With all due respect

[altivo]

(or something like that)

If you've ever seen the 1997 Dreamworks film Mouse Hunt, with that hilarious opening that takes place at a funeral, and things go downhill, or rather down the sewer, from there

Comments

[atomicat]

Well that was less graphic than I expected but maybe it was for them non-rural types. Interestingly enough I just got "Mouse Hunt" on videotape last time I was in town, hilarious! Personally I hope my own funeral is a comedy of errors and misadventures, a last good laugh for my friends.

[altivo]

I thought the bit about string cheese at the end was rather too much, but the coffin sliding down the steps and the corpse flipping head down into the New York sewer system was as funny as it was absurd.

[atomicat]

I think my favorite scene was the one with the mousetraps. I've always loved Rube Goldberg apparatus (and gags).

[altivo]

The mousetraps were brilliant. Especially when the mouse used them to catch the ferocious cat...

When the film was first released, I was particularly taken with the scenes from the mouse-eye view. There are a lot of them, and I'd like to see how they made them back then.

We watched it again last night because I thought of it after Shaun's burial. What struck us this time was all the similarities to Disney's Ratatouille. It's like they stole whole concepts from the earlier film. The cockroach incident. The business of the mouse advising the chef at the end...

[quickcasey]

Go out with a bang, Shaun.

[altivo]

Probably we'd get cited for something if he did.

[cozycabbage]

Is it against the Geneva Convention to bury ram-mines?

[altivo]

It is against county health regulations to bury "livestock". This is mostly unenforced unless there is a complaint.

You're supposed to have carcasses removed by a scavenger service. (Many county regulations here seem to be written to create business income for various interests.) However, none of the services will take sheep. They take cows and horses for outrageous prices. Small animals like chickens, of course, just get buried anyway or tossed in the regular trash unnoticed. They won't take sheep because they are afraid of scrapie, the sheep disease that is related to mad cow disease.

[hgryphon]

Good reading after a full meal. ;)

Sorry to hear it was his time. You have my condolences.

[altivo]

As long as the meal wasn't mutton.

[schnee]

Mmm, very interesting (if somber). I never knew that this kind of composting would be possible, although when you think about it, it's probably not entirely dissimilar to what happens.

The idea of an explosion there made me chuckle, too, admittedly, although I hope it won't actually happen. o.o

[altivo]

I imagine humans would dissolve pretty easily too under the right conditions. Oddly enough, those who commit crimes of murder seem inclined to do unproductive things like wrapping the evidence in plastic before burying it.

[schnee]

Yes, I imagine they would; there's no real, fundamental difference between the body of a sheep and the body of a human, after all (from a pure biochemical point of view).

Hmm, and that's an interesting point, yes; I really rather wonder why people do that now.

[soanos]

Oh, my... *hugs* Poor Shaun. I hope the compost heap won't start flying off...
He is probably chuckling into his beard at the comedy from the greener pastures. :>

[altivo]

I'm sure you'll see the news here first if it actually happens. You have to look at these things with some sense of humor or it just gets utterly depressing. Fortunately my grandmother was an old fashioned farmer and I sort of learned that viewpoint from her.