I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you’re going to die. Not today, maybe not for years down the line, but eventually, you’ll cross the street one second too soon or lose a wrestling match with a stingray. During the brief time we have waiting for that day to come, we manage to divert our attentions occasionally, but that nagging thought that we could bite it at any time keeps us focused on our mortality enough to find some entertainment or humor in it. So if living your life is getting dull, but you’re not about to expedite your checkout, you can at least goth it up like the rest of us and obsess a little.
Bury the Jerk
Breakups are big deals. They mark the closure of an era, the death of a part of one’s life, and sometimes a bloody, beaten end to a relationship. This parallel was not lost on the creators of Bury the Jerk, a “relationship closure and recovery” program that sells kits and materials needed for hosting a “relationship funeral.” Cheaper than therapy and opening the door for macabre food and drink themes, it beats the Lorena Bobbitt method of achieving closure. But I suppose that depends on the ex.
Felted wool animal skulls
Casper. The Nightmare Before Christmas. Octogenarian Mickey Rooney. Few things are more endearing than when creepy things get cute. While softening the gruesome is usually a late-October affair, artist Stephanie Metz has combined the soft, fuzzy, woolly goodness of stuffed animals with skeletons, deformed animals and the ever-popular teddy bear fetus in a jar. The result? Some cuddly felted wool animal skulls. Because we all have a little bundle-of-weirdo joy in our lives who would appreciate a headless cow or a legless Chihuahua doll, right?
Eternity
I don’t know about you, but one of the things I’m going to miss most when I kick it is the simple earthly delights like deep-dish pizza and Chipotle burritos the size of my maggot-filled face. Many cultures before us appreciated this; the Egyptians were entombed with their favorite foods so their afterlife selves could chow down for all eternity. Whether your beliefs don’t jive with that or you can’t invest the time or energy in pyramid construction between homework and club meetings, you can get a taste of afterlife cuisine at a new restaurant in Ukraine, created by undertakers, filled with coffins, wreaths, black sheathing and menu fare like “Let’s meet in paradise.” The building itself is currently in debate for being the world’s largest coffin, and I hear the dessert menu is to die for.
Ghost site in Bartlett, Ill.
For a more local, and probably even cooler encounter with the afterlife, take a road trip with some friends out to an Illinois landmark and necessary pre-adulthood pilgrimage: Munger Road. As the story goes, a young boy was allegedly stuck on the Bartlett, Ill. railroad tracks at a really inopportune time, and his ghost still mills about the area today, hoping to prevent anyone from meeting the same fate. So being the annoying, young adults that we are, people have begun parking on the tracks late at night, which, according to the story, incites the ghost kid to push your car out of the way of danger. Many go so far as to put baby powder on their bumpers, claiming that little handprints will appear all over the back of the car. Feeling adventurous or looking for an excuse to get the hell out of Evanston? Check this one out and let me know how it goes.