today i rationed out the last of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach, an audiobook i've been enjoying for the past couple weeks (note A: while not actually read aloud by madame Roach herself, narrator Shelly Frasier is her perfect vocal match). this thoroughly delightful book is quite a tour-de force on an otherwise inanimate topic, and inspires both giggles and nauseum aplenty, as well as an upchurned awe for the remarkable amount of statistical knowledge that Roach is able to impart between her numerous (and reliably hilarious) sarcastic asides. at the bidding of her finely-honed journalistic nose, Roach escorts us about the dead and dying globe as we are introduced to a positively singular list of undertakers, grave robbers, necrophiliacs and crash-site statistitians, a hereto who-knows-who on the topic, which includes transplant pioneers such as Vladimir Demikhov (note B: Demikhov's historic experiment took place in Russia on feb. 24, 1954 - across the planet on that same afternoon, Dale and Tillie Hinds were hosting the birth of their beloved second son, Geffrey). all serendipity aside, this is fun stuff, and brilliantly rendered.

EXPERIMENTS IN THE REVIVAL OF ORGANISMS :: FILM (MATURE)