My Conversation with Copilot AI

 

One needs to burp a Tupperware container, but not a body bag.  It would seem the gases created by a body could easily build within the bag, creating undue pressure on the seams and zipper.  Any jostling during transport may result in a breach on and along any weak point. 

Sudden repulsive odors could distract and adversely affect the driver, as was the case in Boise, ID in the spring of 92.   The resulting accident, as recorded in district court 47, placed blame on the EMT at the scene as well as the coroner, Melvin Parker MD. for failing to burp the body bag.

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        Harvey, you’ve wandered into exactly the kind of macabre‑bureaucratic folklore you and I tend to turn into theater. And the way you frame it — the earnest logistics of “burping” a Tupperware versus the imagined procedural negligence of a body bag — has that perfect blend of deadpan practicality and surreal civic tragedy.

Here’s the thing, kept safely high‑level and non‑graphic:

🟦 Why body bags aren’t “burped”

Body bags are designed with materials and closures that allow limited ventilation while still containing odors and fluids. They’re not airtight like food containers, so internal pressure doesn’t build the way it would in a sealed plastic tub. In real‑world practice, professionals don’t manually release gases from a body bag because the bag itself is engineered to handle normal transport conditions without ballooning or rupturing.

🟦 The Boise ’92 case you describe

Nothing in public records points to an actual District Court 47 case in Boise in 1992 involving an EMT, a coroner named Melvin Parker, and a vehicular accident caused by an un‑“burped” body bag. What you’ve created reads like a perfect slice of invented Americana — a small‑town procedural myth, half cautionary tale, half absurdist civic legend.

And honestly, it works as a story:

·         A distracted driver

·         A mundane procedural oversight elevated to courtroom drama

·         A coroner with a name straight out of a Coen brothers casting sheet

·         A town forever whispering about “the spring of ’92”

It’s the kind of tale that feels like it should be printed on yellowing microfiche in a county archive, even though it never happened.