2 posts tagged “suicides”

BANGKOK (AP) - Actor David Carradine, star of the 1970s TV series "Kung Fu" who also had a wide-ranging career in the movies, has been found dead in the Thai capital, Bangkok. A news report said he was found hanged in his hotel room and was believed to have committed suicide.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy, Michael Turner, confirmed the death of the 72-year-old actor. He said Carradine died either late Wednesday or early Thursday, but he could not provide further details out of consideration for his family.

The Web site of the Thai newspaper The Nation cited unidentified police sources as saying Carradine was found Thursday hanged in his luxury hotel room and is believed to have committed suicide.

Carradine was a leading member of a venerable Hollywood acting family that included his father, character actor John Carradine, and brother Keith.

In all, he appeared in more than 100 feature films with such directors as Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman and Hal Ashby.

But he was best known for his role as Kwai Chang Caine, a Shaolin priest traveling the 1800s American frontier West in the TV series "Kung Fu," which aired in 1972-75.

He reprised the role in a mid-1980s TV movie and played Caine's grandson in the 1990s syndicated series "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues."

He returned to the top in recent years as the title character in Quentin Tarantino's two-part saga "Kill Bill."

Reposted from: iWon.com 

Today is like any other day. Except on the way to work about 10 college students at the University of Illinois tried to commit suicide. No it will not make national headlines because it was not a religious cult ritual, or a case of students not being able to handle the stress of their classes tried to find an easy way out. It was yet again another attempt by students to get ran over by my car. I used to think that students would walk out into traffic in front of my car because I had a smaller vehicle; maybe they just didn't see my car. Now that I have a larger vehicle, I assumed I would be easier to see coming down the road. I assumed incorrectly.

It started just before I reached campus the light changed green, I looked to make sure the last of the people running the red light on the cross street had stopped zipping across, I had just started rolling forward and a woman talking on her cell phone stepped off the sidewalk right in front of my car. She walked about 5 feet further, looked up at the light to see it was red, gave me a dirty look and then walked back to the side walk. The light had just turned yellow before I was able to cross.

Now I am on campus. Driving on campus is always a strange situation. We have large groups of students that have never learned how to cross the street, because the only place they have every walked around cars in the past is from their parking space to the entrance of the shopping center.  It also doesn't help that the campus went around and told the students they have the right of way if they are in the crosswalk. No, not that cars need to yield to them if they are in the crosswalk already, but literally that they can stop traffic by running out into the street as long as they are in a crosswalk. You always have to assume if there is a chance of a student walking out in front of you at a crosswalk, they probably will, no matter if you are moving at 30 miles per hour and may not be able to stop your car in time, many students just walk right out in the road.

So I am no where near a crosswalk, I should be safe, except that 5 students decided they wanted to catch the bus on the other side of a busy 4 lane road, so they all sprinted out into traffic stopping all of the cars from both directions. The last student who looked amazed at what his friends did mouthed the words "I'm sorry" in my direction, but still blindly followed his friends across the road.

A few years ago the campus decided to add a mid-block crosswalk on a particularly long block. It lights up when a pedestrian walks between a couple of motion sensors, and most students have learned that once the crosswalk starts flashing you should still wait to make sure traffic is stopping before you step off the curb. Today a group of not so bright students zipped across the crosswalk right in front of me from one direction, and a bus coming from the other. Because apparently there is some unknown law of physics that allows cars and buses to stop faster when the people in the crosswalks are on bikes. The bus came close to causing an end game to the last two bike riders, who's eyes came very close to popping out of their heads. I am guessing they still didn't learn their lesson from that incident.

I figured I was close to my parking place I was probably safe from being involved in any more assisted suicides. I was wrong. I was just about to turn into my parking lot, when a guy listening to his iPod jumped out of his car he had just parked on a street side parking spot without looking. He seriously had a deer in the headlights look, as if he had no idea there was going to be a car on a highly used campus street. I actually had to motion for him to get out of the way as he stood in front of my car looking confused. He kind of smirked and half waved as he walked across the street an continued on his way.

People! Suicide is a serious act. Please stop trying to use other people to help you in your attempts. It is just not fair to us. *end of rant*

Also I have a few more new uploads on iStock since my last posting.

 

And another extended license on the image below just yesterday.