I just went on a honeymoon with my husband (of course!), and we booked first class to South Africa and back. On the flight to South Africa, someone died in economy class, and believe it or not, they moved the body from where it was over to first class, where it lay wrapped in a blanket directly across the aisle from me.

I protested, because who wants to look at a corpse on her honeymoon, especially in first class, after paying a lot of money, but was told that economy was really crowded, and they didn't want a corpse there "for health reasons" (but first class was OK?? Our health was better?).

When we landed, I pitched a fit, and said we deserved to have our money refunded, considering it was hardly a first class experience. The airline had a real hard time understanding this, apparently. They said nothing in their agreement with passengers prevented them from moving a dead body from one class to another.

What do you think?

Dorothy Parker: If the stiff what brung you isn't fun/
Here's a mile-high two for one!

Casanova: Why "of course?"

Oscar Wilde: Oh, how vile. Salts, please.

Marquis de Sade: Some of us do like to look at corpses on honeymoons, by the way.

George Donner: What was this, 10 hours? Cry me a river!

Marie Antoinette: On the contrary, the rich are far, far more delicate!

Midas: You know, money isn't everything.

Jack Kerouac: Fuck planes.

A First Class Body, The Death Rattle And Helping A Family Friend [Obit]

My colleagues and I are convinced that one of our co-workers is insane. The details are bizarre and too numerous to go through, but as an example, when collecting clothes for needy children we found that this worker, who admitted to never having been in a relationship, mentioned that he had a basement full of toddler clothing. When I told him about an encounter with a pushy beggar, he said: "You should have sliced his hand off with my knife." I have this fear that something bizarre will happen and then when the police ask: "Were there any signs?" we'd answer: "Sure, tons of them." Yet what were we going to do? Go to human resources and tell them he's crazy?

Dorothy Parker: Sticks and stones are mighty harsh/But beat your body in a marsh.

Soapy Smith: "Collecting clothes for needy children?" I know that game.

Lizzie Borden: Don't you travel with your own weapons?

Michel Foucault: Maybe you're insane.

Marie Antoinette: What are these "coworkers" of which you speak?

Jesus Christ: Y'know, you should really be more careful how you treat beggars. That's all I'll say. Verily.

Sigmund Freud: And who are you, Freud?

Jeffrey Dahmer: In his defense, there are much worse things you could have in your basement.

Robert Frost: Good fences make good neighbors.

Oscar Wilde: At least madness would be amusing; this is tedious.

Henry Darger: What? Some of us really like toddlers. And sometimes the state won't let us adopt, okay?

Baby Jane Hudson: Exactly! How else are you supposed to do musical numbers?

Jack the Ripper: Hand? Then they can identify you! That's why the lord made "disemboweling."

Franz Kafka: You say "something bizarre" like that's a bad thing.

Jane Austen: One may live a very full life without a "relationship," Sir.

Jack Kerouac: Fuck offices.

DearLucy [Financial Times]

I love European travel, but my girlfriend has travel restrictions outside the United States for at least one more year...I really like her, but this is causing me some resentment; she hinted that she's okay with my traveling by myself — but in a passive-aggressive manner, I suspect. Any words of wisdom?

Dorthy Parker:
"You overestimate your appeal/
She'll pack your bags with joyful zeal."

Ernest Hemingway: This is why God made French whores. And Spanish whores. I'm forgetting some whores.

Casanova: That's what we call a "business trip."

Emily Dickinson: What is this "travel" of which you speak?

Lizzie Borden: What is this "passive aggression" of which you speak?

Joseph McCarthy: "Travel restrictions?" And what are these "European" countries you're so very eager to visit?

Abelard: So, you "love" travel and "like" this woman? Enduring Love: ur doin it rong. [translated from the Latin.]

Isak Dinesen: I disagree. This is curtailing your ability to travel? End it.

George M. Cohan: Wait, why would you want to leave the GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD? [Dances.]

Marie Antoinette: Travel restrictions? I don't understand. You just call a carriage, nicht wahr?

