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Jill

Liar - Thief - Cheat - Selfish - Unsharing - Unloving - Unkind - Disloyal - Dishonorable - Unfaithful

Mark Frauenfelder at 3:19 pm Mon, Apr 30, 2012

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201204301518I hope Bernard wasn't upset by the addendum to his grave marker.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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  • Antinous / Moderator

    Given that he died at 88, it’s hard to imagine who would have had both the desire and the gumption to make this addition.  Also, the weeds look a bit blurry where they overlap the stone.

    • Donald Petersen

      Aw, spoilsport!  I was hoping lots of people would be making frantic calls to their plot brokers to check their Post-Interment Editorial, Addenda, & Errata Policy!

    • http://twitter.com/OversteerNZ Oversteer

      Seems like someone did – here’s an earlier pic: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=52513068&PIpi=28530201

  • sam1148

    That would make a fine addition to the Haunted Mansion. 

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

    If they REALLY didn’t like this guy they’d have sculpted a little urinal into the slab. 

    • awjt

      How apropos.  I thought the addenda were referring to Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy.

      • Antinous / Moderator

        That was my first thought, too.

  • Brainspore

    *sniff sniff*

    “Does anyone else smell urine?”

  • http://twitter.com/sconklin sconklin

    Here’s our local odd headstone.

    http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=10860996

    • 10xor01

      Interesting story, thanks for posting.  This one lacks commentary, but is also notable:

      http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Head&GSfn=Dick&GSbyrel=all&GSdyrel=all&GSob=n&GRid=19768734&df=all&

  • bazzargh

    One of the differences with WikiCemetery is that there’s no BLP policy. But still, every grave needs a {cite}.

  • Aram Jahn

    I stand in solidarity with the rotting stiff corpse of BH Hopkins. Myself, being of unsound mind and a still a lying, thieving, cheating, selfish, unsharing, unloving, unkind, disloyal, dishonorable and unfaithful (isn’t that covered by “disloyal”?), yes I voted Republican every time and YES I’m glad I joined the Neptune Society.

    Back to you guys in the booth.

    • LunarMovements

      “(isn’t that covered by “disloyal”?)”

      No. You can be “disloyal” to friends, cohorts, and country while keeping your pants on. It’s generally understood that when someone is accused of being “unfaithful” that the betrayal is of a romantic partner with whom you vowed to be sexually monogomous.

      • RJ

        It must be upsetting to you when people talk about the faithfulness of their dogs.

        • Antinous / Moderator

          Not to mention all those people who ‘live’ in the Paths of the Dead.

        • LunarMovements

          Those friends of mine who have dogs will sometimes refer to their loyalty, but never to their faithfulness.

          Perhaps that’s a colloquial thing.

          Or maybe I hang out with a crowd that has more conventional relationships with their pets than those “people [who] talk about the faithfulness of their dogs” to which you are referring.

          BTW, I hope you don’t let those people dog sit for you…

          • phuzz

             I’d agree, to my ear faithfulness and loyalty are pretty much synonyms.
            That’s in brit English.

  • Vanwall

    Winsor McCay had a variation on this:

    http://www.indyworld.com/indy/spring_2004/karasik_interview/images/rarebit_fiend.gif

  • teknocholer

    How many of us, at the end, will be able to say that our lives really touched another human being?

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Nell-Anvoid/100002383626402 Nell Anvoid

      I’m calling it: best comment in the thread!

  • MikeKStar

    I guess somebody did not have much fun during their weekend at Bernie’s

  • semiotix

    My grave will have a real showy obelisk made of expensive marble, and the engraving after my name will read:

    FORTY-EIGHTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
    INVENTOR OF THE SEAWATER ENGINE
    LEGENDARY SEXUAL INNOVATOR
    AND COMPETENT UTILITY INFIELDER

    A JEALOUS WORLD COULD NOT ACCEPT HIS GREATNESS
    AND TURNED ITS BACK ON HIM
    DESTROYING, AFTER HIS PASSING
    NOT ONLY HIS WORKS
    BUT ALL RECORD OF HIS ACCOMPLISHMENTS
    SERIOUSLY
    PROVE THAT THEY DIDN’T

    THIS MONUMENT ALONE BEARS WITNESS
    TO A MAN WHO MAKES YOU LOOK PATHETIC, FRANKLY
    EVEN IF YOU’RE WHAT PASSES FOR IMPRESSIVE THESE DAYS

    MORS ULTIMA LINEA RERUM EST

    THAT’S LATIN
    HE WAS FLUENT IN IT
    SERIOUSLY, THIS ISN’T EVEN DOING JUSTICE TO HOW AWESOME HE WAS

    • alfanovember

      NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INNOVATION; A FAST MOVING GROUNDBALL TOOK A BAD HOP AND THE REST IS LEGENDARY

    • Vanwall

      …And the lone and level sands stretch far away….

