Dead

Whoops! Maybe you were looking for Your future?

Virgil and Dante tickle the dead.

Dead (also spelled Ded) is the condition of being unalive, or aliven't, and the opposite of being undead. Doctors have trouble reversing this illness as it stems from an acute case of no longer living. Dead can be literal- "Your dog is dead, because I ate it - I'm Asian its a cultural thing." And it can also be figurative- "She laughed, and it made me feel dead inside." or "I laid down on the couch dead tired and had a snack, but at least the barking had been stopped."

Natural Progression

Organisms on Earth go through a life cycle with many stages, unless their name is Luke Osborn, in which case they live forever in a state of being so ugly and having such a big head that death does not want them (or Noel Coward, Where Uglyness is not an Option). Dead being the tertiary stage, preceded by Life, and Life after Divorce, though some experts allow for the stages of "Political Death" (when politicians embrace ideas for the betterment of their fellow man) and "Career Death" (nailing the boss' daughter). Though not identical, the two can (and often do) overlap. Other commonly referred to "stages" of death are "Brain Death" (see Paris Hilton) and "MegaDeath", a stage of death in which one becomes a super-rich, revenge-seeking, hell-bent, former member of Metallica with a substance abuse problem. This may be accompanied by a disease called "The 1980's" and high speed shred guitar playing.

Doctors have noted that all life functions cease when someone is declared dead with the exception of out of body experiences, reuniting with dead pets, visions of a white light, and obligations to appear on stage at ten o' clock at the Monte Carlo casino for the next thirty years. Death is the end of a biological process as all all biological functions stop. Being dead is a strange feeling as one cannot feel it, logically speaking, and reincarnation is a very gruesome process.

Some people seek to circumnavigate the cycle, throwing the system out of balance and causing huge paperwork headaches for St. Peter. The only way to successfully return from the dead is to file a form #CR-18B in septuplicate with Oprah, the IRS, Abraham Lincoln, and the extradimensional entity known as The Fonz.

Elvis Presley pictured at his nursing home in 2012.

People Who Won't Stay Dead and then Return to Life

Throughout history individuals have sought to remain alive, or return from the dead. One of the earlier high profile individuals to do so for three days and four nights was Jesus. This act was followed by many imitators over the following centuries including Nostradamus, Zombies and/or Frankenstein, Joan of Arc, Carmine, Harry Houdini, my depression, Elvis Presley, William Afton, Jerry Garcia (Garcia was dead long before he actually died, by the way), and Kenny McCormick (died a total of 102 times). Often those who refuse to stay dead (and lack the proper paperwork) are hunted down by Death. (This is known as the Jeanne Calment Policy, by the way.) And also Justin Bieber is dead, but the public has kept him alive with cryogenics (thus his voice communicates at a frequency more appropriately geared for interaction with dolphins)

The living pretending to be dead are known as Goth. The dead pretending to be alive become black metal vocalists.

All Minecrafters die many times. Then they just respawn. Remember, it's ok to die, since if you die, you can just "come back" by pressing a button infront of you. Logic. Nothing in games, or the internet, is false.

Things That Won't Stay Dead and then Return to Life

The warthog has died, but he lived. Therefore he is immortal.

People Who Won't Stay Dead and Then Become Undead

In 62 AD Emperor Nero was the first human to die, and then return to "life" as one of the undead. This was due in part to a prophecy in the book of Revelations Chapter 6, Paragraph 4, Subsection 28-

"And the beast which was and is not: the same also is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into destruction."

The prophet John declared that Nero was the eighth head of the beast, and that he would come back, and his word was Jewish law. Other notable people to return from the dead as undead include- Pharoh's Tutankhamun through Cleto IV, Julius Caesar's slave- Veronicus, Popes Final Fantasy IX through John Paul II, Hannibal, Rob Zombie, David Bowie, and noted surgeon Jack the Ripper.

Controversy Surrounding Sleep vs. Dead

Origins

Differences arising from the condition known as sleep, and being dead began early on in the Garden of Eden with the death of the first human- Abel. One day God was spying on Adam and Eve, when he noticed Cain was out for a stroll. God appeared before Cain and asked him where his brother was. Cain replied- "He's sleeping in the Land of Nod". Which by all accounts was the first euphemism used for the condition of being dead, but God didn't pick up on that at that time being distracted by that crafty snake he had let loose in the garden. This led to the line between sleep and dead to be further blurred in the future- "Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him up" (Jesus 11:11) (From the Christian Bible also known as the "Bible of Bibles" and the "Bathroom Book of Bathroom Books.")

