I found an intriguing household tip from Tom Brennan on what to do if you need to open a sealed envelope without ruining it:

Put in the freezer for a few hours, then slide a knife under the flap. The envelope can then be resealed.

Here's a tip for the neatniks:

Blood stains on clothes? Not to worry! Just pour a little hydrogen peroxide on a cloth and proceed to wipe off every drop of blood. Works every time! Now, where to put the body?

But speaking in purely hypothetical terms, thanks to Deadwood, we all know where to put the body. Feed it to the hogs! A large Burmese python will work too, but you might have to rub some rat or rabbit scent on the corpse to coax the python into eating it. Humans aren't their normal prey.

A friend I knew who did a lot of construction told me that reinforced concrete piers are plenty wide enough to hold a body, but I'd have long-term concerns about weakening the structural support so I'd want to tightly wrap the body with cyclone fencing as well before the pour. This would compensate for the inevitable hollowing which might take place over time.

But if done to obstruct justice, any of these methods of body disposal would be wrong. And as they say in Philadelphia, "eee-liggle."

Is it ever right to dispose of a body? Well, I'm not sure about the "rightness" of this, but I think it's at least theoretically possible to come into possession of an unwanted dead body which was not the result of murder. If you came home from a long trip and discovered that a burglar broke into your house and died, well, the decent thing to do would be to call the police, but suppose you just weren't in the mood for decency. Or paperwork. Is there really a moral distinction between burying the corpse in your yard and dumping it in a vacant lot? I don't know. I'd never suggest that anyone become a test case, either -- either as a gravedigger or a grave occupant!

Questions like these are best posed hypothetically in classes on criminal law or ethics, and not in a blog.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I neglected to address the ghoulish utilitarian aspects of dead bodies. May the moral relativists forgive me!

Well, Jeremy Bentham's invaluable personal example aside, our remains are worth at least a few hundred dollars....

UPDATE: Envelope freezing does not seem to work with older sealed mail; I suspect it would only be of value with recently moistened flaps. (Somehow, that didn't come out as dry and scientific sounding as I thought it might....)

MORE: I hope regular readers will remember the fact that today is Friday the Thirteenth, and treat my attempt to mollify the forces of darkness accordingly. As Lord Vader opined earlier,

We are all connected.

Anyone who awakens to the Force knows this. The divisive issue is what to do with this knowledge.

MORE: Or am I sounding like Darth Winer? As the saying goes,

Do not be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed.