This morbid picture of abandoned cadavers in city morgue taken surreptitiously last December was the front page spread of the El Nacional of Venezuela on Friday the 13th. "Muertos sin dignidad", it says, die without dignity, and then the statistics for the first six months of this year: 2,177 homicidal deaths, 362 per month, 12 per day, and one every two hours. There may be worse records somewhere, so we're not shocked.
Even for people who do not believe in superstitions associated with Friday the 13th, the picture is loathsome. What more to others who dread the day and take extra precautions so as not to court the attention of the Grim Reaper?
An amusing counterpoint to the Venezuelan picture is this front pager of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the business(es) attendant to dying. It revolves around the death of 22-year old Chase Shaw, a Cardinals fan who died in a car accident last December, and "laid to rest in a Cardinals jersey and hat, and a Cardinals bat and ball inside of a Cardinals casket, which was placed inside a burial vault adorned with the Cardinals logo."
Later in the story we found out that the casket was bought for $3,500 from a Michigan-based company called Eternal Image, which began selling caskets with major league baseball themes two years ago. They also sell urns with major league logos for $799.
Would you believe that "the NCAA has allowed more than 200 colleges and universities to license their logo to casket manufacturers?"
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