death

“I would never had done any of this if I thought there would have been an accident.” — Jim Abernethy, Scuba Adventures

Right. Of course. You’re just dumping bloody fish chunks into the ocean and then letting people swim with really aggressive sharks. What could possibly go wrong?

People naturally worry about splashier threats, such as shark attacks. However, the Marons’ research found there were 16 sand hole or tunnel deaths in the United States from 1990 to 2006 compared with 12 fatal shark attacks for the same period, according to University of Florida statistics.

The “assisted living facility” where my grandmother lived — Indigo Manor in Daytona Beach, Florida — just sent my mom and uncle an automated form letter. It was something along the lines of, “Please tell us how satisfied you are in the care we gave your loved one.” They’re really not very bright over there.

If my mom and uncle are still too upset to do so, I’m going to be the one sending them a reply: “We were completely satisfied … right up until the day you dropped her and broke her femur, then allowed her to spend over 36 hours in agony before telling anyone what had happened. Y’know. Right before she died because of complications from the emergency surgery. Aside from that, though, you were terrific.”

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Anna S. Albanese
10/28/1920 - 05/04/2007

My grandmother passed away died this afternoon. I hate “passed away”. It’s so … passive. Nana was not a passive person. She was incredibly, astoundingly active. She’d been pretty limited for the last few years, but that’s not really how I’ll remember her. When I was in elementary school I used to be very proud that she was the president of the local Italian American Association. She could crochet like a mother#$@*; she was an amazing cook; she was in all sorts of women’s clubs; she had a full-time job for a long, long time after she should have been … I don’t know. She just didn’t “pass away”.

I don’t know why I’m writing this. But I hate the thought of seeing the obituary in the paper when I get to Florida. I remember when my grandfather died I hated the obituary. Hated it. My uncle (or someone) had a bunch of them laminated and made into bookmarks and I just hated the idea that a life could be summarized in two or three column inches like that. So here goes …

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Renowned cat veterinarian and beloved Cornell University professor James Richards died Tuesday from injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident that occurred on Sunday.
Richards, the director of Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine’s Feline Health Center, was thrown from his motorcycle when he attempted to avoid a cat in the road.

One of the all-time best stand-up comedians, Richard Jeni (official page, currently down), apparently committed suicide this weekend. My girlfriend and I read about his death on Perez last night as we were getting ready to watch Rome. Just the night before, while celebrating a friend’s birthday at the Dresden, a few of us were talking about his hysterical HBO special, A Big Steaming Pile Of Me, how difficult stand-up is, and how few real geniuses there are in the field.
I still have that show on the TiVo in the guest room. It will be that much harder to delete it now.

You have to get out of bed pretty early to pull one over on the local coroner in Los Angeles.

Southern California kicker Mario Danelo was drunk when he plunged over a cliff to his death, but the cause of his death was “undetermined,” according to a coroner’s report released Monday.

He’s a football player in excellent physical health. He got really, really drunk. He climbed a large wall and fell over 100′. I don’t see the mystery here. Tragedy? Yes. Mystery? No.

“Herrion was 6-foot-3, 310 pounds — fairly average for an NFL lineman, but considered obese within standards routinely accepted by the medical community.”

This weekend I finally finished Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything”. It was a terrific read, truly wonderful. Bryson managed to make even the most esoteric, incredibly — for lack of a better word — boring details about life on this planet inconceivably fascinating. I mean really, it takes a brilliant author to get you completely engrossed in plate tectonics, genome theories, and the Brownian motion of subatomic particles. I’m not a very good test subject, actually, because I tend to find these types of things amazing and fun even when presented in incredibly bland tomes on them, but I have to tell you that even if you aren’t even barely interested in glaciers or the lipids that comprise your cell walls, this book will enthrall you.

I also just recently finished “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers” by Mary Roach. This book, too, was just so damn fun to read. A bit morbid, to be sure, but Roach approaches everything with a bent towards comedy and I enjoyed it.

And lastly I should mention that my girlfriend and I managed to catch March of the Penguins on Friday night. If it doesn’t win an Academy Award — or two or three or four — I will be astonished.

What could be more wholesome than a good old-fashioned snowball fight? In Scotland, however, a romp in the snow turned lethal when a 10-year-old boy died after being crushed by a giant ball of snow that rolled down a hill and engulfed him. Said a local minister, “It seems there was a giant snowball the boys had made themselves. Apparently it rolled and unfortunately Peter was caught under it.” Police have confirmed there was no foul play. “The boys had just gone out there to play and then something like this happens. It’s very difficult to find words to explain it all,” added the minister.

from Wired magazine

Theinhko: killed by a farmer whose cucumbers he ate without permission. Theinkho’s Queen, fearing civil disorder, smuggled the farmer into the royal palace and dressed him in royal robes. He was proclaimed King Nyaung-U Sawrhan, and was known as the ‘Cucumber King’. He later transformed his cucumber plantation into a spacious and pleasant royal garden. (931 AD)

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From the “I Guess It Depends on Your Point of View Department”:
This morning a dj on KROQ said, “And there’s some good news to report on traffic: The fatal accident that was blocking the 210 has been cleared from lanes.”

Mock funerals are another practice that happen more often than you would imagine. This is where a service is held for family and friends and then when it’s over the cemetery buries the casket wherever it wants. Horrific, but it does happen. Make sure you receive everything in writing and appoint someone to check if it has all been carried out correctly.

SEATTLE, Washington (AP): A body was found at the home of Layne Staley, lead singer and guitarist for the Seattle grunge band Alice in Chains.
The King County medical examiner’s office scheduled an autopsy Saturday but investigator[s] … could not immediately confirm the identity of the deceased late Friday night.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer quoted unidentified law enforcement sources as saying the body was Staley’s.
The person appeared to have been dead for several days …