Category: Tragedy

Menacing Talent

Entertainment, Tragedy

I see with sadness that veteran Brit actor David Warner has gone to join the Choir Invisibule, and the screen has lost one of its better character actors in consequence.

My favorite of his roles is in the (apparently-forgotten) time-travel piece, Time After Time, in which he played Jack The Ripper to Malcolm McDowell’s H.G. Wells (storyline here).

What I loved about this movie was that when H.G Wells (the good guy) is transported from his comfortable Victorian life forward to modern-day San Francisco, he finds it incredibly difficult to cope.  Not so for the Ripper (Warner), who finds that evil transcends culture and, for that matter, time as well — and among San Francisco’s prostitute population, he has an even greater choice of victims than in 19th-century London.  And Warner is beyond-words excellent in the role.

R.I.P.

Helping Hand

Ethics, Tragedy

I know how I feel about the man in this story:  I have complete and utter empathy.

Tender love letters have emerged that show the devotion of a British pensioner to the wife he is accused of murdering.
David Hunter, 74, is due to stand trial in Cyprus today after the alleged mercy killing of his terminally-ill wife of 56 years, Janice, 75, last year.
UK lawyers have written to the island’s attorney general asking prosecutors to reduce the charge to assisting suicide amid family pleas to ‘show some compassion’ but have received no reply.
Mr Hunter will die in prison if found guilty of murder.

As to Janice Hunter’s condition:

Mrs Hunter had been suffering from leukaemia since 2016 and her health deteriorated rapidly in the months before her death.
She was losing her sight, couldn’t eat or drink and had constant diarrhoea that meant she needed nappies – but was only given paracetamol by doctors.
Mr Hunter allegedly suffocated her before trying to take his own life by overdosing on sleeping medication in an apparent suicide pact.

And she was quite clear about her feelings:

He has since told his daughter, Lesley, 49, that his wife made her wishes to die clear and talked about it every day in the last six weeks of her life.
‘To begin with, he tried to dissuade her, then he said he would go with her,’ she said. ‘He loved her so much… I’m horrified they were so desperate they thought that dying together was the only way out.’

As you all know, I was in a similar situation when Connie was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and her condition worsened almost daily.  We had so many drugs in the house that it would have been easy for her to overdose;  and because she was in a drug-induced fog most of the time, she was quite capable of OD’ing through pure confusion — which is why I took over the job of giving her the drugs  — and therefore I could have deliberately given her an overdose which would have ended her life.

And I want to be perfectly clear about this:  had she asked me to, I would have, even though my conscience would have scourged me every day for the rest of my life.

As it happened, that fortunately never became an issue.

However, New Wife is a cancer survivor, which means the bastard can always return and cause her massive suffering.  We’ve talked about this often, as her late husband suffered and died from throat cancer — his last months of life having had as much suffering as Connie had from hers — and so both New Wife and I have had the most intimate experience with this situation.

And we want no part of it.

Fortunately, we’re both in decent health (for our age), so the immediate future so far does not look that dire;  but as everyone at our end of the age spectrum knows, that’s a precarious situation.  Both of us have a “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR) document should it be needed, and we also have a (very private) agreement to cover the “Hunter” situation.  Neither of us wants to go through a painful and irreversible illness, both for ourselves and for the strain it puts on the other spouse, and that’s all I’m going to say on the topic.

No More Gilbert

Tragedy

Gilbert Gottfried, one of my all-time favorite comedians, has died aged 67 (my age ATOW), from complications caused by muscular dystrophy.

There was and is nobody more cruel and nastier than Gilbert.  Here’s one example (and is VVNSFW).

And my favorite line of his, conducting an imaginary interview of Jackie Onassis:

“So… do remember what you were doing on the day..?”

I am SO going to miss him.  R.I.P.

Death By Covid

Tragedy

You know, it’s one thing when Olde Pharttes like me are whacked by the Rona;  but this is just horrible:

Britain’s oldest pub has called time after more than 1,000 years
— due to the Covid pandemic

Ale was first served at Ye Olde Fighting Cocks in 793 but sadly the popular boozer has been unable to withstand the struggles of the past two years.
The pub in St Albans, Herts, has survived wars, plagues and previous economic crises. But landlord Christo Tofalli said he was walking away because the pandemic had been “devastating”.
He added: “I have tried everything to keep this pub going. However, the past two years have defeated all of us who have been trying our hardest to ensure the pub could continue. It goes without saying I am heartbroken.”
The much-loved landlord, who has run the venue for a decade, has been inundated with messages of support from around the world since his company went into administration.

“Messages of support?”  What about financial support?

Here’s yet another reason I would like to win a huge lottery:  I’d buy The Fighting Cocks (was there ever a name better chosen to get the hippies upset?), run it at a loss until business picked back up, and then give it back to the owner, who seems to be more than a decent sort.

And don’t talk to me about having the National fucking Trust step in to save this historic building.  First thing these wokist twats would do is change the name (because animal croolty), and then ban the sale of booze on the property.  Fuckers.

No, the Brits need to get behind this most excellent cause, with the rallying cry of

It deserves no less.

Letter To Alec

The Gun Thing, Tragedy

Here’s an interesting headline:

The sequence of events on set that led to Alec Baldwin accidentally shooting and killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins remains unclear but there are a handful of options.

…none of which are relevant.

Look, I know that Alec Baldwin has the mental capacity of a bag of cement, so all that follows below is wasted on him.  But here are the simple rules which, had they been followed in sequence,  would have prevented Baldwin from shooting an innocent bystander.  They are universally known to us serious gun owners as “Cooper’s Rules” (after the late and much-missed Col. Jeff Cooper):

RULE I: ALL GUNS ARE ALWAYS LOADED

Had Baldwin known anything at all about guns (he clearly doesn’t), he would have checked to see whether the round loaded in the gun was live or a blank (they look completely different from each other).

RULE II: NEVER LET THE MUZZLE COVER ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO DESTROY

Had Baldwin not been a complete tit (he is), he would also have made sure that the gun was pointed in a direction where no one was standing, or else told whoever was standing in front of him to get out of the line of fire, even if he had made sure the gun was loaded only with a blank.

Cooper’s last two rules are not relevant to this tragic story, but nevertheless, here they are:

RULE III: KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER UNTIL YOUR SIGHTS ARE ON THE TARGET

RULE IV: BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET

And that’s all that need be said.