Alfred Dreyfus: Don't talk to me about resentment, Monsieur.

Sir Thomas More: What do you mean, "hinted?"

Ernest Hemingway: Remembered! Cuban whores.

Jack Kerouac: Fuck the government.

CAROLYN HAX [Washington Post]

Earlier: How Do I Tell Everyone That This Guy Died Of Prostate Cancer Because He Was An Adulterer?
"My Marriage Is Falling Apart Because I'm A Mac, And He's A PC."
What To Do When You're In Love With Your Sister's Widower?
"How Do I Keep My Sullen Daughter From Alienating My Wealthy Boyfriend?"

Dear Judy,

I don't know if this is up your alley. One of the people in my church died recently. He was wealthy and had the best doctors but prostate cancer got him anyway in the end. He was also married, with four children, and slept with a number of women, including the church secretary. She has a broken heart, still, because he left her.

I think maybe he got prostate cancer because he was an adulterer, although I realize there's no scientific proof of this.

Now some of the people in our church want to establish a scholarship in this man's name (a religious scholarship! for college students who want to go on and become pastors). So what do I do?

Do I inform our own pastor about this issue? In a way I don't want to because the two men were friends. But in a way I feel I should do what's right, no matter what. Also, I think the 11 members of our church who want to fund such a scholarship should be told so maybe the scholarship can be given another name. And maybe the man's widow, who is a very nice woman, but none too smart.

Your view?

Celia

Dorothy Parker: If every man who cheated got smote, well, there'd be no one left to smite.

Casanova: Yes. I'm sure the pastor had...no idea. He'll be shocked. Really.

Anais Nin: I don't believe in "morality."

Brigham Young: I really fail to see what the problem here is, Madam.

Peggy Hopkins Joyce: Wait, how wealthy?

Saint Augustine: Passion is the evil in adultery. If a man has no opportunity of living with another man's wife, but if it is obvious for some reason that he would like to do so, and would do so if he could, he is no less guilty than if he was caught in the act.

Leopold and Loeb: We know what it's like having to deal with intellectual inferiors; torture.

Andrew Carnegie: You're absolutely right; all philanthropists should lead blameless personal lives.

Oscar Wilde: Madam, I find your moralizing exceedingly tedious.

Hippocrates: A doctor, you're not.

Benjamin Franklin: Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

Jack Kerouac: Fuck religion.

The Man Who Broke My Heart, A Church Scandal and a Callous Cousin [Obit]

Earlier:"My Marriage Is Falling Apart Because I'm A Mac, And He's A PC."
"How Do I Explain To My Friend That Her Bad Mothering Drove Her Daughter To Suicide?"
What To Do When You're In Love With Your Sister's Widower?

"How Do I Keep My Sullen Daughter From Alienating My Wealthy Boyfriend?"

I recently married my dream husband. We have incredible chemistry and a shared commitment to each other. When we disagree, we settle our differences by balancing logic and gut feelings. That is, until we came to our disagreement on which laptop I should buy to replace my Mac PowerBook. We are both in the software industry and have strong preferences on which operating system we prefer. I have been a happy Mac user for years. My husband can't stand the Mac, and his only explanation is the image associated with Mac users. Whenever he sees me with my PowerBook, he thinks of the "Get a Mac" commercials where Justin Long, who is a Mac, ridicules John Hodgman, a PC. I agree with him that the commercials are obnoxious, but they have nothing to do with the usability of the Mac. My husband said jokingly that I could get a Mac only over the divorce papers. I don't believe he was joking. It's getting to a point that we cannot discuss this without getting our blood boiling.

Dorothy Parker: "Dream husband?" Dream on.

Lady Idina Sackville: Bolt, my dear! Bolt!

Henry VIII: You are discouretous, Madam. He'd do well to cast you out.

Sir Thomas More: With all due respect, marriage is an Athenic weaving together of families, of two souls with their individual fates and destinies, of time and eternity - everyday life married to the timeless mysteries of the soul.

