Guest Anon: I said this on the other thread about the crematorium ("BS: I think there's a song challenge here!!!") when this situation was compared to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and I'll say it again here: Trying to draw a comparison between this situation and any terrorist activity is like comparing apples and oranges.
No, I'm not going to make light of journalist Daniel Pearl's kidnapping, torture and murder by terrorists. But the people whose bodies are in question here were not terrorized, kidnapped, tortured or murdered by Ray Brent Marsh. He is a corrupt businessman, not a murderer or a terrorist (as far as we know!). He and apparently his parents, too, have been swindling customers for years. Part of the definition of satire is "a work holding up human vices to ridicule or scorn; trenchant sarcasm used to discredit vice" (Webster's Dictionary), and that was my intention in writing a parody about the Marshes' theft by deception, by reflecting the anger and disgust felt by the bereaved toward Marsh as they are forced to deal with the decomposing remains of their loved ones and arrange – again – for cremation of those remains once they're found.
Oddly, the Marshes' plot was uncovered because a passerby noticed a skull on the property, not because any – ANY, in 15 to 20 years! – of the survivors of the deceased noticed that the urns they were given contained concrete dust or wood ashes or potting soil. It's hard for me to believe that the funeral directors, at the very least, didn't check the contents of the bags sent to them by Marsh before passing on the urns to the bereaved. How could anyone mistake potting soil for ashes... if they had but looked?!?
Now the local news stations are advising people to shop carefully for a crematorium and ask questions before going ahead with a cremation, as there appears to be little legal regulation over them. It's the old story: let the buyer beware.
As for my insensitivity in posting the above satirical parody (please note that I forewarned people that they were about to read a satirical parody!), I've already apologized for any pain I might have caused or exacerbated thereby. I've already explained the reasons I wrote what I wrote. I've already explained the way I feel about the crematorium situation in Georgia. I've already asked whether people think I ought to try to have the song removed from the thread, and no one has answered in the affirmative. I've done all I can do about it. If people still feel the need to read something they've been told is satirical and then take offense at it, so be it. That's the chance one takes when one writes satire.