Plagiarizing in the Name of the Dead
But here’s the thing. Some days I just want to make shit up. Embelish. Add something spicy. Anything. When you write obituaries for a living, you realize how many Average Joes and Janes have lived. And how many are still out there doing nothing. Watching TV. Sending Easter cards. Polishing their mag wheels. Nothing. This guy that I’m doing right now, I knew this guy. His name is even plain yogurt. Bob. Fucking Bob! Put some mutton chops on him and he looks like Martin Van Buren. Party Hardy Marty. Everything he’s done has already been done by millions before him. Everything I’m about to write has been written. Regurgitated. Rehashed. Nothing’s really new. It’s like running into doors half open. Party Hardy Marty.
Robert Haglund Bosco: People considered him a pushover. Famous for his 1986 decree at his Company’s Christmas Party in response to the disc jockey taking a request from his boss: “Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young; nice enough fellows but it’s still safer to shoot them with a Winchester carbine.” Released from duties two days later. The IRS garnished his wages monthly until his death in February, 2008–one week after winning the lottery. Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think? (Ed note: No. That’s not irony. It just sucks) His son was decapitated in a minivan accident on I-95 near Richmond, Virginia. He supported Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education. Indeed, the manic-depressive Bob had plenty of reasons to drink his ass off—not to mention he looked like Martin Van Buren. Bob was stricken with oral cancer, requiring surgeons to fill a hole in the roof of his mouth with a rubber plug. Plenty of faux-pas and gaffes. Bob was once charged for intentionally running over a woman’s foot with his John Deere mower in Asheville. Seems the two had entered into an argument over property lines and whose fence was encroaching on whose property. Booze of choice: Bob wasn’t picky. After winning $183,130 in the state lottery (pick 3) and leaving his job as clerk at Sears, Bob declared: “There’s nothing left but to get drunk.”
All right, so it’s not spicy or exciting or even elegant. But it beats the real thing: “he was born and then he lived and then he died.” (Even that is plagiarized.)
Obit
Pruteanu, “Sir” Alexandru Mihail, (President–Royal Society of Saltimbanques, Treasurer–Union of Wine Tasters-Mattress Testers), the obscurely-known author, born in Bucharest, Rom. on 1 July 1969, died in Melbourne, Aus. on Valentine’s Day, 2008 of sunstroke. Although never a famous cricketer, he could hit hard and bowl slows with a puzzling flight. (It is said that Shacklock, the former Nottinghamshire player, inspired him with the Christian name of his famous character, Tavi, and that of the latter’s brother, Pimmel Schweinhuber, was suggested by the Derbyshire cricketers). In 1991, Sir Pruteanu was in the Rugby XI, and although he was unsuccessful in the Marlborough match, he headed the university’s bowling averages with a record of 19 wickets for 14.05 runs each. In 2004 he was accidentally pelted in the head with a cricket ball, prompting him to start writing a daily web log which received little traffic and even less publicity. In September 2007, disillusioned with the “rightside up world,” he and his wife moved to Melbourne, Australia to pursue his studies of the didjeridu and live the organic, aboriginal life. Sir Pruteanu had gained a modest reputation, ironically, as a freelance writer of obituaries for his hometown newspaper “The Cary Hangover.” He is survived by his wife, his pet sloth Fast Eddie, and two friends.
