Halifax Reducks: Great Graves

Remember last time I was in Halifax and I witnessed the surreal scene of a girl in a prom dress torturing some freakish bird creature? Well, I caught up with said bird creature when I returned recently. This time we were with a dog¹, and apparently the thing learned to fight back. It must have felt threatened, seeing a less useless animal, and fucking came at our fucking faces, hissing. That's scary enough when you know what you're dealing with.

On the up side, the freak bird found itself an equally freakish mate.

But who cares about things that are alive? I find graveyards fascinating. A gravestone is the only semi-permanent visible relic that remains in proximity to these bodies we inhabit our whole lives. The textual messages on them have to be meaningful yet brief; they're like everyone's final Twitter update.

Despite dying so long ago, Smardon's grave is in perfect shape. I love the faux raw rock slab and the crooked cross. And his final message—"God alone understands"—is intriguingly cryptic. I see so many possibilities in that message and the dates that his family died.  I like to think he was a hitman.

Alexander Keith's original grave is nothing special:

But beside it is something a little more extravagant:

We take beer seriously around here.

Others keep it simple:

Although having them side by side gives them some meaning, no?

Just having a funny name can leave an impressive final message:

wheres mario lol

That's just unfortunate.

Some people put emphasis on the wrong words:

lawl

But aside from all the hilarity, there is heartbreak to be found in graveyards:

This creeped me out:

And this:

I found the graves of the survivors victims of the Titanic disaster to be particularly emotional. It was unsettling to see rows after rows of graves, all with the same date on them, most of them too young to die.

Many don't have names.

It's touching that someone cared enough to leave flowers here:

Unfortunately, disaster victims aren't immune to funny names:

Perhaps it's tactless to make fun of dead people. I mean no disrespect; if they were alive, I hope I could laugh with them, not at them. But they are dead, and thus unable to experience either joy or offense. If it's okay to find humour in living people with funny names, it's even more okay to do so with the dead.

RIP.

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¹ This dog: