From The Horrible And Ironic Ways To Stay Dead Department:

BBC: Frozen parents cremated by son
A Frenchman who fought a long-running legal battle to keep his parents' bodies in a deep-freeze has cremated them after the freezer broke down.

Remy Martinot's parents were frozen soon after their deaths in the hope of bringing them back to life.

A court in January ordered them to be buried or cremated, and Mr Martinot had said he would appeal the decision.

However, they were cremated on 3 March after the crypt where they were kept at -65C heated up to -20C.

"I decided that it was no longer reasonable to carry on," Mr Martinot told the AFP news agency.

That is truer than he knows.

"I am no more sad today that at the time my parents died. I have finished mourning," he added.

That does not make any sense. If he truly believed freezing them would enable them tocome back to life one day, I should think he would be devastated at the thermostat's malfunction...unless he doesn't really love ol' pere et mere...or maybe he's just in it for the money...

"But I am bitter that I could not carry out my father's wishes. Maybe the future will show that my father was right and that he was a pioneer."

Daniel Boone was a pioneer. Your father was a looney.

Mr Martinot's father, Raymond, a cryogenics enthusiast, froze his wife after her death in 1984, hoping that one day science might enable her to be revived.

He showed off her crypt for a fee in the cellar of his chateau, in the Loire Valley town of Nueil-sur-Layon, to help pay for upkeep of the equipment.

When Raymond died in 2002, his body was frozen by his son.

In March that year, a court ruled that keeping the bodies refrigerated at the family chateau was against French law.

In January this year, France's highest administrative court, the Council of State, ordered Mr Martinot to either bury or cremate his parents.

He had planned to take his case before the European Court of Human Rights.

But there is good news for all the looneys chasing immortality:

Method designed to save cells from damage in cryogenics