    • Brainspore

      Then again, Mr. Hopkins was assured that his headstone would read “loving husband and father.”

      • Donald Petersen

        Always tip your copy editor.  Generously.  In fact, just bequeath it all to her.

      • Antinous / Moderator

        It’s hard to imagine a cemetery allowing this.  But it kind of makes me want to try to figure out where my father is buried so that I can add some personal sentiments.

        HE THOUGHT THAT HE WAS A CROSS BETWEEN HUGH HEFNER AND ANDY WARHOL.
        WE REMEMBER HIM AS A CROSS BETWEEN TED BUNDY AND HOMER SIMPSON.

        • http://twitter.com/Ohyran Jens Reuterberg

          You should do what Strindberg did “and on my grave I want a huge penis in red sandstone to be erected with the inscription  ”Hic Jacet” (and here he lies)”

    • 10xor01

      Pull My Finger No More

    • Ipo

       Death, the final frontier. 
      We’ll “water” your flowers for you when we come by. 

  • http://imcravingpresidency.tumblr.com/ SedanChair

    I thought this was going to be about “Newt’s Word List”:

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4443.htm 

  • MooseDesign

    I love this one from Hollywood cemetery in Richmond, Virginia… There is a fellow buried between his wife and mistress and their mutual headstone reads, “kept” and “satisfied”. I have a pic of it somewhere but in the meantime here is one I found on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/montanapets/6270634296/

    If you ever find yourself in Richmond and are a history buff of any stripe, definitely take  tour… its a beautiful cemetery with loads of great history and character.

  • OgilvyTheAstronomer

    Not a fan of how it switches from nouns to adjectives after the first three, but at least they kept it consistent after that.

  • RJ

    Even if he was a cad in life, it’s poor form to go after him when he can’t defend himself.

    • Donald Petersen

      Never mind comets or military-engineered viruses, this will be the motivating factor for Patient Zero Bernie Hopkins in the new zombie apocalypse novel, The Affronted Dead.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      Maybe his widow caught his ghost boning Almira Whipple.

    • Brainspore

      …it’s poor form to go after him when he can’t defend himself.

      Seems to me that if he had been a half decent guy there would be other people willing to do the job for him.

    • chgoliz

      I spend a lot of time around genealogists, and can tell you many of us would love to find something like this.  Paper trails are very tedious.  We find a lot of NPEs (non-parental events) but usually no backstory to help us figure out how the people at the time dealt with the situation.  Or an individual family member who all of a sudden moves thousands of miles away — often to a new continent — and we don’t know if they were looking for work, had a rambling spirit, or were trying to stay one step ahead of the law.  To actually see proof that an ancestor was known to be a jerk would be fabulous.  Usually, the sands of time have worn down any personal story.  A lot of tombstones with only a start and end date on them, nothing else.

      We’d like to believe we descend from conquerors and explorers, but ancestors like Bernard P. Hopkins are more representative of most people’s ancestry.

  • http://twitter.com/AbelUndercity Abel Undercity

    “Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” – Mark Twain

    Bernard didn’t seem to quite manage that.

  • frozenintime

    Sounds like Soapy Smith.

  • billstewart

    The graveyard where my father’s buried dates back to the 1700s, which isn’t uncommon back in the northeast US.  Most of the graves that I found notable were children under 1 year old (way too many of them), and a friend from college who’d disappeared on her way home from music lessons one day (we still hitchhiked back then) and wasn’t found until months later after spring thaw.

  • AlexG55

    “HERE LIES EBENEZER AIKLE
    AGED 102
    THE GOOD DIE YOUNG”

  • Ipo

    “I hope Bernard wasn’t upset by the addendum to his grave marker.” 

    No, no he wasn’t. 
    Left him cold.
    He was dead already at that time.

  • doggjones

    It’s Flashy!

    • phuzz

       No one could accuse Flashman of being unloving!
      (indiscriminate in his loving perhaps…)

  • Scott Taylor

    Oh, I thought those were his kid’s names.  I went to school with a guy named Disloyal Hopkins….I wonder if they’re related.

  • Culturedropout

    I guess whoever did this decided that trashing him on his Facebook page just wasn’t enough…

  • zero

    I had this tattoo done about a year ago. Compare and contrast.
    https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/261710_1715020402019_1433484811_31267112_5108536_n.jpg