters to keep the gawdamn spam at bay. Whilst being sick to death of the indidious spam one day, I hit a wall. I got one that just made me mad. So, instead of simply blocking and and filtering, I replied. The subsequent transmissions are posted below. I know, I know, you've read it all here before, but let's file this under "be careful who you might be offending, they could have something to teach you" file. Hello- I would like to personally invite you and your entire sales team to my latest seminar, Advanced Funeral Selling Skills: Understanding Buyer Behavior being held Tuesday, September 20, 2005, at Flanner & Buchanan’s world-famous Community Life Center in Indianapolis, Indiana. ...

Oh dear readers, thank you for being so patient with me. I do wish that I could update this silly manuscript with more punctuality, I really do, I promise, but that, alas, seems to be proving quite impossible. I sit here, dear readers, awaiting my colleague, so that we can ascertain the possibilities of a viewing of a man that went through his windshield. My colleague, who spoke with the man’s family yesterday, decided not to bring up some glaring details about these said, “possibilities”. Now, If it would have been me, after retaining said “family” upon the telephone I would have compassionately outlined in pure blunt truth about why it would be “difficult” to see their said loved one in his current condition. However, with some restorative measures and the simple yet magical act of the embalming ritual, viewing could not only have been possible, it would have been encouraged. My colleague, however, failed to outline some of these details and simply left it to calling the fam...

As if you have not figured out by this point, I am not a writer. I do not have a solid voice, nor do I retain the ability to keep up with a, whats that word I hear all the time that writers have, it’s not a habit, it’s a oh whatever, I don’t have it. A regimen? Maybe it is a habit. I have recently perused my prior rants thus far and have come to the conclusion that I have said plenty about certain topics. There will be no reason to further enlighten you upon my theories on the proper moral etiquette of the contemporary funeral director, (but I would imagine that based upon the very premise of this said, "blog" I will from time to time always come back to this general motive). I feel that it must branch out a bit though, there is no use in beating horses that are already dead. In fact, there are no reasons to beat horses at all! People ask me a lot about death. I know nothing of it. I only catch glimpses of the repercussions of it’s presence. I have never done i...

I have just decided that the keyboard/screen/chair configuration here at work is the most ergonomically debilitating system that has ever been conceived. I patiently await back-pain. So what’s new? I am into the fifth day of my seventeen-day run here. I am covering for a colleague that has chosen to better himself by attending a conference on pre-need sales. This conference should not hurt him in any way. It is the stuff of my personal nightmares but, as they say, to each his own. I have come to the conclusion that (and this does not really have anything to do with my colleagues sales predilections) I do not feel comfortable “earning” commissions on anything that I could “sell” as an undertaker. If I don’t actually do it, then it isn’t my money. I would imagine that I lose a lot of revenue for the company by sending the families directly to the monument company but darn it, if I am not cutting the stone and etching the dates and names into it, why should I get a sniff of that mo...

Now that I have this amazing power at home. I should really be able to post more, not that anyone reads this anyway. Let's talk about dysfunction shall we? Actually I don't want to talk about dysfunction. I would rather write about how sad I am about Dr. Hunter S. Thompson committing suicide this last weekend. He was my Hemingway and he went out just like him. I will miss the musings of this man. I really wonder what he had in the hopper about the current state of affairs. It' s probably what made him kill himself. "Sometimes A Great Notion" - Kesey, "Down The River" - Abbey, "Stranger In Strange Land"- Heinlein, all of these works have shaped me in ways that I can only vaguely understand. Thompson, I understand, he wrote from a place of balls-out blurred line reality that only the initiated can taste. When I went to see the film version of "fear and loathing", it made the hairs standup on the back of my neck, I knew that I could neve...

I find that because no one reads this thing that I have a hard time updating it. it has been so long. Lately, I have been pondering what I really do. Lately, I have decided that I am a middle man between you and what you are supposed to do when someone dies. You don't always know what to do and I don't always know what you need. Really, all I am is the guy that is willing to be bothered in the middle of the night, (besides the ones who are taking care of the loved one before they die) and the family with ( or not with ) the person that dies. I am the guy willing to undertake the responsibility of being bothered. Besides that fact, I am the only one legally allowed (at least in my state) to sell you a casket, cremate a body, sell you a pre-arranged/prefunded funeral. I also tend to keep up on the literature, read the books, and study the way people grieve. I am getting better at figuring out what you need. A few things that you need to understand: You could do this yourself if...