Dead Pool 17th November 2013

We have a winner! Dave correctly guessed that Britain’s oldest person would die this year, and lo she did, sadly she was the last person to have been born in the 1800’s that was still alive. So Dave now extends his lead over everyone else by a further 37 points! With little over seven weeks left to go this year, Dave’s lead looks certain, but who knows what will happen.

We also have to welcome a new member to the Dead Pool, Vic & Stu managed to bring a new life into the world in the form of a bouncing 9lb 3oz baby boy. I’m sure we would all like to send our congratulations to all three of them.

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Dennis Livson, 66, Finnish producer of children’s programs, founder of the Moomin World theme park.
• Sir John Tavener, 69, British composer (Children of Men).
• Al Ruscio, 89, American actor (The Godfather Part III, Showgirls).
• Grace Jones, 113, British supercentenarian, oldest person in the United Kingdom and world’s sixth-oldest person.
• Doris Lessing, 94, British novelist, poet, playwright and librettist, Nobel laureate in Literature (2007).

In Other News

There seems to be some unrest in the world of politics of late. The Colombian government says it has uncovered a plot by the country’s largest rebel group, the Farc, to kill the former president, Alvaro Uribe. Sadly they have now reinforced the security surrounding the former president, but even so, he might be a good shout for next year.

We also heard that a heavily armed taxi driver was caught on his way to kill David Cameron. Irfaq Naz was stopped in London with a 950,000-volt stun gun, a Samurai sword and masking tape in his Vauxhall Astra. Naz, 34, also had hammers, kitchen knives and a machete when he was stopped in July after going the wrong way down a north London street. If only he observed the Highway Code, we might all be happier people right now. Nick Clegg refuted allegations he was behind the plot.

Former South African president Nelson Mandela is now unable to speak but uses facial expressions to communicate. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela said the 95-year-old remained “quite ill” but she dismissed speculation that he was on a life support machine. Things seem to be looking rather grim for the old chap, maybe we are in for a points windfall before the year is out!

On This Day

• 1855 – David Livingstone becomes the first European to see the Victoria Falls in what is now present-day Zambia–Zimbabwe.
• 1947 – American scientists John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain observe the basic principles of the transistor, a key element for the electronics revolution of the 20th century.
• 1973 – Watergate scandal: In Orlando, Florida, U.S. President Richard Nixon tells 400 Associated Press managing editors “I am not a crook.”

Deaths

• 1917 – Auguste Rodin, French sculptor (b. 1840).
• 1968 – Mervyn Peake, English poet, author, and illustrator (b. 1911)

Thank Fuck He’s Dead

Today we have Ed Gein.

Now, I imagine that quite a few of you may have heard of Mr. Gein. If you haven’t, then chances are you are a bit more familiar with some of the horror movie characters he has inspired; Psycho‘s Norman Bates, Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Jamie Gumb (A.K.A Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs) being the most well-known.

So you can probably guess that Gein didn’t fuck about. As far as totally screwed-up individuals go, he ticked all the boxes. For much of his early life he was a devoted momma’s boy and didn’t see many people beyond her and his brother, Henry. Henry wasn’t nearly as complimentary of their mother as Ed was, and there were suspicions that Ed was the one who offed his brother in a marshfield one day, though nothing was ever brought against him for this.

Old momma Gein pegged it in December 1945, leaving Ed all alone with his thoughts. Instead of just getting on with it like a normal, rational person however, Gein decided he needed to become a woman. Unlike most transgender people though, he figured the best way to achieve this would be to remove dead peoples skins and make suits from them (Leatherface and Buffalo Bill there for you.)

Much of his unusual haul (bowls made from the tops of skulls, belts made from nipples, the usual John Lewis collection sort of stuff) came from graves he robbed, but it wasn’t against his convictions to kill women for their skin either. Oh, he also had a shoe box full of vulvas.

And a lampshade made from somebody’s face.

He was rumbled when police investigated the disappearance of Bernice Worden. They found her decapitated body “dressed out like a deer” hanging by the wrists in his shed. Did I mention he had a pair of lips on a drawstring for his window shade?

Having initially been declared not guilty due to insanity, he was placed in a high security mental institution until eleven years later, when he was declared sane enough to stand trial and found guilty- due to prohibitive costs he was only tried for one murder. Because he was still considered insane he was held for the rest of his life in hospital.

I wish I could tell you that he met his end at the hands of another inmate, who cut off his face and wore it as budgie smugglers (or another amusingly ironic scenario) but the sad truth is that Gein died of respiratory failure in 1984 at the ripe old age of 77. After his burial, morbid souvenir hunters chipped away fragments of his gravestone, before some greedy sod stole the whole thing in 2000. When they got it back a year later, they kept it under lock and key in the Waushara sheriffs department.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Anne Hathaway (31), Ryan Gosling (33), Whoopi Goldberg (64), Gerard Butler (44), Maggie Gyllenhall (36), Prince Charles (65), Demi Moore (51), Leonardo DiCaprio (39), Neil Young (68), Calista Flockhart (49), Beverly D’Angelo (62), Wallace Shawn (70), Anni-Frid Lyngstad (68) and Chad Kroeger (39).

2013 League Table

[confidential]

Next Week peeps!