The larrikin take on a larrikin’s death has begun.

At the humourous blog Electron Soup, Flashman defines “mournstabation” for readers, “the act of deriving pleasure or satisfaction from providing or consuming media coverage of a death, usu. celebrity eg: ‘Look at this outpouring of sorrow and emotion from people who never even knew Steve Irwin! They’re mournstabating like crazy.'”

Over at The Daily Gut, they’re running a series which presents the death from an animal perspective. “Koala: he repeatedly touched me over a period of years. I never told anyone, until now.”

Scott Adams of Dilbert fame picked up the theme with a comic piece on his blog. It was later pulled, but it’s still up on the blogosphere for those wanting to gawk:

It seems weird to me that the stingray that got him is now the world’s most famous aquatic creature and doesn’t even know it. He’s probably floating around eating kelp or whatever-the-hell stingrays eat, oblivious to the fact that he’s as famous as OJ. I hope he gets a book deal because I’d like to hear his side of the story. I realize that stingrays have brains the size of a dried raisin, but that doesn’t stop athletes from writing books. All you need is a good co-author.

Meanwhile, dubious jokes have started doing the rounds, notes Sam at Culture Strain: – “I just received an email informing me that Steve Irwin wouldn’t have died had he been wearing sunscreen – it would’ve protected him from the harmful rays. The email went on to reveal that the song played at Steve’s funeral will be “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” by Sting.”

But with a life lived so large, sometimes satire is dangerously close to reality, as one of Denmark’s largest newspapers has discovered to its embarrassment. Satirical site Brainsnap reported that the Irwin family had refused a state funeral because his remains would be fed to crocs. Weird but plausible, reasoned Politiken, which ran the story as fact.