Down Under

(Welcome Stubbornfacts readers!)

Mobile/cell phone use is so ubiquitous in the Western world, and many areas besides, that I'd bet you a fair amount of us couldn't LIVE without our handy Handy (as Germans call it).

In fact, a study conducted recently confirms my suspicions, by claiming that overall, 45% of us responded no, are you crazy, we couldn't live without our mobiles!, 'ssamatter you.

(It depends where you are from though, with an astounding 87% of Saudi Arabians polled saying cell phones are vital to their existences, whereas 65% of Romanians thought the same, and a mere 52% of Canadians agreed. Must be the mooseburgers and the snow)



I know for sure that I'm addicted to having my cell phone around, at any moment, though I blame my parents for that -- unlike many people who got cellphones a mere decade ago, since they're physicians, they've been "connected" whether by cellphone or bleeper, going on over 30 years now.

Having a dinner where some technological gadget DIDN'T go off, was the rarity, not the norm in my family, and we won't even speak of nighttime...

Still, I mean, just ten years ago, people could actually go through a date or dinner without needing to have that life-affirming apparatus in their pockets or purses. But now?

"The idea of being out of touch, even just for a 90-minute movie, is enough to induce anxiety" says Lisa Merlo, a psychologist at the University of Florida.

Even on mount Kilimanjaro, you can text message now, (presumably "Made it, didnt die of hypothermia, I luv u!!"), which of course is the best by-product of cell phone usage.

Not for nothing are Blackberries known as "crackberries" for their addictive natures.

But NOTHING prepared me for this story, of people pondering what to take with them, to the afterlife, a choice I thought had more or less gone out of fashion after Cleopatra got it on her asp.

As fellow blogger Patricio Lopez wrote, in a recent study 1 in 5 Britons want to have a mobile inside their coffins, when they die...

...just like the Vikings of old who were cremated with their horns, swords and shields inside a ship-pyre.

Oh my God, people, seriously?

Not just their cell phones, though, you'll be happy to know. Amongst the various tschoki designated for co-burial, are:

1. Wedding ring/other jewelry (39%)
2. Photographs of loved ones (24%)
3. Mobile phones (17%)
4. Favourite clothing or shoes (7%)
5. Teddy bear(3%)
6. Other (10%)

Photographs, clothes, and jewelry, I can relate to. And if your childhood teddy survived after 70 odd years, it should be ready for the rubbish heap, never mind a pine coffin.

But mobile phones are just too macabre for words.

Who the heck are you going to call?

I mean air time minutes are already a bitch, without adding roaming charges from heaven, or Purgatory (presumably your phone will have disintegrated in Hell if you were too naughty a person).

And speaking of disintegration...

Why do I think that this fad, if indeed it is that, would resonate most with people who are all New-Agey, with their crystals, their energy bracelets and Julia "Butterfly" Hill causes?

Fear not!

If you're concerned that your cellphone will contribute to the ozone layer depletion, or the ice caps melting, or baby seals being cudgeled to death, by its very unbiodegradability, scientists are way ahead of you.

Britain's Warwick University, [have] developed a partly biodegradable mobile phone implanted with sunflower seeds.

The idea is that when the phone's no longer wanted, it can be buried in the garden, where it will slowly decompose — and bloom.

Wow, just wow.

We might have to alter the funeral rites.

Dust to dust
Ashes to ashes
Nokia to Nokia...

Two stories do come to mind, about this topic, though:

Remember the Heaven's Gate cult, whose members all died with their cell phones, passports, and pristine Nike sneakers near them, since they thought they would need this after hopping a ride on the Hale-Bopp comet?



Please. It gave new meaning to fellow ET-phrase, "phone home".

And of course, there were several famous people who decided to be buried with ropes, or pulleys, or something inside their coffins, which they could then notify others in case they had somehow been buried alive.

Edgar Allen Poe, Hans Christian Andersen, and if memory serves, Charles Darwin all suffered from perhaps this ultimate phobia.

Maybe I'm being too harsh, though. It's not just yesteryear that we had these concerns.

"Voice From The Grave is Ireland's Latest Fad," headlined a report from Dublin in The Independent. [...] Others, he said, "may be terrified they'll wake up in the coffin, so they take along a mobile to ring for help to get them out."

Now, the land of the leprechaun and the pixie-dust might be considered a bit fey to begin with, but it sounds a reasonable enough excuse, I suppose.

But this, I draw the line on.

A cellphone-shaped GRAVE (and is that a solar panel on the phone, I see?? Christ on a bike).



Yes.

This is mausoleum kitsch even King Tut would have been embarrassed about.

What makes this new-fangled, post-modern phenomenon even more cringe-worthy, is that you know, YOU JUST KNOW, that people today won't just stop with their freaking cellphones, inside or outside their coffins.

Oh, no.

So, one day, when you're reading about the latest fad to hit the mortuaries, remember, you saw it here first.



Bank on it.