Stiff, the book

I finished a book called Stiff by Mary Roach, who more recently came out with a book called Bonk. Stiff is about cadavers. Bonk is about sex.

She's a great writer. I kept laughing out loud and when I tell ppl that, in regards to the subject matter, they look at me funny. But she just says the funniest things! And has a natural curiosity that I appreciate.

I now know way too much about cadavers. In connection to my weird obsession with organ transplant and wanting to know where do all the med school skeletons come from? (you kinda don't want to know), I can now add to that illustrious curiosity resume "Knows extensive cadaver facts and will elaborate easily."

Mary Roach writes respectfully of the dead and takes on a distant approach (it's not analyzing what happens to our beloved, but more strangers). In the end, I came away thinking there's no good way to handle a body after it's gone. Everything is messy and ugly and not pretty.

She writes that after talking to many researchers and other ppl who deal with cadavers, she hears that the biggest no-no to do to a dead body is test bullets or bombs on it. This is after reading about crash-test cadavers (I know, surprised me too) who get smashed in simulated car accidents, embalming, body farms where they study the body's messy, liquidy breakdown by having many bodies in different stages of decomposition, and plastic surgeons who practice on decapitated heads. So what's so bad about using cadavers to test bombs or bomb-seeker shoes? I found that very interesting. I say, blow me up. I'd rather have my corpse thrown into a bomb or have bullets shot at it then to be a crash-test body. Or to have maggots run through me and all the researchers take notes. Ugh. Sudden re-death anyday, please.