Robin Williams RIP

[82_28]

The last guy I would ever detect suicidal tendencies. Wow. Just found out.

[Sounder]

nevermind, RIP

[Hunter]

Oh captain my captain, gather ye rosebuds while ye may, carpe diem, Robin, seize the day.


This one really hurts. Just fucking stunned.

It is not completely shocking though, Robin fought horrible depression all his life and self medicated with drugs and alcohol for a good number of years. I guess things just became too unbearable for him.

[Hunter]

it's bullshit, it didn't happen.

Sadly, my friend, this one is not a hoax, he did die by his own hand apparently.

[82_28]

Well let me begin with the "RI speculations". Just throwing this out there:

Tom Dobbs (Robin Williams) is a comedian and host of a satirical talk show who is able to tap into people's frustrations with the sharply divided, special interest-driven political climate. Specifically, he makes fun of the American two-party system. During his warm-up act, an audience member suggests that he run for President. At first, Dobbs laughs off the idea, but following a popular groundswell of support, later announces on the air that he will stand as a candidate. Through his efforts, he gets on the ballot in 13 states and participates in one of the national debates with the Democratic incumbent, President Kellogg, and Republican U.S. Senator Mills.

A parallel plot follows Eleanor Green (Laura Linney), who works at a voting machine company called Delacroy. According to a television commercial in the movie, the entire United States will be using Delacroy voting machines for the Presidential election. Shortly before the elections, Eleanor notices an error in the voting system, but the head of the company, James Hemmings, purposefully ignores her warnings.

Initially, Dobbs approaches the campaign seriously – perhaps too seriously, to the chagrin of his staff, especially his manager Jack Menken (Christopher Walken). That turns around the night of the Presidential debates, when, fed up with the other candidates' posturing, Dobbs shifts back into comedian mode, managing to keep the audience laughing and make serious points simultaneously. From then on, he resumes his showman persona, thoroughly shaking up the political landscape. Dobbs surges in polls after the debates, but remains a distant third to Kellogg and Mills.

Election Day arrives, and polls show Dobbs at 17% with Kellogg and Mills tied in the 40s. Early returns show Kellogg beating Mills everywhere. Eleanor says that this is part of the error in the voting systems. Suddenly, Dobbs starts winning states. He soon stands at 146 electoral votes, and the media report that if he wins the remaining states whose ballot he is on, he will become President. Soon afterwards, results show that Tom Dobbs has indeed won the Presidential race, beating out Kellogg and Mills. Dobbs is extremely shocked – like the rest of the world. While Dobbs and his crew move from shock to celebration, Eleanor remains unconvinced. She considers revealing the computer error to the public but is attacked in her home by Delacroy agents and injected with a cocktail of drugs. Upon going to work, she behaves extremely erratically and is hospitalized for drug abuse. The company uses this as a pretext to fire her. While recovering in the hospital, she realizes that very few people would believe her story but decides that if nothing else, she must tell Dobbs.

Though still suffering from the aftereffects of the drugs in her system, Eleanor eventually makes her way to Jack Menken's birthday party. There, she unconvincingly impersonates an FBI agent but manages to catch Dobbs' eye; the two dance through the evening and Dobbs gives her his telephone number. Eleanor cannot bring herself to tell Dobbs that he is not really the President-Elect. Later, Dobbs tries to get back in contact with Eleanor by calling Delacroy. This immediately raises the suspicions of Delacroy's leaders, and they redouble their efforts to silence Eleanor. Eleanor calls Dobbs, and he whisks her off to a paintball fight, followed by Thanksgiving dinner. At dinner, she finally gets him alone to tell him that the elections were a fraud, then leaves. Dobbs wrestles with the idea that he should not have been elected as President and finally decides to break Eleanor's news to the public in a major speech. Delacroy pre-empts his announcement with one of their own, stating that Eleanor was caught attempting to throw the election for Dobbs, but that her efforts had no impact on the polls. Eleanor becomes increasingly fearful for her safety, a feeling that is soon justified as Delacroy agents break into the hotel room where she is staying and confiscate her computer, which contained the only evidence she had.

