frozen heads

frozen heads Frozen Heads

Eclectic Ubiquity - Column 2

by L.A. Dudik

Recently I decided to clean out the refrigerator in the lab I manage at work. Its an old fridge and builds up massive glacier formations in the freezer. So I turned the thing off and went about my merry way for a few hours. When I came back it was actually possible to stick your hand into the freezer so I started pulling out pieces of ice. I also pulled out several bottles of chemicals and a package in a brown paper wrapper. The chemicals I set aside but the brown paper parcel was a bit squishy. I brought the package up towards my face to get a better look. Then the smell hit me, the putrid, sickening smell of rotting meat. Carefully pulling back the wrapping, I was confronted with a part of a human head, the temporal bone, actually. What was part of a human head doing in my lab freezer, you ask? Rotting, yep, mostly rotting. While staring at the head, I started to fantasize. It seemed like the only normal reaction to being confronted with part of somebody's skull. What, for instance, would Jean-Luc Picard say when he found part of a human head in the freezer in his ready room? "Number One, dispose of this, now. Make it so." I liked that idea quite a bit, making somebody else get rid of the silly thing. My thoughts drifted onward, what would Captain Kirk have said to a head taking up space next to his frozen twinkies? "Spock! Bones! There's a... head in my freezer. Beam... it... out... of here!"

Not having a transporter, I imagined what Duncan McLeod would say under the circumstance, "Richie! I thought I told you, you take their quickening with you, not their head!"

Kwai-Chang Caine to son, "Peter, it is bad frozen food karma to put a dead head in the freezer. The peas will never again be in harmony with the carrots."

Dave Lister onboard the Red Dwarf would quip, "Hey Rimmer, look, it's Mr. Flibble's brain! Gross, man. Think it would taste good in a vindaloo?"

I started to giggling, which my co-workers found strange. But I was holding a rotting piece of a human corpse. I couldn't let the idea go, so my mind branched out to other universes. Commander Sisko of Deep Space 9 was heard to say, "Major Kira, I don't care what Bajoran holiday it is, I'm not cooking that."

Commander John Sheridan, onboard Babylon 5, "Mr. Garibaldi, would you please tell the those ambassadors to stop storing their snacks in my refrigerator!"

Nick Knight, Toronto Homicide detective and vampire to Dr. Natalie Lambert, coroner, "Nat, I thought you weren't going to bring your work home anymore? There's a frozen head next to the Hagen-Daas and you complain about all the bottles of blood in my refrigerator!"

Yoda to Luke Skywalker, "Strong with the force you are, but stronger the smell is of that rotting head."

Then from somewhere deep inside the recesses of my frontal lobes came the phrase, "Defrosting heads! We don't need no stinkin' defrosting heads!"

By the time I'd gone through all the different scenarios in my head, I was no longer grossed out by the temporal bone I was holding. All right, I was still slightly queasy but with a slight laugh I tossed it in a red biohazard disposal bag and put it out in the hall. Biohazard Waste would come and pick it up later that night - no questions asked, I'd like to point out. I still liked the idea of beaming it out into space better, or preferably into the car belonging do whoever had left it in the freezer, but you make do with the technology available.

For all of you who just have to know why the head was there in the first place. It had been used for work on an implantable hearing aid. They just sort of forgot about it after the initial trials had been completed.