The Bronze Age

Socrates debated with Aristotle on the differences between being asleep and being dead. Socrates maintained that Aristotle was- "As good as dead if he didn't shut up and leave him to catch up on his sleep." The debate raged until his trial, when Athena the goddess of Athens sentenced him to be shown "what it is to be really dead". Socrates was then forced to commit suicide by drinking a clover cocktail prepared by a jury of his peers. After the hemlock phase of the trial he was declared dead.

The Dark Ages

Before the advent of capital punishment, murder was rampant and an easy way to get yourself dead. Often confusion between the stages of sleep and dead would arise during these primitive murder years. Rocks, clubs, primitive poisons, and even bigger rocks left doubt on the actual deadness of a person. "I see that their eyes are gouged out, but are they just sleeping?" People who were missing were considered sleeping until found dead. One man set out to define the state and quality of being dead once and for all- Isaac Newton. Newton (in his common Elven tongue) stated this in his first law-

"Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare."

Which literally translates as- "A corpse does not start to breathe on it's own, unless acted upon by another force, and certainly it's a corpse if you find it in a bag of manure."

Those Middle Years That Lasted an Age or Two

Galileo posed his famous question- "If you're sleeping, and you are killed in a dream- Do you wake up dead in real life?" This postulate would go unanswered until the emergence of one Freddy Kruegar, hundreds of years later. Copernicus asked of Galileo- "If I'm sleeping alone, and have a wet dream, do my screams make a sound?"

The Italian Renaissance Festivals

Niccolo Machiavelli declared- "I would rather be dead, than go to one of Dante's stupid 'Inferno Rave Parties'." Around this time sleeping with the dead became all the rage. In coffins one could find a sleeping person, a dead person, or a vampire taking a little nappy-poo. Leonardo da Vinci found that hacking up dead subjects, and drawing their insides more palatable than the unpleasantness of a subject awakening to find their small intestine being measured.

The Modern Age

"You can tell the Ayatollah that tonight, Salman Rushdie sleeps with the fishes." An age where the confusion of sleeping and deadness continued full force. People were said to be- "Dead to the world" (while sleeping and still fully alive), "Having the sleep of the dead", and a true anachronism- "God is Dead". When it was well known that God had just been asleep at the wheel since the trial and execution of Joan of Arc.

The Future Age

In the age of the future, there will be no death. Human remains will be turned into liquid an injected into the unborn, thus passing on the experiences of the elderly. At least that's what "The Matrix" seemed to suggest after 3 days of nothing but Red Bull.

Ways to be Sure You're Dead

1. You have just committed suicide.
2. You have just been murdered.
3. You are floating in the air above somebody who looks like your twin, who is hooked up to a heart monitor and an EEG, both of which are flat-lining.
4. You wake up one morning and you find that the grim reaper is taking notes on you.
5. You have your own planet and you're reading a to-do list on how to get into the Celestial Kingdom.
6. You have a metal cap welded to your head, weighing you down, that keeps your lips from reaching the surface of a frozen lake. Also, there are demons.
7. Everyone is speaking in Iambic Pentameter and no one wants to give you directions.
8. Rich people who you are sure are not sleeping, but most certainly are dead, are there panhandling.
9. Your name is written in the Death Note.
10. St. Peter is standing around telling jokes.
11. The last words you remember thinking were- "What did Oscar Wilde say...?"
12. That bad taste in your mouth is dirt.
13. Many people around you, that you love, are crying
14. You can see an "insert coins to continue" screen, but you don't have any quarters left.
15. You jump up in the air, fall down, you hear the game over tone and it says game over on the screen.
16. You're Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense.
17. That gurney you were lying on has suddenly disappeared, along with everything else.
18. Your wife is smiling at you.
19. You feel like you’re alive, but not.
20. U didn't confirm that ur not dead on izuded.today.
21. You feel like you jumped in a freezing lake and froze.

Is Death Better Than Life?

No. Well, possibly, depending on your definition of good. Maybe you've just broken up with your girlfriend, or just discovered you had AIDS and couldn't just live it large anymore (with one obvious exception). However, studies by the Dead Education Association of Dead (DEAD) have shown that in excess of 99.999% of newly-deads would consider the You Are Dead state to be bad, not good.

One Final Note

It's okay to die, we all do at some point! Except if you hook yourself up to computers and turn yourself into a horrible abomination that should have died a long time ago. Pizza Pizza!