I told my wife I wanted a death mask done, and that I wanted her to mount it on the ceiling over her bed so that she would have to sleep under my dead face.

She patted my shoulder and said "Yes, dear."

It saves all kinds of curious arguments with busy hospital staff, and the subject gets to admire the finished product, which will doubtless be a topic of conversation and a source of innocent merriment for years to come.

I'm not suggesting we have a roomparty or anything, you understand. Though it'd probably be tidier than oobleck.

Perhaps there should be an anthology, called something like AFTERMATHOMS, in which various skiffians tell stories of Interesting Future Things To Do with Stiffs. And then again, perhaps not.

I know, Iknow, you're supposed to be nostalgic about long walks beside the Seine... Thanks for the link, though.

(at least as old as the hollow straw, anyway)

Does that mean that before there were hollow straws, there were not-hollow straws? Just like there were square wheels? And blank stone tablets?

Some of them look just right, and some are totally wrong for my mental image. Napoleon had much finer features that those with which he's usually portrayed. Chopin was surprisingly almost pretty. They should have left the glasses on Joyce. Thanks for this link. I postponed finishing the historical society's newsletter for a good hour.

MKK

LIFE MASKS: Use vaseline/oil/grease on eyebrows, eyelashes, hairline. Very painful, possibly dangerous otherwise -- please believe this. You might like to rub in some cream to the whole face some hours before, just to make removal a bit easier. Particularly applies to plaster, but you still need something for silicone, etc.

Which definitively proves nothing, of course, until and unless one of those depictions is accepted as genuine. But the mask does seem to be at least related to the bust at Charlecote Park, the Droeshout engraving, and the Chandos and Flower portraits.

What is it that spurs people (or perhaps just me) to compare people to (current) celebrities?

Because if you said John Dillinger looks *exactly* like my Aunt Edna, no one would be able to agree or disagree with you.

too true. among the old dame's many frailties was a decidedly mannish countenance.

wasn't there something in "Virtual Light" about this.. cops comparing wanted men to various celebrities, because the associations were easier?

I really find death masks fascinating. A friend of my sister kept her mother's death mask in the living room-- it was pretty amazing.

I did the same thing with Hitch. As for the Newton/Williams resemblance, I don't see it for some reason. Frederick the Great looks like, I don't know, an Escher drawing or something.

My nominee for "most what you'd imagine": Dante.

There are a couple of photos of Edward Kelly, in youth & 'maturity' -- he was about 22 when hanged -- so you can directly compare the masks (several copies are 'round) to them. In fact, a mask was used to compare a disputed skull relic quite recently www.abc.net.au/tv/rewind/txt/s1168553.htm You can get an idea of some of the issues surrounding him from some of these links too.

I rather doubt that it stands for Freakin' Looney Killer.

Essentially, they looked kind of... off, and sometimes that indicated other problems.

(My partner works in a psych hospital, don't mind me.)

Alban Berg
Albert Lortzing
Alexander Pushkin
Alfred Hitchcock
Amado Nervo
Andre Gide
Antoine Wiertz
Chimpanzee
Battista Sforza
Benjamin Franklin
Bertrolt Brecht
Bjornson Bjornstjerne
Blaise Pascal
Bruce Lee
Cesar Vallejo
Charles Ives
Charles Sainte-Beuve
Charlotte Wolter
Chief Seattle
Conde de Mirabeau
Cyriel Verschaeve
Dante Alighieri
Dr. John Yonge
Eduard Morike
Ezra Pound
Fjodor Dostojevski
Frank Wedekind
Franz Lizst
Franz Rosenzweig
Franz Schubert
Frederic Chopin
Frederic Chopin (2)
Frederick Deeming
Frederick the Great
Friederich Ebert
Friedrich Hebbel
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche (2)
Friedrich Schiller
General Robert E. Lee
Giacomo Leopardi
Giovanni Bottesini
Gotthold E. Lessing
Guido Gezelle
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler (2)
Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert (2)
Heinrich Heine
Heinrich von Treitschke
Hendrik Tollens
Henry VII
Hermann Hesse
Hugues de Lamennais
Ishi
James Joyce
James Joyce (2)
Jean-Jacques Rosseau
Johann Goethe
Johann Goethe (2)
Johann Gottfried Schadow
Johannes Brahms
John Calhoun
John Dillinger
John Keats
John Keats (2)
John Wesley
Jonathan Swift
Josef Kainz
Joseph Hoffner
Joseph Smith
Julius Caesar
Karel Ledeganck
Karl Krause
King Charles XII of Sweden
King Teti
Leo Tolstoy
Lorenzo Medici
Louis Vierne
Ludwig van Beethoven
Martin Luther
Mary Queen of Scots
Max Scheler
Napoleon Bonaparte
Nicola Tesla
Nicolo Machiavelli
Nikolaj Gogol
Oliver Cromwell
Pancho Villa
Paul Gauguin
Peter Lorre
Phineas Gage
Pope Pius IX
Richard B. Sheridan
Richard Wagner
Rio Reiser
Robert Musil
Robespierre
Ruben Dario
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Scythian Queen
Sir Charles Edward Stuart
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton (2)
Theodore Gericault
Thomas Edison
Torquato Tasso
Ulysses S. Grant
Unknown 1
Unknown 2
Unknown 3
Unknown 4
Unknown 5
Unknown 6
Unknown 7
Unknown 8
Unknown 9
Unknown 10
Vicente Barbieri
Victor Hugo
Vincent Price
Voltaire
Walter Hunscheidt
Walter Scott
Wilfrid Laurier
Willem Bilderdijk
William Cullen
William Hunter
William Shakespeare
William Sherman

Unless you are one of those folks who has pictures of loved ones hanging around your living and working space, you probably see the celebrities lots more often than anyone you don't live or work with daily.

M&Ms were first developed for their offensive capabilities by the early military-industrial complex. Only after enough nations had developed similar candies of their own, obsoleting M&Ms' worth as a deterrent, were they "released" to the general public where they became known for their more benign properties. However, one can quickly see the military underpinnings in their design:
- doesn't melt in hands: useful when eating candy while operating a flame thrower
- melts in your mouth: a potential vehicle for a measured dose of toxin that would render your agents unable to be interrogated.

The color-coding is obviously very important too. Maybe someone with the appropriate security clearance can tell us what the colors stand for.

The black and white one looks exactly like Woody Harrelson in the People vs Larry Flynt, while the color version looks exactly like the narrator in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I think people associate with certain celebrities because they are always looking for the familiar. It's comforting. The reason it's usually celebrities is because we are bombarded with images of them.