“There’s nothing certain, except death and taxes.” – so the saying goes, and probably if you work in the funeral business, or the tax office, you’d never be unemployed.

I attended a funeral recently, and the large crowd there spilled over into the foyer, from the parlour’s chapel. No seating was provided to such overflow, although most were elderly; they watched the service on a TV screen, so overflow is not a rare event.

A funeral is no joking matter, even if it is, like Musical Chairs, a gathering of relatives from which one is gone – though present in body, rather than spirit.

Relatives eye each other, and wonder who’ll be next; there being no stampede to the graveyard.

No joking matter? Well, not quite, as Steptoe & Son episode “Oh, what a wonderful mourning!”, and TV series “Six Feet Under”, might demonstrate. Yet again, the black humour of Japanese movie, “Yojimbo” , indicates, that even a coffin-maker can lack customers, if death becomes too infrequent.

More broadly, we are asked to Save the Planet, but the Planet can go on without us, it is Humanity which must be saved (from ecological disaster).

At the funeral of the human species, attendance will be compulsory, the chimneys would have belched their smoke prior, and no people will be allowed to leave afterwards. None will be left to mourn.

Where’s the joke? The joke is on us. Homo Sapiens dead in one million years, taking most other species with him. Now that’s being really Efficient!

From a Usenet newsgroup