It’s funny, really. I know this site offends people. In many cases, I say stuff specifically with the intention of putting people up over the edge screaming and hissing. I take pride in making people pull their hair out. In fact, at a recent family function, my cousin (Alan H. to the rest of you readers) told me that everytime he reads my site, he wants to punch his computer.
I see him as just one more person I’ve reached in my quest to piss off the entire world.
A couple of months ago, I wrote about Lifegem, a company that takes the remains of your dead relative and pressurizes it into a gem that you can proudly display forever and ever. The post was entitled “The Ultimate in Ghoulishness,” and it read as follows:
Oh wow. I thought Angelina “My Lips Are Like Toilet Seats” Jolie’s wearing Billy Bob’s blood in a vial around her neck was weird. This is 10 steps beyond that:
What is a LifeGem®?
The LifeGem® is a certified, high-quality diamond created from the carbon of your loved one as a memorial to their unique life.
The LifeGem diamond provides a way to embrace your loved one’s memory day by day. The LifeGem® is the most unique and timeless memorial available for creating a testimony to their unique life.
Your LifeGem memorial will offer comfort and support when and where you need it, and provide a lasting memory that endures just as a diamond does. Forever.
via Pirillo
All in all, in the course of my day to day spewing, that really is innocuous, as most of you who have been here any length of time know. Now that I’m in my 4th year of doing this, I’ve gotten hatemail from arabs, christians, liberals, atheists, pro-abortion zealots, democrats, and on and on and on. Never have I gotten as nasty an e-mail as I got from this woman:
From: Annah H. Boyer [mailto:aboyer@cpradr.org]
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 3:02 PM
To: comments@insignificantthoughts.com
Subject:Vinny, you are a giant asshole who clearly has nothing better to do than hurt other people’s feelings on your INSIGNIFICANT blog. I hope someone you love dies and you perform the “ghoulish” ritual of interring them in a locked coffin in the ground as their organs rot and seep into the earth.
Annah
New York, NY 10022
Got that? She hopes someone I love dies and I bury them. Well, it just so happens that I just went through that very thing this weekend, but that’s beside the point. Ms. Boyer may have done a smart thing to read the disclaimer on every single page of this site, that all e-mails I receive are considered for the purposes of publication. I was’t about to take a shot like that laying down. However, instead of responding right away, I Googled the domain from the e-mail, cpradr.org. It’s the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution! Ironic that such a hateful screed should come from an organization that prides itself on conflict resolution. I also found a link to a site called Dragon Fire, which contained a story that explained who Ms. Boyer actually was:
After watching a segment of the “Today Show” featuring a company that makes diamonds out of the ashes of cremated human remains, Annah Boyer’s father turned to her and said:
“Why don’t you make me into a diamond when I die?”
Three months later, he died unexpectedly of a massive heart attack. Boyer, 29, a native of Winston-Salem, N.C., who now lives in New York City, was unsure whether she should proceed with his wishes.
She turned to the Internet for help. “I googled ‘death’ and ‘diamonds,’ and LifeGem popped up,” she said.
Today, two years after her father’s death, Boyer wears a ring on her right hand with a setting of a blue diamond made, in part, from the carbon extracted from her father’s ashes. She is but one of many who have turned to the company in search of a unique way to memorialize loved ones.
Eeeeshh… Sorry, still ghoulish… Anyway… I went to her company website and Googled her name there. From the FAQ:
As a member, with whom would I interact at CPR?
Our membership chairman is Beth Corman, ably assisted by Annah Boyer. These people would be your primary contacts. However, the entire senior staff is available to serve member needs.
Holy sweet Jesus. Anyway, I wrote back, while at the same time holding back explosive laughter.
From: Comments [mailto:comments@insignificantthoughts.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 3:03 PM
To: Annah H. Boyer
Subject: RE:It’s so nice to have a fan. Who the hell are you, anyway?
To which she replied:
From: Annah H. Boyer [mailto:aboyer@cpradr.org]
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 3:12 PM
To: Comments
Subject: RE:No one you’d want to know, anyway, since you think I’m so ghoulish. My father died recently of a massive heart attack and we had watched the LifeGem segment of the Today show together after reading a book by Mary Roach (NY Times bestseller, very easy to find, I’d recommend you read it) about what actually happens to you when you die and how horrible and disgusting it is. LifeGem gives you a beautiful memorial that can become an heirloom, rather than a creepy graveyard to visit once a year. I didn’t mean that I want someone you love to die. I’m just very very sad. It hurts so much to miss someone so badly and then to google the company that produced the one bright memento I have (to help a friend who was looking for it) and find ignorant bashing of it instead was just very hurtful. I’m sorry I reacted so nastily.
Now I could have just let that be, but I’m not the kind of person to just ignore when someone comes on that strong, and I wasn’t about to let her just walk away from her nasty first e-mail. Of course, she did call me ignorant, which I wasn’t, so I laid into her pompous ass:
From: Comments [mailto:comments@insignificantthoughts.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 3:46 PM
To: Annah H. Boyer
Subject: RE:Truthfully, I think your email was nasty, vindictive, and misdirected. There was no ignorance, just an opinion that someone who would want to wear their loved one as jewelry was ghoulish. I still think so. It isn’t meant to “hurt” anyone; frankly I think cremation is pretty damned ghoulish also.
I also believe that Lifegem is a company that capitalizes on people’s fear of what happens to their body when they die just as much as the coffin manufacturers who charge some poor schlub $25,000 for a box made out of a nanometer of copper sheeting. It’s the same thing.
I’m sorry for your loss, but frankly you were way out of line. On Sunday, I stood at a gravesite and watched someone I knew get buried after suffering a heart attack on dialysis. I really don’t need any lectures on how to grieve, or what burying them in the ground does. Piece of advice for the future: Get a better picture of someone before you fire off an angry e-mail at them.
To which she responded:
Fuck You
And being the gentleman that I am, I responded:
You’re welcome.
Look, the truth of the matter is, I don’t give two shits what you decide to do with your dead daddy’s ashes. I’ve seen some crazy shit done with remains, and really the idea of turning them into jewelry is just another kook idea for people who can’t figure out how to let go.
Annah Boyer wrote me a nasty e-mail, to an address with a site that has a clear disclaimer on it that all e-mail sent is considered for publication (go down to the bottom of the page, folks) from her office address, and told me, basically, that she wished someone in my family would die.
Am I meant to feel any kind of empathy for her? Any of that was gone with the first contact she made with me. Despite the childish nastiness of her e-mail, I don’t relish the fact that she lost her dad. It’s tragic to lose family members. However, her assertion that my opinion that Lifegem was ghoulish was ignorant put her instantly in the category of people who think they’re right and everyone else is a moron.
Frankly, Ms. Boyer, exposing yourself for public ridicule proves you’re not exactly a genius either. Hopefully one day you’ll do a vanity search and find yourself here.
If it weren’t for kooks, I’d have nothing to write about.
[tags]lifegem, annah boyer, ghoulish[/tags]