Dave T’s Pros And Cons Of Stuff Everyone Has: Deaths
I know you think that your pet goldfish, Bronson Pinchot as Balki, went down the toilet into a wonderful world where all fish who’ve grown too big for their bowls swim together in magic fluorescent pipes that connect the entire world.
He didn’t.
He had a DEATH.
Don’t know what it is?
Death is the end of life. It’s both the act of dying and the state of being dead after that. Scientists and theologians have tried for centuries to determine the exact moment of death; they’ve all sucked at it.
According to several sources I’m too lazy to cite, around 55 million people die every year. Holy smokes!
If you believe in an afterlife, then death is probably a happy event that takes you into a more peaceful world. Unless you were a professional baby stabber, in which case you’d probably be tormented in the afterlife—tormented by giant babies who laugh and drool on you whilst stabbing you with vinegar-dipped butter knives.
If you don’t believe in an afterlife, then death is just the cheapest way the earth could think of to make new fertilizer. (Your earth seems to have forgotten about how much horses poop every day.)
Pros:
• Death can make an artist’s work worth a lot of money, which can make her heirs all kinds of rich. Death also makes critics and readers take a fresh, often more somber, look at an artist’s work, sometimes giving the artist fame she never had in life (which can be ironic if the artist offed herself because of her obscurity).
• Some people’s deaths are hilarious. Maybe not to the people close to them, but to the people who didn’t know them and just find it funny to hear about a dude dying in an attempt to prove to his friends that a rabid coyote would make a perfectly good pet.
• Some people suck and it’s great to not have to see them anymore once they're dead.
• Without death, we would have a hard time properly punishing murderers. We’d have to torture them, or make them live the rest of their lives in fart chambers™ (rooms in prisons where the farts from all the other inmates and the guards are piped in through vents).
• Without death, life would get very boring. You’d have no impetus to do something now, knowing you have forever to get it done. Newspapers would print on a when-we-get-around-to-it schedule.
• Without death, the world would be crazily overpopulated. Our lives would become one constant will-you-scooch-over-a-little-please, and we’d have to shoot people into space to make room. And those shot-into-space people would float forever in black nothing without dying.
• Horror movies would be lame if no one died at the end; the monster or maniac would just go around jumping out at people, hurting them a little, and then moving on. Action movies would also be lame. And there would be no murder mysteries, which are my favorite kinds of movies. Romantic comedies would stay the same since they are already lame.
• Thanks to death, you have a chance of getting reincarnated as a gorgeous lipstick lesbian. Or going to heaven.
• Deaths keep funeral directors, embalmers, coroners, morticians, gravediggers, and grave robbers in business.
Total Pros: 9
Cons:
• Some people are super-rad and it sucks to see them go when they die (I still miss you, Jim Varney). And tons of people die too young.
• Deaths often hurt a lot. And that’s a sucky way to spend your final moments.
• Sometimes dying makes a crappy artist seem all deep; people find layers in the work that just aren’t there.
• If there were no deaths, wars would finally be decided the way they were always meant to be: thumb-wrestling tournaments.
• Thanks to death, you have a chance at being reincarnated as a dung beetle. Or going to hell.
• Dead things smell awful.
• You miss lots of fun parties and interesting lectures when you’re dead.
• When you die, people have a chance to root through your things and find out all the secrets you've spent your life hiding. That’s why the storage unit full of women’s clothes that I rent is leased to Phake Pursen, and all the videos I’ve made of me doing the Cha-Cha Slide dressed as a pretty lady are labeled Not Me.
Total Cons: 8
So, 9 pros, 8 cons, death lives on. Sorry, Tuck Everlasting.
Without death, Arthur Miller would’ve written an awful play called A Salesman Retires and Builds Many Ships in Bottles.
‘Til next time, Ciao!
Dave T
Dave Terruso is half of the sketch comedy duo Animosity Pierre.