When planning funerals today, the cosmically awful Bette Midler rendition of Wind beneath my Wings is thankfully OUT - and funky groovy hip rad mad toonz with a hidden or sarcastic message are, like, IN:

It’s unlikely a mournful sombre mood could prevail through a funeral rendition of Ding Dong the Witch is Dead. But this was a last musical message played at a final farewell in South Australia and it is part of an increasing trend away from hymns towards popular, rock and novelty songs, a leading funeral provider says.

Other funeral ceremonies have been accompanied by the blaring rock tones of Another One Bites The Dust, Stairway to Heaven or even Highway to Hell.

Personally, I think I’d go for American Pie. It’s so long that it would drag the whole thing out painfully; it harks back to my mispent youth of country pubs and cover bands; and the lyrics would leave everyone scratching their heads about why the hell I chose it. All of these things would make me happy in the afterlife (if I actually believed in such a thing).

What would Grods-plodders go for?

Riding my bike to work this morning I scored the double whammy of bicyclist experiences: abuse and near death.

First I was riding up a suburban one-way street (the right way) and preparing to turn right where the road met another at a T-intersection. The dude in the car behind me leaned out the window and yelled, “Get out of the middle of the road, dickhead!” You see, my crime was that I’m apparently supposed to give way to vehicles behind me.

Then I was cruising down a major-ish road in the bike lane when a car turned left into a side street right in front of me without indicating. I was so busy screeching my tires and fighting to keep control of the bike that I didn’t have time to extend a middle finger and yell some combination of swear words at him.

Sometimes I just can’t shake the impression that people in cars hate my guts and want me dead. All I want to do is get to work.

Not only do they run away, but they get sick too. One day Napoleon looks a little lethargic and is off his food, and the next morning he looks like he’s about to slip away to the big scratching post in the sky.

So you take some time off work, borrow your friend’s car, take the cat to the vet, hold him still while the vet shoves a thermometer up his arse, inspect the holes in your t-shirt from the cat’s claws that appear while the thermometer was shoved up arse, hold him still while the vet gives him a needle in the back of his leg, inspect the holes in your skin from the cat’s claws that appear while the needle was inserted in his leg, hand over your credit card for it to be violated, and further torture cat for next eight days with pills shoved down his throat.

And what gratitude do you get from the little shit in return? None. Not even a thankyou.

Great story in the paper about a cat-of-death in the USA:

OSCAR the cat makes his grand entrances just as life is about to leave.

A hop onto the bed, a fastidious lick of the paws, then a snuggle beside a nursing home patient with little time left.

“He’s a cat with an uncanny instinct for death,” said David Dosa, assistant professor at the Brown University School of Medicine and a geriatric specialist. “He attends deaths. He’s pretty insistent on it.”

In the two years since Oscar was adopted into the dementia unit of the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre in Providence, he has maintained close vigil over the deaths of more than 25 patients, according to nursing staff, doctors who treat patients there and an essay written by Dr Dosa, published in yesterday’s New England Journal of Medicine.When death is near, Oscar nearly always appears at the last hour or so. Yet he shows no special interest in patients who are simply in poor shape or even patients who may be dying but who still have a few days.

I am the angel of death

(Do you like the way I surreptitiously managed to sneak in a Friday Napoleon post by disguising it as bizarre news commentary?)

UPDATE: I Can Has Cheezburger? has a lolcat take on the death cat story.