Apparently Mummy2 is about to open in theatres everywhere and then some, but since all we have where I live is carmike [Equivalency, -0-] I’ll see it next year on dvd along with Pearl Harbor. Unless I can be enticed to drive 90 miles to Forsyth, MT.

Article, By David Blend [From an Internet site...]

Most folks don’t worry much about what happens to their bodies after they die. There are simply bigger things to worry about at a time like that. But every once in a while you hear about some weirdo who wants to be buried in a fish tank, or the old lady who insisted on motoring off into the hereafter in her beloved Avon Lady-pink Cadillac. And if that’s not eccentric enough for you, there’s a Salt Lake City resident who calls himself Summum Bonum Amen Ra, and who offers a far more thorough and magnificent means of protecting yourself from the eternal dirt-bath than a luxury automobile could ever provide. Mr. Ra wants to turn you into a mummy, and he’s not kidding around.

Ra (born Claude “Corky” Nowell -- he changed his name to mean “sum total” in Latin) says he first became interested in mummification in 1975, just as the Federal Trade Commission cracked down on funeral homes by requiring them to inform clients that after two weeks in the ground, their seemingly well-preserved loved ones would look like “a big pile of mush and bones.” A licensed funeral director, Ra was petitioning the state of Utah to let him open a winery, but was stymied by the state’s teetotaling bureaucracy. Ra discovered a federal loophole allowing for production of wine for religious ceremonies, and, while studying religion in pursuit of his license, he became infatuated with ancient Egyptian philosophy.

Soon after, Ra met John Chew, who directs the Institute for Funeral Service Education and Anatomy at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida. Together they came up with an idea so old it seemed new again -- mummification. “We wanted a process that would preserve the body’s cells forever, not just two weeks,” he says. After 10 years of research and politicking, Ra’s company, Summum, obtained its patents. In 1985 they snared their first client, a 35-year-old computer network administrator. The sale wasn’t particularly hard; like many of Summum’s clients, the man called them out of curiosity and made his decision quickly.

Since then, Summum has signed up more than 100 would-be immortals, not to mention a heavenly choir of once-frisky family pets (pet mummification starts at $14,000, depending on the size of the animal.) All of them will eventually have their organs removed, washed and replaced; then their bodies will be dipped in chemicals and encased in an amber-filled bronze or stainless steel outer shell, known as a mummiform. As you’d expect, the process isn’t cheap: After tallying up transportation, preparation, burial and an artfully designed mummiform, you’re looking at a minimum of $70,000. Insurance companies do offer payment plans -- called pre-need policies -- and many of them allow for mummification.

Summum is a full-service mummifier, too. For a modest fee, they’ll be happy to design a mausoleum to house your remains -- one L.A. family paid $2.3 million for their corpses’ condo, and a woman in New York coughed up $11 million for her final resting place, which she’ll share with her vast collection of cats, nine of whom have already passed and been mummified. The 60-by-40-by-18-foot mausoleum sits on the woman’s estate, and, like all Summum mausoleums, is constructed from solid granite. While they lack the kind of intricate booby traps one would find in an Indiana Jones flick, Summum’s structures do feature foot-thick walls to keep out worms, grave-robbers and nosy reporters. “You couldn’t get into them without a bulldozer or a large truck of explosives,” says Ra. Summum also plans to construct two burial complexes for clients, one in the mountains outside Salt Lake City, the other outside Las Vegas (when your former spiritual adviser tells you that mummification means gambling with your immortal soul, maybe he won’t be kidding.)

The biggest problem facing Ra’s team right now is the fact that no one’s died yet. While Summum’s staff has plenty of experience mummifying med school cadavers, so far none of Summum’s human clients have passed into the hereafter. “We’ve been trying to get them to die, but they just don’t seem to want to,” jokes Ra, with the morbid humor common among funeral directors, nursing home chefs and Silicon Valley headhunters.

When the inevitable does arrive, the clients are free to customize their mummiforms -- one client has chosen an Oscar statue depicting his likeness, while another has requested a pharaoh-style Egyptian get-up. “The only people too outlandish are the ones who won’t pay their bills,” says Ra, who describes his own mummiform as “rather plain.” The pyramid that will one day house Ra’s mummiform, however, is anything but. The 40-by-26-foot structure is mathematically modeled after the Egyptian pyramids (it follows the “golden mean”), and is currently the home of Summum’s winery and school.

So what sorts of people choose mummification over more traditional last rites like burial, cremation or the trunk of a Chrysler off the Jersey shore? The reasons for mummification vary from client to client -- some firmly believe in supernatural reincarnation, while others simply have egos that refuse to die with their bodies. Though Summum’s client list is confidential, Ra does claim to have enlisted a rock star into the ranks. Ultimately, says Ra, “people who choose to be mummified have a belief that they’re different.” We couldn’t agree more.

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