Desperate, Eleanor first flees to a mall, where she is found by a Delacroy agent but escapes. She then drives to find a pay phone so that she can call Dobbs for help. She manages to reach him but is not able to communicate anything before the Delacroy agent's truck crashes into the phone booth on purpose; she escapes just before the collision but is injured and hospitalized a second time. Dobbs goes to the scene and, though he cannot understand what she is trying to say, is convinced that she was telling the truth about the election. During the Weekend Update segment of the sketch comedy TV show Saturday Night Live, he finally announces to the public that the elections were flawed and that he should not be President. Dobbs declines to accept victory in a phony election, and another election is held with Dobbs choosing not to participate. President Kellogg wins another term, though, perhaps chastened by the Dobbs phenomenon, is much more sensitive to the populace as a whole rather than the special interests, and Dobbs returns to his career as a talk show host, with Eleanor at his side as his producer and wife. The Delacroy executives are convicted of fraud. The last seconds of the film shows a mock TIME magazine cover with Dobbs chosen as Person of the Year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_of_the ... 06_film%29

[Asta]

Humans like Robin Williams are so sensitive, they protect themselves with humor. At some point they can't take it anymore. I totally identify with Mr. Williams, but unlike him, I keep fighting to save my identity and soul. I am the same age as him. It gets very weary at times to continue on with all the bull shit in this world.

I am in tears writing this, because I really loved that man and his humor, and this world has lost a really wonderful, brilliant mind. May he find peace now and see how much he was truly loved by so many. I will miss his wit and intelligence.

[8bitagent]

The last guy I would ever detect suicidal tendencies. Wow. Just found out.

My absolute, absolute favorite actor since I saw Popeye in the early 80's. So many special, strange movies. Got to meet and talk with him about 20 minutes in 2002, strangely calm guy behind the scenes.
Now my #2 favorite actor, and Ive been saying this since 2002, was Philip Seymour Hoffman. Also passed this year. I can't think of any actors right now that come close to the magic I felt when they were on screen...

[8bitagent]

Humans like Robin Williams are so sensitive, they protect themselves with humor. At some point they can't take it anymore. I totally identify with Mr. Williams, but unlike him, I keep fighting to save my identity and soul. I am the same age as him. It gets very weary at times to continue on with all the bull shit in this world.

I am in tears writing this, because I really loved that man and his humor, and this world has lost a really wonderful, brilliant mind. May he find peace now and see how much he was truly loved by so many. I will miss his wit and intelligence.

I couldn't agree more, beautifully said. I have a poster of the 1992 movie "Toys" with a Rene Magritte-esque Robin Williams in my study, and it always makes me happy to look at. And while he is best known for comedy,
it's his dramatic and stranger turns that I enjoyed the most. I can't think of any other actor who for so long gave me so many goosebump worthy good roles.

I still can't believe BOTH my favorite actors are now dead this year. I am almost too numb to be shocked, just with everything happening these days.

[justdrew]

his appearance on Louie at the end of season 3 I think, was a very honest self-portrait. So I can't say I'm shocked, but then I'm not much shocked ever anymore.

you should see "what dreams may come" now, though it may be particularly painful now.

[Jerky]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr6y5tNE7CY

[Hunter]

The last guy I would ever detect suicidal tendencies. Wow. Just found out.

My absolute, absolute favorite actor since I saw Popeye in the early 80's. So many special, strange movies. Got to meet and talk with him about 20 minutes in 2002, strangely calm guy behind the scenes.
Now my #2 favorite actor, and Ive been saying this since 2002, was Philip Seymour Hoffman. Also passed this year. I can't think of any actors right now that come close to the magic I felt when they were on screen...

Philip and Robin are without a doubt the two greatest loses possible, those two alone where two of the greatest if not the greatest of their generation, of any generation in fact, The world has been robbed of all the wonderful things those two could have given us over the course of many more years of life. Very sad and tragic, most celebrity deaths dont get to me but those two in particular really HURT BADLY. I too am in tears over this one not because I have been robbed of them but because both of them and Robin in particular must have been in great pain for him to see this as an answer to his problems and it is never good to know that someone went out, their final moments, in that kind of deep unrelenting pain. Like I said Robin had battled very horrible depression all his life and I guess it just became too unbearable.

[8bitagent]

http://seankerrigan.com/us-government-i ... 99s-death/

Worldwide heroine supply has been on the rise since 2001 when the US invaded Afghanistan and allowed the production of the opium fields to resume. According to the New York Times, Afghanistan “accounted for 75 percent of the world’s heroin supply” in 2012 and was expected by UN officials to reach 90 percent by the end of 2013. Heroin production had been illegal in the country in the year prior to the US invasion. As a result of the booming supply, the drug is cheap, selling for as little as $4 a package, according to The New York Daily News.

[RocketMan]

Yes, 8bit, there definitely is something in the air...

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/suici ... in-america

There's a Suicide Crisis in America

By Stephen Marche

Two years ago, suicide became the leading cause of death by injury in America, surpassing car accidents for the first time. And the major reason for that change was a cohort shift: Men and women between the ages of 35 and 64 are increasingly committing suicide. The latest addition to these statistics is Robin Williams.

Since nothing ever happens in America until it happens to a celebrity, perhaps this will be the moment when we notice that we're living in the middle of a suicide crisis, and a suicide crisis that particularly affects middle-aged men.

