Why is it that we still insist on wasting huge amounts of space in our cities and elsewhere to bury dead people? Valuable real estate that could at least be a park or a demolition derby track or a reservation for glue kids, at least until they're herded off to be cast into a pit. It's stupid, it's nostalgic, it doesn't make any fucking sense. What's the alternative? Make like normal people and burn your loved ones. Put them in a little urn on the mantlepiece where it can be easily knocked off whilst dusting, then inhale all the microscopic bits. But, no. Instead we get conned by the Death Industry with their pious pitches and talk of dignity. Why the fuck do you care if it's dignified? You're dead! You don't need a ten thousand buck suit and costly reconstructive surgery. Tell them to fuck off with their policies that extort money from you every month for thirty years just for them to reneg on the contract over a technicality when you die. Have them throw you naked into a hole so the worms can get at you quickly and you can give back to nature for once. It's only fair.

You don't need a funeral plan, you need a strong friend who can handle a spade or a ditch-digger. For too long we've been conned by religion, tradition and just plain stupidity — all this talk of the sanctity of the human body is a load of bullshit, it's just another way to get you to pay for something you don't want or need. The human body can be used for so many more useful purposes than stinking up a box underground. Take out all the good bits and sell the rest to the butcher, Delicatessen-style. In fact, dead people could become the new staple diet of Africa. I'm sure people wouldn't resent the AIDS epidemic so much if it put food on the table — it would be a catharsis to eat your deceased. I can picture the public service accouncement from government:

Kid: "Mom, what's for dinner?"
Mom: "We're having leftovers of your granny."
Kid: "Again? We had that for the last three weeks. When are we going to get some fresh food?"
Mom: "Well, your aunt Nonhlanhla isn't at all well. Hopefully she'll succumb soon."
Kid: "I hope so. I'm sick of granny."
Mom: "Besides, the shipment of AZT that was meant to save auntie's life has been sold to buy the MEC for Health a new Volvo. She'll never survive without it."
Kid: "Yay! We love you ANC!"
Voiceover: "Yes, the ANC is there for you. The African National Congress: sabotaging the health system for personal gain so you can eat better."

Rich people could pay substantial sums of money to eat dead celebrities. Who cares if you drive a Ferrari, I ate Pamela Anderson's spleen. Homeless people could sell themselves off piece by piece to earn income — hopefully you manage to put down a deposit on a flat before you're just a head on a stool. Ordinary people like you and me could list on the Meat Market and go public. People would be able to buy Futures in us, which is one way of saying I'm buying your feet now for when you die. In a country where entrepreneurship is keenly encouraged, but access to startup capital is hard to come by, why not let someone sell their legs? It's unconstitutional to prevent them.

But we all know where this nostalgia for putting dead things in expensive boxes comes from — the Church. Filling people's heads with nonsense such as The Afterlife, which I understand to be like a giant rave: if you were really good and pious in life, you get to go up to the VIP Room and have sex with the kind of blonde slag who gets herself fucked in a VIP Room. Meanwhile the heavenly bouncers make sure that the riff-raff — those who led less spiritual lives like Saddam Hussein, David Hasselhoff and all the retarded presenters from Simunye — are thrown down the stairs and paralysed for eternity. But the far more likely outcome of your death is fuckall. Nothing will happen, you'll just be dead. No celestial prizegiving, so you'll just have to give up on your life's dream of winning the Fyfe-Chumleigh Floating Trophy for Voluntary Abstinence.