Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Iowa House Rising Up for the Dead!

Alice Cooper: Official Poster Muse of the Necrophilia Society
“I Love the Dead”
I love the dead before they're cold
They're bluing flesh for me to hold
Cadaver eyes upon me see nothing
I love the dead before they rise
No farewells, no goodbyes
I never knew your rotting face
While friends and lovers mourn your silly grave
I have other uses for you, Darling
We love the dead
We love the dead, Yeah

The Iowa House has slipped into full protectionist mode. First they set their sites on protecting minimum-wage workers, then potential bully victims, and now they’re extending their protectionist claws to the corpse community. Apparently there has been an insurgence of abuse in the human corpse community, thus prompting the Iowa House to introduce a not-in-my-back-yard bill (HF 432), which would extend protections to corpses. (Note to practicing Necrophiliacs: a bill on the books already protects corpses from people “knowingly and intentionally” engaging in a sex act with the deceased, so don’t get any crazy ideas.) The House merely wants to extend rights to corpses, making it a crime for a person to “mutilate, disfigure, hide, or bury a human corpse with the intent to conceal a crime.” All violations will be considered a class “D” felony, “punishable by confinement for no more than five years and a fine of at least $750, but no more than $7,500.”

I’m guessing this bill is meant to serve as a deterrent, so when somebody kills somebody, they’ll think long and hard about dismembering the body and hiding the remains under the floorboards? Or the guilt of committing such a heinous act, compounded by the looming possibility of fines or imprisonment, will inevitably force the alleged perpetrator to confess:

“Villians!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! – tear up the planks here, hear! – it is the beating of his hideous heart!” (Exhibit A: documented confession from Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”)

If the House is genuinely serious about protecting and/or extending more rights to the human corpse community, they should consider putting more teeth into their bill by adding the following to the corpse abuse bill:

Add “corpse trait” to anti-bullying bill. This will not only help deter kids from picking on the dead, but it will help foster respect for their “nonliving peers.”
Corpse Tax Stamps. Using the Drug Tax Stamp as its model, the Internal Revenue Service should levy a tax on corpses. So if a person intends to sell a corpse, they’ll need to pay a corpse tax and receive a stamp to attach to corpse, thus indicating that the corpse bearer has paid the government its respective due. And if corpse peddlers fail to pay their tax burden and gets caught with an unstamped corpse, boy will they be wishing they had paid The Man.

Better yet, the House should focus their energy on extending more rights to the human corpse community. A good start would be allowing corpses to marry other corpses, extending them the same rights as living married couples (this includes living married couples whose relationship has died).

Human Corpse Community Battlecry: "All we are saying is give corpses a chance..."

2 comments:

Gark said...

Tom,

This is purely self-protection--when the legislature spends much time on bills like this (instead of say, funding affordable health care,education, or clean water) naturally people back home want to kill them and bury them under the floorboards.

T.M. Lindsey said...

Not to mention, dead constituents aren't eligible to vote...for now anyhow.