Terry Pratchett: I'll die before the endgame
posted by Artw on Aug 3, 2009 - 74 comments

How to best show your love if you're a rockabilly singer in the 50's? First, claim you might cry. Or die. Or commit suicide. If that doesn't work, you can threaten her vaguely, threaten her with a baseball bat, or even threaten her with death. Oh, you're female? Try the gun/sex metaphor (NSFW images) or just go hog wild and claim you'll blow his head off with nitro. Touched on previously. [more inside]
posted by andihazelwood on Dec 12, 2008 - 15 comments

Last Year I Killed A Man , by Vaughan Thomas. Published Saturday July 19, 2008 by The Guardian.
posted by ZachsMind on Jul 20, 2008 - 117 comments

Why is anonymous group suicide so popular in Japan? From 2003 through 2005, 180 people died in 61 reported cases of Internet-assisted group suicide in Japan . . . All but two of these cases have proceeded according to a common blueprint: The victims meet online, using anonymous screen names, and then take sleeping pills and use briquettes, charcoal burners, and tape to turn a car or van into a mobile gas chamber.
posted by jason's_planet on Oct 10, 2007 - 33 comments

1-800-SUICIDE loses govt. funding: Despite the fact that almost 2 million callers have reached help and hope over the last 8 years, and a government funded evaluation stating the benefits of 1-800-SUICIDE, the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA), a division of Health & Human Services, has decided to create their own government run system where they would have direct access to confidential data on individuals in crisis. (SAMHSA has already scrubbed their websites of any and all LGBT information, and gay youth are 2-3 times more likely to commit suicide.) Save 1-800-SUICIDE website here.
posted by amberglow on Jul 28, 2006 - 68 comments

"To all our sisters who have committed suicide or who have been institutionalized for their rebellion."
Throughout her career, but especially in her latest and most wrenching work— Sisters, Saints, & Sibyls, the 39-minute three-screen lamentation that is a duel memoir of her sister's suicide at the age of 19 and her own mortifications of the flesh and battles with addiction—the photographer Nan Goldin has been one of the great living suicides of recent art history... Charles Baxter wrote that novelist Malcolm Lowry captured "the way things radiate just before they turn to ash." At her best Goldin does this too.
posted by matteo on Apr 7, 2006 - 10 comments

Forty-nine published plays. Four Pulitzer Prizes. Three marriages. A suicide attempt. A celebrity for a father. A drug-addicted mother who blamed her habit on her son. A daughter estranged, a son who committed suicide. A Nobel Prize, the only ever awarded to an American playwright.
Eugene O'Neill from inside out: a documentary film for American Experience. More inside.
posted by matteo on Mar 30, 2006 - 16 comments

After a Noel Mewton-Wood performance of Hindemith's (.pdf) Ludus Tonalis, Dame Myra Hess exclaimed: ‘The boy is truly remarkable, and what shall he be like at 40-odd?’. Glowing testimonials to his ‘genius’ (Sir Malcolm Sargent) from Beecham, Schnabel, Bliss, Hindemith and Britten were countered by indifference from the major record labels and concert managements. In 1953, at the age of 31, the pianist, a shy young man susceptible to depression, committed suicide. Now, the Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive of Middlesex University offers a scan of the The London Evening News page with the report of Mewton-Wood's death. And here is a mp3 page with some of his out-of-print work.
posted by matteo on Mar 24, 2006 - 11 comments

How NOT to commit suicide
posted by Gyan on Mar 16, 2006 - 120 comments

17 Minutes is a performance and video blog project by new media artist Chris Barr. It's about suicide. [MI]
posted by sjvilla79 on Nov 22, 2005 - 7 comments

Lethal Beauty is a seven-part series by the San Francisco Chronicle about the Golden Gate Bridge and its history of suicides. The articles present both sides of the argument regarding a barrier which would stop such tragedies. The presentation includes graphic representations of suicides by location, a timeline and podcasts from survivors & relatives, among others.
posted by Masi on Nov 11, 2005 - 13 comments

Hunter S Thompson commits suicide. Goodbye, the king of Gonzo Journalism. A timeline of his life is here. And some more here and of course here.
posted by bonaldi on Feb 20, 2005 - 530 comments

Cult leader proves his divinity by being buried alive and resurrecting himself. Except for the resurrecting bit. Good show for trying though
posted by criticalbill on Dec 16, 2004 - 26 comments

A little over the top? I know some people are depressed but......this?
posted by Ron on Nov 7, 2004 - 84 comments

Might as well jump. JUMP! An interesting article (nicked from linkfilter) about suicide and the Golden Gate Bridge. Only 26 people are known to have survived the 220 ft drop into water 350ft deep. I have been across the bridge once and was "amused" by the fact that there is a free counselling phone as you get halfway across. Reading this article and realising the numbers involved, it suddenly seems less funny... BTW, the jumper (who before he went a second time was one of the 26) protesting the Iraq War was discussed here.
posted by jontyjago on Oct 7, 2003 - 38 comments

"Donald looked upon violence as an artist might look on paint..." Director Donald Cammell committed suicide at home on April 24, 1996. Because of the location of the gunshot wound he inflicted on himself, he stayed alive and conscious for 45 minutes. He asked for a mirror to observe his own death. Foreshadowing this, in Cammell's underrated 1987 film White of the Eye, serial killer David Keith holds a mirror up to a victim's face as she dies. Filmmaker and author Kenneth Anger said "I predicted Donald Cammell's suicide. He was in love with death." He wrote seven films and directed six, ranging from the controversial end-of-the-psychedelic-sixties counterculture gangster film Performance (starring Mick Jagger),to the schlocky Demon Seed (based on a Dean Koontz novel), in which Julie Christie is raped by a computer, to a documentary about U2. A man of unusual talent, Cammell was an enigma even to those closest to him. "Cammell knew that nothing was as ever as it looked, that there was no single, simple truth." His body of work, as diverse as it is sparse, reflects this. Three different biographers are working on Cammell projects, and a fascinating biodocumentary Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance was released in 1998. His films are well worth seeking out, taken as a whole, they present an interesting psychological picture of their creator, and taken separately, they're thoughtful and interesting examinations of perception, reality, violence, and the nature of power.
posted by biscotti on Jan 13, 2003 - 25 comments

Ex Enron Vice Chair Commits Suicide J. Clifford Baxter was found dead in his car in a Houston suburb Firday. Texas police said the cause of death was suicide.
posted by Lanternjmk on Jan 25, 2002 - 40 comments

If, after careful consideration, like so many others you decide that life isn't worth living anymore, please do the research first, debunk the myths, buy the book, consider more elegant methods, and don't forget to alert your VSG. Or, better yet, stop your morbid self-indulgence and go make some ice cream.
posted by signal on Dec 10, 2001 - 8 comments

Jack Kevorkian's lawyer in trouble. He made some negative comments about a few appeals court judges. Not while he was in court, but on a radio talk show. Even so, he could potentially lose his license. His partner said, "Since when is it improper to make comments that are critical of government officials?"
posted by Potsy on Apr 17, 2001 - 7 comments