(Raleigh, North Carolina • AP)—Watch what you say around the dead in North Carolina, and don’t go hauling them around in a pickup truck. The state Senate has passed a bill regulating the for-profit transportation of bodies. It was prompted by a case of corpses transported in the back of an open pickup truck. The bill amends the law governing embalmers and funeral directors. It also prohibits using what’s called “profanity, indecent or obscene language in the presence of a dead human body.” The clean language clause was already in the law as a violation that could cause revocation of a funeral home license. The bill’s sponsor says the same language was included in the new regulations for transporting bodies out of respect for the dead and their loved ones.
The Associated Press wrote:
Oh, this is brilliant. Does it really need to be legislated? How will they enforce it? I don’t know about anybody else, but when I walk into a room with a corpse that I wasn’t expecting, my response is likely to be “Holy shit!” Upon closer examination, I’ll probably comment “Well, this guy’s fucked.”
Are family members exempt from this rule? How about people with Tourette’s?
And as to transportation: unless the Corpse Patrol rides along in the hearse, nobody’s gonna know what was said to the dear departed.
Argh.
I’m assuming they are going to have a special Corpse Cuss Control squad, cops who pretend to be corpses—then, when a mortuary attendent cusses around them, they leap up and go, “POLICE!”
At which, of course, the attendent clutches his heart, yells “JEEE-ZUS FUCKING KEE-RIST!” and drops dead.
But it’s OK to swear around the Living Dead, because they’re already cursed.
I can see the report now:
"In the news today, an undercover agent posing as a corpse was accidentally embalmed today. The officer, a lieutenant of the local ‘Corpse Patrol,’ was going undercover to break up a suspected cadaver-vulgarity ring operating out of Cuba.
However, disaster struck when the unwitting agent was embalmed by funeral director Earl Jones.
<cut to Jones>
‘Well, sure, I heard him screaming, but I just thought that it was in the voices in my head again. That, and the alcohol.’
The family of the policeman expressed extreme grief, but also relief that funeral arrangements have already been made for them."
Well, this is the state whose motto is: “Smokin is good fer ya.”
I suspect some of those folks don’t have too strong a grasp on reality.
such as Jesse Helms?
Does the law give an exemption to necrophiliacs? Sometimes you want to talk dirty to get your partner “in the mood”.
There was a story in the paper the other day about a funeral parlor (in Connecticut or on Long Island, I think) that was being investigated because they had six decomposed bodies in the garage. I guess that’s what happens if you piss off the funeral director by insisting on the budget plan.