The Crazy Trail Derailed
Reflections on Ozzy, bike riding, odd burial ideas and human mortality
Sad news dear reader.
It seems that Ozzy Osbourne just died.
It’s shocking really. Given his lifestyle and the stunts he pulled on stage, I’m surprised he lasted this long. I guess not everyone can be a member of the 27 club.
But given his love of darkness and horror, I’m curious about what his funeral would be like.
Right?
So dear reader it behooves us all to ask ourselves, when it comes to end of life preparations, what would Ozzy do?
My guess?
He’ll go pure vanilla, cremation then some sort of ornate Victorian looking urne.
Something tasteful for his ashes…
I guess, given how many records he sold, he earned a nice container somewhere.
Though there is a small part of me that wishes he and everyone had their ashes stuffed in a chock full of nuts coffee tin like Donnie in The Big Lebowski, I’ve had some other fantasies about Ozzy’s burrial.
Most of which?
They are how I imagine Vikings or other great warriors would go.
Righ?
Ozzy bit the head off bats.
He could be fed to dogs and it would be fitting.
It would be even better if Sharron, his wife walked those dogs, let them shit on the beach and forced some municipal employee to pick up the turds. I can almost hear him right meow:
I’m Ozzy the turd! Rock and roll! You’ll know it if you tread on me!
Though it would not be dignified at all if he were to end up in a small, tied plastic baggie tied to a fence to flap in the breeze.
Right?
That’s a bit too much - even for Ozzy.
Really though, Ozzy should be left on the top of a high hill for the crows and other scavenger birds to get him.
Sadly though, the birds wouldn’t get that much. Most of him would be eaten by the maggots.
When flies start laying eggs on decaying human flesh, where do you imagine they start? The eyes? They are soft and most and likely ‘good eatin’.
Or perhaps they’d burrow into a person’s ears and start eating their brains.
For a while I thought that maybe the worms would begin in the snot of the nose. It has great growing conditions given how warm and most most nose insides are.
The big drawback there? Snot can be more than a little salty.
What people don’t think about is the fact that if you leave a human corpse in the sun long enough it heats up and the billions of bacteria that are in your guts?
The build up pressure until your belly explodes.
This is when the birds really come in - as the post maggot chunk crew.
And mammals have enough gut bacteria to eventually blow up.
An aside dear reader, if you ever find a dead seal when you’re out for a surf session, stay the fuck away from it. If it blew up you could be impaled by an infected seal rib should the beast go off nearby you.
I’ve seen exploded seals before. It’s kinda like a meat grinder for crows. The bellies blow up and the crows have easier access to the shattered mess.
Out on the trail this past week, a few days before Ozzy smoked his last sweet leaf, I thought about all of this dying stuff - not because I was suicidal.
But because the ride in the middle bit was so fucking hard.
I was imagining lying down on the trail and just letting the dogs and crows get me. It was there that I wondered aloud about the maggots.
I was thinking about how would a body break down when left out in the sun too long. Having thought about it a lot I came to the following conclusion: Even in death, I do not want worms and other creatures crawling into and out of my arsehole.
But then?
After all of these wonderful thoughts, I saw Zeke and Columbian waiting for me.
I wasn’t alone and I told them and myself that I’d complete this painful task.
So I made my mind and will turn to steel. I got hard and blocked out the pain and any lingering sense of sadness and doubt.
I doubled down on the toxic masculinity and ate a couple of candies.
I spun one foot in front of the other, my cranks, chain and wheels making endless circles as the earth circles the sun.
We weren’t going anywhere special, just heading home.
Just like Ozzy.
Because progress is as real as a bike ride.
We begin as we end and end as we begun - with blurry eyes and no fucking idea of what’s next.
Stay cheerful you bloodsucking fiends.
