I have a similar thought when watching some Monty Python sketches, which use death humorously: the Upperclass Twit of the Year Competition, and Fresh Fruit.
Graham Chapman died first in both, and the other Pythons (minus Terry Gilliam) die thereafter.
I just have to wonder if they’re going to die in order (for either sketch) and if they do, what it might say about the world.
On a reunion special (Just the Pythons sitting around and talking, no skits. Still a lot of fun and very informtaive) the Pythons reveal that they had performed the Dead Parrot sketch at Chapman’s funeral, with alterations to make it the Dead Graham Chapman sketch. Cleese said “It was in very bad taste. But, Graham loved bad taste.”
Photos from the 19th Century: Sometimes I’ll see a woman who’s quite attractive. The first thing that hits me is that she’s dead. The second thing is that personal hygene wasn’t what it is today. (I know that some people think Americans are too concerned about bathing, and maybe it’s true; but I like being clean every day.) People might bathe once a week or less. So this attractive woman might have some stank on her! Not only that, but they didn’t have nice rolls of toilet paper back then. The Sears & Roebuck catalogue isn’t what I’d call a good substitute. Ever wonder where the phrase “rough as a cob”* comes from? Some people used corn cobs. :eek: I’m sorry, but I’m a little anal about my anal hygene. We do not do hash marks.
So when I see a very old photograph of a nice looking woman, I think that she probably doesn’t smell very good and that cunnilingus would be out of the question. And that she got old and is dead.
[sub]*Incidentally, I think Rufus A. Cobb would be a good user name.[/sub]
I used to feel the twinge of mortality while looking at an old family album. The very last photograph in it was taken in 1904: my grandfather as a newborn baby, in his grandmother’s arms. Looking at that photograph in the days before my grandfather died it was odd to think of that little baby as the only thread of life between that time and mine. Since he died and the thread was broken, the album is less affecting.
Recently I saw something I hadn’t known existed: my maternal grandparents’ wedding “video” (would’ve been called a “home movie,” maybe?) taken in November 1937. Everyone in it is dead now, but four of them were known to me (both my grandparents and one sibling of each) and I’d heard stories about most of the rest. The movie quality–ever so slightly herky-jerky, and of course with old cars and brick streets and fur coats and such–was something I’d never seen outside of, well, the movies. To connect such a lost time with people I remember–and resemble–was a strange feeling indeed.
I have a slightly different take on the tie to the past. Believe it or not, my grandfather (born 1860) as a 10 year old could have known a person of 80 who was 10 years old when Thomas Jefferson was elected President.