Dead Pool 20th July 2014

Welcome all, hope you all  haven’t drowned or been  hit by lightning this weekend,  it would be a terrible thing to have to announce to the minions that you had died, clutching vigorously to your toilet seat in a rictus from being hit by the wrath of Thor! Anyhow, as you may have guessed, no points to be awarded this week but plenty to read and discuss and an amusing contribution from Liz, which I hope you will all enjoy!

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Nadine Gordimer, 90, South African writer (The Conservationist, Burger’s Daughter, July’s People) and anti-apartheid activist, Nobel Prize laureate in Literature (1991).
• Jack Tocco, 87, American mafioso, head of the Detroit Partnership, suspect in the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance, natural causes.
• Alice Coachman, 90, American Olympic champion high jumper (1948), first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal.
• Elaine Stritch, 89, American actress, Tony Award (Elaine Stritch at Liberty) and Emmy Award winner (Law & Order [1993], Elaine Stritch at Liberty [2004], 30 Rock [2007]).
• Henry Hartsfield, 80, American NASA astronaut and test pilot (Columbia), commander for Discovery and Challenger missions, complications from back surgery.
• James Garner, 86, American Hall of Fame actor (Maverick, The Great Escape, The Rockford Files).
• Skye McCole Bartusiak, 21, American actress (The Patriot).

In Other News

Former US secretary of state and Nobel peace prize winner Henry Kissinger underwent heart surgery at a New York City hospital on Tuesday and was resting comfortably, hospital officials said. Kissinger, 91, underwent an aortic valve replacement procedure, according to the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. There are no reports as to how it went, but being 91, it’s not going to end well one would expect. Watch this space! 

You may have been especially observant this week and noticed that the Assisted Dying Bill has been in the news, with notables such as Patrick Stewart and Desmond Tutu backing the bill, for obvious reasons… But what you might have missed was the admission by Chris Woodhead, the former chief inspector of schools, who said that he considered starving and dehydrating himself to death after he was diagnosed with cancer and kidney stones in addition to the motor neurone disease he has had since 2006. The former schools inspector has said previously that he would rather spend his final hours with family enjoying good food and wine and listening to Beethoven than travelling to the Dignitas centre in Switzerland. Let’s hope it gets passed, surely we’ll be able to score a few more points then, also great doctors like Harold Shipman wouldn’t be arrested for doing their jobs…  

DJ Casey Kasem has still not been laid to rest a month after his death due to a legal wrangle amongst his family. A Washington state judge granted a temporary court order to Kasem’s daughter, preventing his second wife from removing his remains from a funeral home in Tacoma. His daughter Kerri Kasem has expressed concerns that his body could be cremated or taken to Canada by his widow Jean, negating the possibility of a post-mortem, even though she herself authorised the retention of food, liquids and medication from him against the wishes of his wife of 34 years, so finding the cause of death isn’t going to be hard. The children from the 82-year-old’s first marriage are hoping to bury him in California in accordance with his final wishes, let’s see what occurs. 

*NEWS FLASH* My super secret intrepid reporter says that Kasem’s body is now officially missing!!! 

On This Day

• 1903 – The Ford Motor Company ships its first car.
• 1944 – World War II: Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt led by German Army Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.
• 1968 – The first International Special Olympics Summer Games are held at Soldier Field in Chicago, Ill, with about 1,000 athletes with intellectual disabilities.
• 1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 11 successfully makes the first manned landing on the Moon in the Sea of Tranquility. Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to walk on the Moon almost 7 hours later.
• 1976 – The American Viking 1 lander successfully lands on Mars.

