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Hey, little deathlings: it gets better

Cory Doctorow at 10:59 am Tue, Oct 2, 2012

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Caitlin Doughty, host of AskAMortician has a message to the "little deathlings" out there who face social disapprobation due to their fascination with death and dying: it gets better. Life as a mortician, coroner, or affiliated professional is good and rewarding. PS: I just discovered AskAMortician and I am as happy as a pig in liquefying corpses!

It Gets Better, Morbid Kids! (via The Mary Sue)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE:  death • employment • goth • happy mutants • Kids • videos • youtube

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  • Teresa Nielsen Hayden

    That’s nice. People should enjoy their work.

  • Mark Dow

    Harold (and Maude) approved.

  • Judas Peckerwood

    My cousin faced incredulity and fierce opposition from our extended family when she announced that she was abandoning a blossoming modeling career to become a mortician. She stuck to her guns, and today she’s happy and successful.

  • RoeBoeDog

    I have worked behind the scenes for a mortuary and the thing you have to remember that you are helping the family through a very difficult time. For some you become family friends and people come back to you for they way you handled their uncles funeral so long ago. It is about the dead, but mostly about the people left living that you are there for. 

  • Brainspore

    Of course it gets better. No matter who you are, every new day brings you that much closer to death.

    • http://twitter.com/variablerush Bradley Hall

      And that will make the little deathlings extremely happy.

  • saint_al

    “There’s a little death in everybody.”  Possibly the best & most practical college course I took was “Death and Dying’, a Sociology elective. Ever speak to someone who literally pulled the plug on a life support machine? or a Sheriff who’d found many bodies in the field? (He had a previous military career- Vietnam era- informing families of KIA situations involving their sons). Always walked away from that room with plenty to consider.

  • http://echofox3.blogspot.com efergus3

    Do enjoy: http://www.pushindaisies.com/candypress/scripts/default.asp 

  • GuyInMilwaukee

    Anytime I think of death this lovely piece of art comes to mind.
    http://www.astrofunk.com/grave/G.PepeGrave01.jpg

  • dr_awkward

    Birth has a 100% fatality rate.

  • http://twitter.com/variablerush Bradley Hall

    If only someone told me that “it gets better” and the real reason why people think death careers are “icky” I could have gone to school to be a mortician instead of being a leader in a world wide movement.

  • http://avarana.blogspot.com MarlboroTestMonkey7

    Guess its time for a mummification renaissance

  • MortuaryReport

    i love what i do, so she’s completely right!

  • http://codeflow.org/ Florian Bösch

    <3

  • http://newnumber6.livejournal.com Peter

    Morbid kids?  Shouldn’t it be “It gets bitter”? ;)

    (Bitterer?)

  • teleny

    Aldous Huxley observed, and I would believe rightly so, that teenagers generally are fascinated by death (something hormonal, I suppose). He also said that it would be a great thing if they could have a “simulated death”, just to take the mystery and fear away (he suggested LSD, but I’m sure someone could come up with something better). At 13 myself when I read this, I couldn’t help but concur. I figured that people would get more enlightened about such things, back in 1970.

    Now, we’re so freaked out by death, we can’t even say the word “died”. We can’t say “funeral”, and we love cremations, if only because we can scatter ashes and not have to have icky gravesites. At the same time, we love playing with mourning (think of Tim Burton films, or of Hot Topic). We love bands with names like “Cannibal Corpse”  and do we ever love zombies.

    strange.

    • Boundegar

      Take the mystery and fear away?  Why would anybody want that?