In 1968, anticipating my imminent demise and wishing to go to the grave looking sharp, I took the precaution of having myself mummified. My major organs were carefully removed by eminent Egyptian physicians and stored in special alabaster jars. (Except for my spleen, whose jar was knocked over and subsequently consumed by field-mice, and my brain, which I still need.)
The only problem is, I have lived far longer than anticipated, and have, as a result, had to endure years of weekly embalming sessions just to keep up the façade. I am normally very co-operative with the embalmers, except when they attempt to remove my brains through my nostrils with an elongated hook. But, with my hollow chest cavity replenished weekly with preserving spices and emolients, and my withered skin slathered with a rare, fragrant oil from the Orient, I am secure in the knowledge that the embalmers generally know what they are doing, and I try not to get in their way.
My mausoleum, too, is being prepared for my expiration. Artisans are at work painstakingly hand-carving a sarcophagus of solid gold, and labor daily on elaborate wall frescoes depicting key events in my life. That way, I may spend an eternity blissfully reliving such glorious times as when The Onion reached a land-mark 50,000 circulation and when I stabbed Brickton Atlas-Trumpet editor P. Oliver Gummidge 17 times with an awl. Crate-loads of solid-gold tubes and catheters, cod-liver oil, and a platinum-coated iron lung have been placed in my burial-chamber as well.
There is, however, a slight wrinkle in the funeral plans. When I pass on, naturally, a few dozen of my loyal servants will be buried alive with me so that they may serve me in the after-life. But there is no way that I will permit that hideous metallic ro-bot nurse of mine to eternally insert thermometers up my rectum! I will simply have to find another nurse. But whom? Certainly not my previous one, the foul traitoress who up and left me without notice!
Now I live in cold fear, not of my actual demise, but that I shall die, and that they will ship that evil mechanical ro-bot down to my burial chamber to forever stare at me with its menacing red eyes!
T. Herman Zweibel, the great grandson of Onion founder Friedrich Siegfried Zweibel, was born in 1868, became editor of The Onion at age 20, and persisted in various editorial posts until his launching into space in 2001. Zweibel’s name became synonymous with American business success in the 20th century. Many consider him the “Father Of American Journalism,” also the title of his well-known 1943 biography, written by Norman Rombauer.
