Dead Pool 7th December 2013
I don’t know if any of you noticed, but some guy in South Africa died this week. Sadly, the great Nelson Mandela finally passed away, thus providing us with a grand total of 1315 points to share between 13 of us, which also means most of us now need to redraw next years lists. Half of you had him as a Cert so the leader board has changed dramatically. The game is far from over, with the top half of the table being very close, one of your big three dying could easily give us a new high point scorer.
2014 isn’t that far away now, I hope that you’re all busily working away on your new lists. I’ve had a handful submitted already, it certainly looks like a tough year as the lists so far are very inspired and well researched. This week I’m enclosing a copy of the 2013 lists so that you can familiarise yourselves with your old list, which might help you decide on 2014’s. Plus you will be able to see where you’ve scored, seeing that we have all scored some points now. Yay!
Look Who You Could Have Had:
- Peter Graf, 75, German tennis coach and manager (Steffi Graf), cancer.
- Colin Wilson, 82, English writer.
- Nelson Mandela, 95, South African anti-apartheid activist and politician, President (1994−1999), lung infection.
- Stan Tracey, 86, British jazz pianist.
In Other News
Brucie was again notably absent from the Strictly ballroom this week. Another unscheduled break from the series, for which we can only be thankful for. The previous week he could barely string a sentence together coherently, so I’ll stick my neck on the line and propose that Forsyth is on his way from this mortal coil shortly. He himself admits that he’s on borrowed time, but I’d rather hope that he decides to give up trying to be on our TV’s before he crumbles into dust in front of our eyes.
Since Paul Walker died suddenly last Sunday, I didn’t get a chance to mention him properly in last weeks’ newsletter. You may have seen the state of the Porsche that he was a passenger in, bit of a mess. But in a fantastic piece of medical practitioning, the coroner deduced from the post-mortem that he died of the impact from the car crash and the subsequent fire. Well, no shit Sherlock!
George Clooney and Russell Crowe have had a small falling out. One wonders if the star of Gladiator would be able to beat a one time Batman? It all began after Crowe called Clooney a “Frank Sinatra wannabe” and also insinuated that he was a sell-out for appearing in adverts. The falling out has yet to become epic in any shape or form, but you never know… To date, Crowe has just sent Clooney a CD of him reciting some poetry, I know that would fuck me off immensely, so here’s hoping that one will kill the other very soon.
On This Day
- 1660 – A woman (either Margaret Hughes or Anne Marshall) appears on an English public stage for the first time, in the role of Desdemona in a production of Shakespeare’s play Othello.
- 1813 – Premier of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.
- 1980 – John Lennon is murdered by a mentally unstable fan in front of The Dakota in New York City.
- 1991 – The leaders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine sign an agreement dissolving the Soviet Union and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States.
- 2010 – With the second launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 and the first launch of the SpaceX Dragon, SpaceX becomes the first private company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.
Deaths
- 1980 – John Lennon, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and activist (The Beatles, Plastic Ono Band, The Quarrymen, and The Dirty Mac) (b. 1940)
- 1983 – Slim Pickens, American actor and rodeo performer (b. 1919)
Thank Fuck He’s Dead by KoA
This week we have Peter Niers (or Niersch).
Niers was a German bandit, and reputed serial killer who was executed 16 September 1581 in Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz, some 40 km distant from Nuremberg. So if you think serial killing is a new phenomena, think again…
Based on confessions extracted from him and his accomplices under torture, he was convicted of 544 murders, including 24 foetuses cut out of 24 pregnant women. I’d be rather surprised if he cut them out of 25 women, but there you go, at least they were relatively good at maths back then…
Allegedly, the foetal remains were used in magical rituals (Niers was believed to be an extremely powerful black magician, with many supernatural abilities) and for acts of cannibalism, which is generally the case when you have a nut job of this level active in your community.
His modus operandi was to join a band of robbers or pose as a shepherd to choose his victims. Both gave him ample scope to travel and thus his tally of murders increased exponentially.
In 1577 he was arrested and tortured; he revealed at the time that he had killed 75 people, but he managed to escape. In ballads commemorating his achievements it is noted that the foetuses (that were kept in a bag) were used to make him invisible so that his reign of death could continue. There were also rumours that he’d made a deal with the Devil to ensure a steady income of gold. Hardly a Tenacious D moment.
Niers capture was only down to laziness on his part. He fancied a bath and forgot to take his bag of magical foetus parts with him, thus ensuring that the locals managed to see and capture him, then putting him on trial and finding him guilty and sentenced to execution.
The detailed manner of the final torture and execution of Peter Niers was as follows:
On the first day, strips of flesh were torn from his body, then heated oil was poured into his wounds.
On the second day, his feet were smeared with heated oil, then held above glowing coals, thereby roasting him.
On the third day, the 16th of September 1581, he was dragged to the place of his execution, where his body was broken by the wheel, slamming said wheel 42 times down upon him. Still alive, he was finally dismembered by quartering.
They certainly knew how to dispense rehabilitation back in those days!
Last Week’s Birthdays
Amanda Seyfried (28), Jay-Z (44), Julianne Moore (53), Woody Allen (78), Bette Midler (68), Frankie Muniz (33), Marisa Tomei (49), Jeff Bridges (64), Daryl Hannah (53), Ozzy Osbourne (65), Lucy Liu (45), Little Richard (81), Britney Spears (32), Eli Wallach Pictured (98), Tyra Banks (40), Brendan Fraser (45), Judd Apatow (46), Nelly Furtado (35), Sarah Silverman (43) and Tom Hulce (60).
2013 League Table
Next Week peeps!
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