From the Houston Chronicle | May 8, 2008 | BRIAN ROGERS

Two men and a juvenile are accused of digging up a corpse, decapitating the body and using the head to smoke marijuana, according to court documents.

Matthew Gonzalez and Kevin Jones have been charged with the misdemeanor offense of abuse of a corpse, said Scott Durfee, a spokesman for the Harris County District Attorneys Office.

According to documents filed in the case, Gonzalez, Jones and an unnamed juvenile on March 15 went to an Humble cemetery, dug up a man's grave, left with the head and turned it into a "bong."

Gonzalez told authorities about the incident Wednesday, and showed officers the defaced grave, including a 4-foot hole. Because of a heavy rain, officers were unable to determine whether the casket or the body had been disturbed.

Anyway, the New Yorker cartoon depicts two men sitting several stools apart in a bar. One of the men wears a conservative business suit and a no-nonsense expression. The other is shabbily dressed, unshaven, and looks as if he makes a habit of lingering too long at the tap: in other words, your typical writer. In the caption, the businessman is saying to the sad-sack scribe, "I doubt that a children's book about beer would sell."

Now, most readers would simply chuckle or smile at this little joke, turn the page and forget about it. Not I, I'm afraid. For better or for worse, I took it as a challenge.

Dear David:

I am writing to you.  A useless activity; you are dead.  I can't say I took enough interest in you when you were alive.  I'm like a woman filled with remorse at a discarded lovers grave.

I discovered your death online.  A notice for a memorial service.  How can that be?  Memorial services are for dead people.  I'd been traveling for two weeks in Eastern Europe.  I hadn't read the papers nor seen a television broadcast.  Had I not seen that notice by chance I may not have known for weeks, maybe months.  

You hung yourself.

How can that be possible?  I wonder it over and over.  I have become mildly obsessed by this wonder.  How can it be possible?  From this distance, one of a generation and of gender it seems barely comprehensible.  He was so successful, a brilliant star in the night sky...

I have an acquaintance, a friend from my art school days, she blew you once, in a closet somewhere--she nattered on and on about your penis--she was a kiss and tell kind of girl (she wore black lipstick for heavens sake)--you must have seen that coming.  I think that was the first I'd heard of you; then Infinite Jest was published. 

I first read Ian Campbell’s photo as “Letterers are effete A-holes,” which was kind of astonishing. I couldn’t see how anyone could have anything against “letterers,” those nice letter-painters who make signs such as “Curb Your Dog,” and used to, when they started, illuminate the first letters in incunabulae. Perhaps, I thought, the word was meant to be “littérateurs,” French for litterati, which is Italian for snobs. In that case, yes, I have seen cases of effetism. Not lately, though.

A NEW DEVIL’S DICTIONARY

Celebrating Ambrose Bierce’s centennary, the Corpse is inviting readers to submit entries for our new Devil’s Dictionary. The one below is an example, by the Editor.


DERIVATIVE: an example of something that should have never happened: turning the verb “to derive” into a noun: it took 100 years for the verb “to derive” to turn into the adjective “derivative,” and another 50 years for the adjective to aquire a negative connotation, as in “his work is derivative,” and only a few months to redefine that noun as a “financial instrument,” and then less than ten seconds for that instrument to become the proctological tool that every American now calls painful. This is the price of letting bankers use words instead of numbers. People, take back your language, and use those butt-plugs we’ve been selling here at the Corpse offices.

Dear Corpse,

Getting a lot of hits on my website referred by Exquisite Corpse.  A very nice thing to see happening.  The show in Chelsea upcoming has a piece from a suite of ten images called Re unificaitons - shot in Berlin at the Olympic Stadium and the cemetery at Weißensee.  Sneak preview below.

My best to you.
Susan
http://www.susansilas.com/