Playing With Dead Things: The Mummification of Beavis I, Part Nine: Greasy, Dead Rats and their Various Uses.

So... where were we, again?

I guess that looks kinda holy...

Oh yeah right, purifying oils. Right, right. Gotcha.

Most of what you see here is palm oil, liberally mixed with the rarer stuff, and slathered by the handful all over Beav inside and out. The dry, crunchy rat is now a greasy, slightly sticky rat, having just traded a considerable portion of his dignity for a rot-resistance upgrade.

With what's left of his fur's fluffiness plastered down, you can really make out all the protruding bones. Little batsard looks like a garbage bag full of coat hangers.

That saucepan still smells a little funny.

With the anointing finished with, it's time to fill the body cavity and get started on the wrapping. I'm tired of lookin' at poor Beav in this pitiful condition. Let's get stately, already.

What'cher seein' here is the bootstrapped double boiler we whipped up to melt the various resins we would need to finish up the mummfication. It's just an old tin can plopped in the middle of a saucepan. We initially attempted to melt the resins the safe way, with the saucepan on the stove burner filled with water and the resin in the tin, but before the mummification was done with we were just sticking the tin can itself on the stove burner. LIVIN' ON TH' EDGE.

Good enough for the baby Jesus, good enough for Beavis.

What the double boiler took on its maiden voyage to the stovetop.

It's easy to find myrrh-scented incense. Not so easy to find actual myrrh. That's probably because no matter how little you use, IT'S ALWAYS TOO FUCKING MUCH. Myrrh is a face-puncher formulated to drown out camel BO and desert nomad funk, and it doesn't let you forget that for one goddamned second. The smoke is thick and white and penetrating when it melts, and God in heaven help you if you burn it. I can still smell it on Beav's wrappings a year later.

Gut replacements.

Once the myrrh was melted, little pillows of gauze were soaked in it and packed into Beav's empty stomach. Yet more perfuming, and yet more anti-bacterial chemical warfare. Along with the disinfecting bath and the anointing, this is kind of like wearing a belt and suspenders. But better overkill than underestimation. I'm sure some poor shaven bastard in a linen loincloth and gothy eyeshadow learned that the hard way a billion years ago.

The flat look wasn't working for him, anyway.

The abdominal cavity, packed and ready to go.

Except, of course, for the finishing touch.

He gets two hearts. Like in "V."

Beavis' heart is still intact in his chest cavity, but the natron had shrunk and flattened it so completely that I have to say, for the officially designated seat of the soul, it left me totally unimpressed. And if I wasn't doing backflips, Anubis was probablly gonna be less than thrilled, too. So we broke out the backup scarab and supplemented a bit.

This particular scarab was originally a bead, and had a hole drilled through it lengthwise for stringing on a necklace. Not ideal, but the perfect size and material for the job.

This took the longest.

And so we begin.

Anointed, en-scarabed and packed full of myrrh, Beav managed to make himself even more tedious than before by insisting on being swathed in four layers of bandages. For a strange little dead thing, he's really quite demanding.

Imagine trying to get the melted amalgam of all this nonsense out of your hair. Then, and only then, will you understand my pain.

The linen bandages were secured with a combination of pine sap, beeswax, and melted frankincense tears. Again, the mummfication was as accurate as I could manage, with allowances made for my fanciful artistic poverty and simple matters of accessibility. The pine sap, for example, wasn't from wherever the hell the Egyptians got it. It was from an American pinion pine. But tree blood is tree blood. Both sorts refuse to come out of the carpet after three hours of desperate tugging and swearing, so both are good enough for me.

IS NOT LAGER. DO NOT DRINK.

The pine sap, beeswax, and frankincense, after a round in the double boiler. Much to my surprise, it got a little foamy. That made it surprsingly easy to work with. Much to my lack of surpise, my apartment stank like a head shop for the next three days.

Hooray?

The stunningly undramatic First Application of Bandages.

I don't remember where I got the plastic knife, because I don't make a habit of saving the cutlery from my take-out orders. But I'm sure glad I had it. The magical incense goo stuck to everything real good. If I'd used real silverware, I'd probably had to of thrown it away when I was done.

The knife melted a little bit more each time I used it to secure a bandage, but I only needed it for the first couple of layers, anyway.