Mortal fools announced their plans to disturb the earthly remains of reggae legend Bob Marley Wednesday, as part of a plan to celebrate what would have been the singer’s 60th birthday. The proposal to exhume Marley has angered some Jamaicans, the few who are not exceptionally easygoing about everything, since Marley was one of the most famous sons of the country.

The exhumation would culminate in the body being cremated, inhaled deeply by close family and friends, held for as long as possible, and then released into the air. The ashes would then be scattered over the soil of Ethiopia, which Marley’s widow Rita called his “spiritual resting place.”

“Bob was the dearest soul I ever knew,” said lifetime friend Cosell Hamlet. “An inspiration to everyone he ever met. I know his soul is in a better place. And I bet his body will be great shit.”

Marley popularized reggae internationally in the 1970s, with a string of hits such as “No Woman, No Cry” and “Get Up, Stand Up.” Reggae is the spiritual music of his home country of Jamaica, and the Rastafarian brought it to everyone in the world with his peaceful lyrics and mellow sound. Thanks to him reggae can now be heard at any party attended on a college campus or from any window from which pours copious amounts of smoke.

In Jamaica, however, all is not perfectly mellow for everybody, as some say to take Marley’s body is to rob Jamaica of its history, and risk bumming everyone out.

“Nah, man, don’t bogart Bob. He was a part of Jamaica, and now his body is part of the land itself,” said Jamaican history expert Dr. Addi Townstone, who has started an organization to protest Marley’s exhumation. “We ask the family to let him stay—stay in Jamaica.”

Rita Marley refused further comment on plans to exhume and smoke her husband, who died in 1981 from cancer. The Bob Marley Foundation, not to be confused with the Peter Tosh Committee to Legalize It, was quick to quell the uproar.

“It’s okay! It’s nothing to get out of joint about, brother,” said Bebe Shadley, press agent for the Foundation. “It’s all irie, my friend.”

Odidi Hubistato, who oversees the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and will be presiding over a ceremony honoring Marley on his birthday February 6, looked forward to the ceremony.

“Ashes to ashes, smoke to smoke, like we say,” said Hubistato. “I for one plan to be up in the front row when we light those spleefly remains. Jah love the man.”

All have apparently forgotten the price to be paid for unearthing the dead, regardless of good intentions. To stir the remains of the deceased is to invite an eternity of damnation and curses, the howls and haunts of the wretched specter himself. Prepare, all who trespass, for the nightly visitations of the angry ghost of the dead reggae superstar!

Bob Marley himself, an ethereal presence in a world unknown to mankind, declined to be interviewed. We were, however, able to talk to long-dead Jacob Marley, no relation.

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” said Marley’s ghost, indicating a very obvious large chain. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.” He concluded, “I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate.”