Deaths

• 1923 – Pancho Villa, Mexican general (b. 1878)
• 1973 – Bruce Lee, American actor and martial artist (b. 1940)
• 2005 – James Doohan, Canadian actor (b. 1920)
• 2011 – Lucian Freud, German-English painter (b. 1922)
• 2012 – Alastair Burnet, English journalist (b. 1928)
• 2012 – Simon Ward, English actor (b. 1941)

A Cheerful Rhyme…. by LizzyWelshCake

Death can be slow
Death can be quick
An evil disease
Or a whack with a stick
Choke on a bone
Skid in the rain
Bleed to death from
An exploding vein
Alcoholic poisoning
From too much rum
Red hot pokers
Shoved up your bum
Hung drawn and quartered
Burnt alive
No water in the pool
When you took a dive
Bitten by a snake
Stood on a rake
Not enough water
Or too much cake
Stayed in the sun
A bit too long
An ambitious sex game
That just went wrong
Only one thing
Left to be said
One day we’ll all
Be fucking dead

Bizarre Victorian Deaths, Part 3 by KoA

6. Torn to pieces by cats

You know how it is. You get a cat, seeking companionship and amusement, and are rewarded with the occasional tea-time display of self-serving affection. It’s charming, so you get another. And one more. Pretty soon, your home makes visitors’ eyes sting. People stop calling by. You let your hair grow wild. You enthusiastically take up muttering. In 1870, in Iran, a rich eccentric lady had cheerfully embarked on much this kind of path, breeding and buying cats to her heart’s content and passing her days in an agreeable if malodorous blur of purrs. Then disaster struck. A fire broke out, and as it swept through the house, the cats were trapped behind a door. Two maids were sent to free them, but the blaze had driven the beasts berserk. The instant the door was opened, they flew at the unfortunate young women, tearing, scratching and biting them in a frenzy. Their injuries were so severe, they both died.

7. Drowned by decorum

The late Victorians and the Edwardians lived through a domestic revolution. Theirs was a bold and exciting age of innovation, groundbreaking discoveries and dramatic scientific changes, many of which altered life at home in profound ways – including some that were terrible and unforeseen. We all know the cliches. The Victorians were a bunch of hidebound, thin-lipped, punctilious, moralising, etiquette-obsessed fun-sponges who would reach for the smelling salts at the mere glimpse of a table leg. It’s a wild generalisation, of course. But sometimes – to revert to another cliche – cliches are true. There’s proof. In 1892, in Bermuda, a party of sailors were returning to their ship by steamboat, having been on shore leave in the capital. Sailors being sailors, there was an argument. The row turned into a fight. One man went overboard. A marine began to strip off to save him, but was ordered immediately to stop by an officer who had spotted a boat with ladies on it nearby. “The ladies in the boat manifested every description of sympathy with the unfortunate man,” reported the Western Daily Press, “but seemed altogether opposed to the idea of an ordinary man springing into the sea unless duly and sufficiently attired in the garments which fashion rather than common sense has decided to be proper.” The increasingly frantic efforts of the sailor to keep afloat suddenly concentrated minds. The officer asked for volunteers. Five men at once leapt to the rescue, but the sailor had drowned.

8. Killed by a drunken bear 

A quick quiz. You are offered a bear to keep as a pet. Do you:

1. Turn it down. It’s cruel to keep a bear as a pet
2. Accept it. Perhaps you might teach it to drink booze too

In Vilna (now Vilnius), then in Russia, in 1891, there was a man who would have answered B). The bear was large but tame, but it had a taste for vodka. One day it bustled into a village tavern and grabbed a keg of vodka. The owner of the inn, Isaack Rabbanovitch, objected, and tried to snatch it back. It would be an understatement to say this was an error. In the chaotic scenes that ensued the infuriated animal hugged to death the tavern keeper, then did the same to his two sons and daughter. The villagers found the drunken animal asleep on the floor in a pool of blood and alcohol, surrounded by its victims. The bear was immediately shot.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Patrick Stewart (74), Harrison Ford (72), Cheech Marin (68), Linda Ronstadt (68), Diane Kruger (38), Will Ferrell (47), Corey Feldman (43), Donald Sutherland (79), David Hasselhof (62), Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (67), James Brolin (74), Elizabeth McGovern (53), Vin Diesel (47), Kristen Bell (34), Richard Branson (64), John Glenn (93), Jared Padalecki (32), Benedict Cumberbatch (38), Bill Cosby (77), Anna Friel (38), Jackie Earle Haley (53), Harry Dean Stanton (88), Kyle Gass (54), David Mitchell (40), Forest Whitaker (53), Brigitte Nelson (51), Jan-Michael Vincent (70), Celia Imrie (62) and Paul Verhoeven (76).

2013 League Table

[confidential]

Next week peeps!