Humancracker Z

I've decided on what I want done with my body after I die. 

I've toyed with a lot of options over the years. For a long time, the Tibetan sky burial was my preferred choice.

I asked an old friend at a restaurant I waited tables at in my 20s if he'd facilitate this for me. He became increasingly annoyed with me the more I asked, but he was good with a knife.

Being an organ donor is absolutely out of the question. It's clear that doctors have no idea what they're doing.

The only thing that would make their incompetence more unbelievable is if doctors were planning on placing this living man's organs inside of an already-dead cadaver. 

For a while, another friend and colleague had asked if he could have my skull once I'm done with it. But I think if he knew what my recent plans were, he might reconsider. For, just the other day, when scrolling through YouTube, I had a eureka! moment. Yes. This is what I want done with my body.

NOT to be eaten. For display purposes only. I'm not a psychopath.

That's right. What better way to reverently and creatively shuffle off this mortal coil than by shipping my body to Japan so that I can be pressed into a paper-thin Japanese rice cracker. 

Why should the natural world get to benefit from my death? Mankind has spent its cumulative billion-year pathway of evolution and civilization advancement to thwart nature's influence on the life of man. Sure, if I was a prehistoric man, I could content myself to being feasted upon by buzzards. Or perhaps giving myself over to the natural elements. But we haven't come this far, as a species, only for us to go backward and concede death to the Earth that would love nothing more than to return to its former status as life's leading cause of death. No, no—I'm part of a vast sprawling lifeform that is not only concerned with asserting its dominance over nature, but all other forms of life—and even the endless depths of space itself! Nature doesn't deserve to be gratified by allowing my atoms to return to the primordial soup of ash and dust that I emerged from, thank you very much.

And for that matter, why should I give my body over to modern medicine and the doctors who steer the sinking ship of health in this country? Haven't they done enough damage? The arrogant class of surgeons and specialists and malpractice dodgers are, after all, concerned with prolonging life, aren't they? As they already seem content to do, let them continue to harvest organs from the living, and ask them to leave the dead alone. By the time I've gone belly-up, I'll have carefully curated the condition of my own organs in exactly the manner I prefer. I should then allow them to run rampant through my system, taking this, discarding that, based on their questionable and obviously very biased perspectives on what is valuable? No, no—I got where I am (dead) thanks in large part to ignoring their obnoxious, and frankly rather whiny, suggestions on what I should do to take care of the body, which has been given to me, by the way. Every time I'm asked if I'm an organ donor, I tell the questioner (or answer in writing in as much space as I'm allowed on the form) that if you give a car salesman a stethoscope and a clipboard, they would be indistinguishable from a doctor.

Should my friend then get only my skull? To do what with, pray tell? Use my noggin as a door stop, paper weight, or worse? Then what? The novelty will surely wear thin as time lingers on—and what's to come of me when he goes? His progeny would take one look at my hollow, expressionless face and throw me into the bottom of a cardboard box that's going straight to the local thrift store. Imagine the boredom of being picked up by an angsty teenager with a fleeting (and stunningly inaccurate) interest in Wicca, bringing me to the very center of a crudely scratched pentagram on the wood floor beneath his bed in his parents' house. I may look good with a melting candle on my forehead, but no thank you. Too much uncertainty; and I shudder to think that I shouldn't remain intact, so that all my parts and pieces can be regarded as a whole. After all, I was together (presumably) my entire life up until my point of death. And if I'm dismembered before my final wishes can be carried out, well, reunification is a goal devoutly to be wished by all who find themselves torn asunder. Remember: a fool and his body are soon parted. 

No, I've decided. Now more than ever. Japanese rice cracker is the way to go.

First of all, the Japanese are dedicated. I hate to speak broadly about an entire people, but I once heard a quote about the Hebrews, that was then broadened to also include the Japanese, that said: "They are just like everyone else, only moreso." That's not the kind of endorsement that can be bought. That's an ethnic and ideological identity forged through generational discipline to a craft. You can't teach people how to care.

Who better to entrust my remains with than they? You could certainly do a lot worse, as described above. 

They'd surely engineer a great big iron press for me—and cook up a nice rice batter to lay down on the hot griddle. Then, they'd place my corpse down in the center of the white pool and crush me down to the width of a strand of human hair, and let me cook for a few seconds. Parts of the batter may spill out over the side, but a skilled rice cracker chef would quickly scrape the sides away and discard them, so as not to infringe upon the uniform, geometrical square-ness of my final form. 

Then, they'd lift the lid, and there I'd be—slightly red, splayed out and immortalized as a cracker—a look of frozen shock forever emblazoned across my flattened face. Maybe you could cover me in a veneer and hang me on the wall. 

"There he hangs," they'll say. Who? Maybe the Japanese will send me back to a posh New York City restaurant—or maybe the chef himself will take me back home and put me on display above his dining room table. "There he's hanged," he may say, more correctly, "May his memory be forever preserved in this large, paper-thin rice cracker, frozen in death as he lived—there, for all to see."

Maybe it'll be a trend. Maybe others will want to follow my example. You could put us all together, in a large coffee table book, and leave us all in a chic coffee shop somewhere along the west coastline—donated, for the continual inspiration and amazement of anyone who cares to look. 

That's how I want to go.