So that's why one of my rules of parody writing is that it's gotta be funny regardless of whether you know the source material. It has to work on its own merit.
To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history but to articulate it.
It is old age rather than death that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.
So what I do now is to pre-empt that by making the up into a virtue and telling funny stories about how crap I am before people have a chance to notice it for themselves and think maybe I haven't realised.