I shouldn't be surprised, but...

It never ceases to amaze me the utterly bizarre things people do. Here's a news of the weird from my own home state, Kentucky:

Pair arrested for sex-slave contract...

Personally, I wonder that the notary didn't think it a mite odd--I mean, you don't see that every day, especially in the Bible belt. The woman was also filing business papers for a psychic hotline business, yet didn't foresee all this fuss. Hmm... Lowers your confidence a bit, doesn't it? Although I guess she got some publicity, although I'm not sure it would be worth it.

It's bad enough that many people, if you mention that you're from Kentucky, automatically assume you're a hick; we're often provincial in terms of dealing with change, certainly. It's often commented that Kentucky's motto is: "Well, at least we're not Mississippi" because for years that state's ranking was all that kept us from being at the bottom in education, etc. The truth is that we've got a lot of good and bad points, just like anywhere else.

Sigh.

Well, at least the weird quality of that story is not on the scale of the Georgia crematorium story. What a nightmare, especially for the families who were deceived. I just can't imagine the justifications that had be in play for this to have happened, or how it could have gone on for so long without anyone realising--and I have a personal understanding of how you can get trapped in justifications, or seem fine and smiling when you really feel like you're crumbling apart under enemy fire. I spent years in the "everything's normal, no one must know" mentality, and even I can't understand this one. Makes me think I'm a lot saner than I sometimes think. The Georgia state government has set up an information page for people dealing with the aftermath.

The creepy thing, too, is that while the son has been arrested, he may have been upholding a warped family tradition. Some of the bodies, they say, may be 15 years old. But he only took over the business a few years ago, and would have been a teenager at that time. (He's 28.) Ugh.

I've always meant to be cremated. My religious tradition holds that the quicker the body breaks down, the quicker the spirit can be reborn. I'd prefer an actual funeral pyre, with appropriate ritual and the remains scattered or buried in a belly-handled amphora (because I'm female) with grave goods, like the ancient Greeks did--or, alternatively, to be placed on a boat and set afire/adrift. (Again, an ancient custom, but one that's been in my mind ever since high school English where we read about Percy Shelley's funeral, whose heart refused to burn, and was fished out by Lord Byron to be brought back to England. Have I mentioned I'm a hopeless romantic?) Somehow, if I die here in the States, I don't think that's going to be possible. But I'm definitely thinking that there needs to be a clause in my will that says the cremation is to be overseen by my executor, in person.