Marlene Dietrich: Oh, just let him have his way. Men are such tiresome children. You can always have your Mac on the side.

Jack Kerouac: Fuck monogamy.

Joseph Smith: Now, now, your husband knows best. Don't tire your brain with machinery and machinations.

Marie Antoinette: Je ne comprende pas. Why don't you have separate chateaux?

Ned Ludd: What's wrong with a sharpened stick and some foolscap?

Job: First-world problems. You haz them.

Computer Love [Slate]

Earlier: "How Do I Explain To My Friend That Her Bad Mothering Drove Her Daughter To Suicide?"
What To Do When You're In Love With Your Sister's Widower?

"How Do I Keep My Sullen Daughter From Alienating My Wealthy Boyfriend?"

Dear Judy,

When her boyfriend broke up with her, a young girl — 17 — committed suicide. She is (was) the daughter of a longtime friend. And to put it candidly, my friend was a so-so mother. Always criticizing the girl, never praising her, telling her she was "fat" or that her grades weren't up to par. Like that.

So I really think my friend's attitude contributed to that poor girl's suicide. My friend talks about it a lot, obviously, keeps pinning the tragedy on the boy who broke off with her daughter. And keeps saying she was always "a good mother."

What should I say? If anything? Should I correct her? In my mind she was an awful mother, and maybe she should acknowledge that.

Lidia

Dorothy Parker: If I trusted you behind the wheel and I wasn't already sipping a martini, you'd have just driven me to drink.

Ayn Rand: How does this serve your rational self-interest? You are a fool.

Freud: Seriously?

Leopold and Loeb: Our superior intellect impels this kind of honesty. Carry on.

Saint Paul: I hate women.

Agamemnon: You know, "acknowledging it?" Doesn't really help that much.

Joan Crawford: Maybe she was fat.

Hume: Honesty is part of letting go. It is seeing the need to let go. (The desire for humility comes from admitting that one is prideful.)

Innocent III: The only sinner here is the miserable girl who's now in hell. Let's pray for her.

Edith Piaf: It was love! IT WAS LOVE, I SAY!

H.L. Mencken: Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends. And you make me glad to be dead.

Judas: You're a good friend.

Aurelia Plath: Go to hell, go directly to hell.

[Jack Kerouac was not apparently available for comment at this time.]

A Second Opinion, The Oversharing Widower And A Guilty Mother [Obit]

Earlier: What To Do When You're In Love With Your Sister's Widower?

"How Do I Keep My Sullen Daughter From Alienating My Wealthy Boyfriend?"

Writes the seeker,

Q. I am a widow with a 15-year-old daughter. I have been going out with someone for six months but he lives and works abroad and I usually go and see him. On the few occasions when he has come to stay with me and my daughter in England, she has been absolutely poisonous towards him. (She is just jealous. He is a very nice man.) Now he has invited us both to stay with him for a fortnight in the summer in his holiday house in Italy and I am at my wits' end to know how I can get my daughter to behave on this holiday and prevent her from putting him off me because the ‘baggage' is too difficult to handle. What can I do?

Freud: I'm leaving this one alone.

Marie Antoinette: I don't understand. Why don't you just stay at separate chateaux?

Vladimir Nabokov: Urbane, European boyfriend? Bratty 15-year-old daughter? Selfish, widowed mother? This should end well!

Joan Crawford: Isn't there a bathroom somewhere she should be cleaning?

Nathan Bedford Forrest: I hate Italians.

Little Edie Beale: She's jealous? YOU'RE JEALOUS!

Oscar Wilde: I find you unspeakably tedious.

Dorothy Parker:
You're boyfriend's married,
You're daughter's a pill.
I wish I didn't, but
I know that drill.

Lizzie Borden: Watch your back.

Dare Wright: Why don't you just live together, do elaborate photoshoots and play with dolls? What is this "going out" of which you speak?

Joseph Smith: And why is this young woman yet unmarried?

Jack Kerouac: Fuck You

Your problems solved [SpectatorUK]

Earlier: What To Do When You're In Love With Your Sister's Widower?