SONG CHALLENGE WINNER!

Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer, But Rita Got Returned To Wal-Mart OMAHA, Nebraska (Reuters) - A Nebraska woman who received an ornate box for Christmas and returned it to Wal-Mart without looking inside discovered later it contained the ashes of her recently deceased sister, a newspaper reported on Friday.  Judy Money received the box as a gift from her brother who lives in Iowa.  But after unwrapping the package on Christmas Eve she saw the box had a broken knob and decided to return it to Wal-Mart without ever looking at the contents inside, the Omaha World-Herald reported.  When Money later confessed to her brother that she had returned his gift, he told her the box contained the ashes of their sister, who had died Dec. 11, the Herald said.  Marvin Tippery, Money's brother, told the Herald he was shocked when he found out she had returned the box.  "No, no, you didn't! Your sister was in there," the Herald quoted him as telling Money.  Money told the Herald she made a mad dash back to Wal-Mart, but the box had already been thrown out with the trash.  Money and her brother finally found the box on Thursday amid trash piles at an area landfill.  "My prayers have been answered," she told the Herald.  "Just the thought of having her in the dump was awful."


The Boys of the Cemetery by derrymacash

derrymacash's Comments:  Inspired by Aine's challenge, the following ditty is based on that great oul'-timer "The Boys Of Tandragee" (coincidentally a place not very far from derrymacash's birthplace!).

Good luck and good health to all lovers of song
I'll sing a few lines and I won't keep you long
About how my oul' life began to go wrong
The day that I took to the dyin'.
Death is an ailment we'd all love to shift
We'd love to turn down the burdensome gift
That causes our friends and our kin and our kith
To start weepin' and wailin' and cryin'

CHORUS:
So here's to the boys that are deep underground
Spending their death-rest snug, warm and sound
Of care and concern they are mercif'lly free
Those rollickin' boys in the cemetery

To be buried with honour it was my desire
Laid out in my coffin for all to admire
Not to be burnt like a log in the fire
And raked out like a grate in the morning
But it was my misfortune to die unattended
By family or even by those I'd befriended
And so things didn't happen quite as I'd intended
(A cause of even more mourning!)

CHORUS

Laid out in the morgue with a corpse on my right
One on my left and one just out of sight
What one of those boyos said filled me with fright
The prospect I found quite alarming
For twenty one days in this fridge you'll remain
But if by that time you haven't been claimed
The default resort is a dip in the flames
Your oul' corpse will be ripe for the warming

CHORUS

I watched corpses come and I watched corpses leave
Relatives mourned and relatives grieved
But yet from my fate there was no reprieve
They took me away for crematin'
As the oul' flames were beginnin' to burn
I cursed all my family, deserted and spurned
And then they were sweepin' me into an urn
And up on a shelf I lay waitin'

CHORUS

A computer analysis of my dee-en-ah
Proved kinship with Judy in far Omaha
And so they packed up my funeral jar
And despatched it with no special trappin's
And it bein' the time that we all know as Yule
Jude met the postman and thought "Oh how cool!"
She started to dribble and started to drool
As she tore like a beast at the wrappin'

CHORUS

But her hopes for a gift of renown were soon dashed
She moaned with dismay "A box full of ash!"
For she had been naughty, haughty and brash
Bitchy and mean and unpleasant
And she imagined St Nick sort the bad and the good
In the former compartment placing our Jude
And scooping the remnants of burnt-out firewood
And making them into her present

CHORUS

And so with a clang and a bang and a crash
Jude picked up the box containing my ash
And chucked it into the bin that stores trash
No piper, no fancy oration!
And now I must lie in a stinking oul' pit
Surrounded by fish-heads, cabbage leaves, shit
If I was alive, I would issue a writ
And seek some just reparation

CHORUS

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