And yet another... RIP

I've been feeling weird and detached all day today. A phone call I just received confirms why.

Dave was a great embalmer and one of the funniest people I had ever had the pleasure of knowing. It's almost impossible to describe him, and it's my firm belief that only people who had the privilege of experiencing him can understand what a loss we've just incurred.

Dave explained to me long before his cancer diagnosis that it was his mission (completed mission, I might add) to do everything he wanted to do in his life before the age of 50. That way, every day after 50 was just a bonus. He lived his life truly and fully, and only on his terms.

All of us should have such character and determination.

After his diagnosis, he described the side effects of one of his more radical treatments in quite possibly the funniest statements I've ever heard, but just too raw to write here, even for my standards.

I'm at a loss for any other words to write. Dave, I'll miss you. The world doesn't change... but it certainly has less in it without you.

I'm cracking a beer or two for you tonight. No one could hit 'em with the powder puff like you. You beat fifty and almost made sixty.

Mission accomplished.

Godspeed.

An Extended Absence... Morons Playing on the Field of Dreams

You know, even the old Guerrilla himself tires of trying to bail out the feeble-minded, the exceptionally egotistical and the just plain stupid. After a string of absolutely mind-numbing encounters with funeral home owners whose egos are writing checks that their asses can't cash, I had to throw up my hands. The final straw was a fine group of gentlemen who contacted me 1 year into their business venture.

No business plan. No funeral home experience. Just self-styled "expertise" and the grand delusion that their shiny new facility would shut the established firm in town down, post-haste. And in their wisdom, a barely five digit marketing budget.

How, may I ask, can anyone in this day, age and economy still be relying on the Field of Dreams business plan?

If we build it, they will come.

Excuse me while I throw up.

That is the worst kind of all the kinds of self-deluded bullshit out there. Pardon the language, but I have got to get a point across. A new building or bigger parking lot isn't going to bring the world beating a path to your door...regardless of what the "expert" told you.

It's about connections. Any chimp with a bank account can hire a contractor to build an International House o' Funerals... it takes a true professional with skill, experience and compassion to elevate the business. Give me a true pro with an old building and an "expert" with a new building and I will show you how the pro whips the new guy's ass every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

People have swarmed into this field in hordes from other professions as the tech bubble burst or from the intellectual backwater of academia and proclaimed themselves experts. Some of these clowns don't even have a professional license or those that do are barely five years into their career and tout themselves as "experts."

These experts are ruining the profession. They're lazy and/or clueless. You don't get to be an expert five years in. Come talk to me when you've got at least a decade of actual day-to-day funeral home experience and then MAYBE we'll use the 'E' word.

Don't be fooled by the wanna-bees. They talk people into doing moronic things, like building new places without a business plan.

And for the guy who told me he has allocated $10,000 to fix his sinking business, let me say this: don't give me the 10k, give it to a good bankruptcy lawyer. Who might save your ass and some of your assets.

And for the rest of you...the Field of Dreams is fiction. Just like a successful business with an "expert" at the helm. The time has come to wake up. The economy is not getting any better. If you have hired one of these clowns, I pity you. Give me a call. I must just help you for free.

Let's be more careful out there, shall we?

Doc's Death