She's amazingly lifelike. I'm referring to the zombie-ish white-gloved blonde who lovingly and sensuously strokes a sleek coffin while she models what may well be the latest way for a one-percenter to bury wealth where it can do no one any good.
It's a coffin-installed sound system that plays music to moldering corpses six feet underground. It claims to do so "forever." Family and friends can program and re-program the music from the present life, if they choose.
One hopes a mischievous nephew won't program in whatever kind of music the deceased hated. Think of the late Richard Nixon being forced to listen to 24 hours a day of Snoop Dog.
The cost of keeping the dead entertained during their long, long sleep underground? 23,000 Euros, or in excess of $36 thousand American. Per corpse.
Listen, you can buy into life after death, or your can declare it's all a primitively superstitious myth (I know, I know, I'm getting redundant here) but in either case, six feet under is not where your loved one's soul, if there is one, resides.
However, some people will have 36 grand to throw away without so much as noticing it's missing. Other less fortunate marks will really not be able to afford the price, but will buy the contraption anyway, while still in a state of shock or vulnerability over their loss.
The United States was a rich country when we had marginal tax rates in the very, very high double digits for the very, very rich. Today, we tax, starve, oppress and milk the poor to bring the top tax rates down for the wealthy. All so they can have options like this.
If there actually turns out to be a hell, more than a few people will burn in it for this. With or without music.
P.S. Listen, Smartypants, at first, I thought this was a sendup, too. But it's not. Next time you're in Stockholm, you can drop in for a demonstration of this coffin sound system, just to the right of the Hollywood "aperitif" store, here.
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