• Some want their ashes to be shot into space, while others . . .  This, by Bonnie Jarvis of London reporting from the Design Museum, via Treehugger:  “The birdfeeders [by Nadine Jarvis] are made from solid castings of bird food and beeswax. They are moulded with the ashes from the crematorium encased inside. Hung in a tree, birds either eat and naturally ‘purge’ the ash or they peck through the edible exterior and thus the ash is released over a period of time. The perch bears the name of the deceased. She has also created a series of pencils made from the carbon produced during the cremation. A lifetime supply of pencils can be made from one body of ash and each pencil has the name and date of the deceased on it.”

  • Weirder than that is an exhibit of corpses in Seattle, previewed by the Stranger‘s Amy Kate Horn.  “Ask yourself: If I were invited to observe the autopsy of a stranger, would I go? If the answer is no, you might want to stop reading here, and you should probably skip ‘Bodies.'”

  • Weirdest is from Discover magazine’s “20 Things You Didn’t Know About . . . Death.” Number 12 stopped me cold, in more ways than one: “In Madagascar, families dig up the bones of dead relatives and parade them around the village in a ceremony called famadihana. The remains are then wrapped in a new shroud and reburied. The old shroud is given to a newly married, childless couple to cover the connubial bed.” Good luck with that.