Four years ago, there were 38,364 suicides compared with 33,687 deaths by car accident. In a sense, those numbers would not be so worrying if their acceleration were not so marked.

The group that has shown the highest increase in suicide rates is middle-aged men and women, for whom the number of suicides has risen by a horrifying 28.4 percent in a mere decade. The sharpest increase has been among men in their fifties, for whom the number has risen nearly 50 percent since 1999. Now nearly 30 per 100,000 American men in their fifties kill themselves. Suicides are increasing across the board, from college students to the elderly, but the increases for the middle-aged are shocking.

The reasons for this rise are unknown. The increased availability of prescription drugs may play some role. Suicide by poisoning was an increasingly common method. There have never been more guns in America and gun ownership also correlates to an increase in suicide. There has also been the brutality of the recession and the new reality of people in middle age taking care of elderly parents while they're also taking care of young children.

Obviously, economic pressures are the most compelling reason. Suicides increase dramatically during recessions. They increased during the Great Depression and during the Asian financial crisis. Across Europe, suicides increased by 3.3 percent after the crash. There have been significant increases in suicides for men across the world, at over 10 percent for the European Union countries. But not a 50 percent jump as for men between 50 and 59 in America.

But the more substantial (and more complicated and disturbing) answer may be cultural. Suicide is not connected to religious values or to traditional family structures. But suicide is one of the most media-sensitive of phenomena.

"The Werther Effect," as it is known in social science, explains how and why people emulate suicides when they read descriptions of them. The phrase derives from the wave of suicides that followed the publication of Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774, but the phenomenon remains in effect today. When Austria controlled the publication of the details of subway suicides in newspapers and on television in 1987, for example, the number of suicides and suicide attempts decreased 80 percent in six months.

More prevalent suicide in media, the studies say, does lead to more suicide in real life.

The suicides of cultural figures—and God it feels like there have been far too many this year, and the best people, too—are only a symptom. Individuals decide to take their lives for many complex reasons. But more so now than ever, those decisions emerge out of our culture. We live, as has been well-established, in an increasingly lonely, increasingly depressed world.

The number of children officially qualifying as "disabled by mental disorders" has increased 35 times between 1987 and 2007. It should come as no surprise that the most common way a life ends violently today is by choice. And that fact has very suddenly emerged only in the past 10 years. Depression is increasing markedly, while the stigma against depression remains in effect. One of them has to give, because in combination they kill tens of thousands.

What does it mean? What do we do about it? Every now and then, I read a backlash-to-the-backlash-style essay which basically runs like this: The idea that we are living in extraordinary times is wrong. There has always been technological change. There have always been recessions. ...And so on. But for the generational cohort to which Robin Williams belonged, in which suicide has been growing by 28 percent, the growth of suicide is not historically or in any other way the norm. That is the trend—the real trend, the indisputable trend—that we need to figure out most urgently.

[NeonLX]

Damn. We need more humor in this world, not less.

There's seems to be something invading our reality that is snuffing out joy and humor.

Everywhere.

I'm walking to work this morning and had a realization that so many people are taking themselves too seriously. Now that I'm single, I've gone to a bunch of concerts and events where I'm around crowds again. I haven't been in such surroundings for decades. To me, it really seems that almost everyone has become so damned humorless. They are defensive and self-absorbed; more interested in being seen at events than actually taking part in them. Almost to the point of being desperate about it.

Or, more likely, I probably don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.

Reality seems to be getting uglier, and with the passing of Robin Williams, the level of ugliness just jumped higher.

[Twyla LaSarc]

Poor Robin, RIP.

I feel very sorry for the men of my generation. I am watching the breakdown as they confront their utter lack of control of what the world has become in the face of their social conditioning to always be the strong, capable primary income source for the family. This isn't getting better as they age and discover that the ideals of their Reagan era youths, like hard work amounting to something and being rewarded for it, all that american dream on steroids stuff, were all just a bunch of lies formulated to steal away their labor and prime physical health. Now their youth is gone, they still aren't rich or successful, and now they often can't even get jobs due to a combination of ageism, diminished physical capapbilities, and the recent demand for 'technical degrees' for even the most mundane of jobs.

None of my circle have committed suicide, but I've witnessed toxic depression and felt quite helpless to do much about it, the socialization being too entrenched to placate easily.

Women are encountering these things too, but women are socialized to accept a certain lack of control over their lives and are not expected to have to be the primary income source for a family (especially at a time when it is increasingly harder to have a single income possibly pay for everything).

The article posted above blaming guns and drugs is funny in a dark way. Guns and Drugs are bad mmmkay, they are the culprits! (with a quick tip of the hat to social pressures that doesn't even really delve into particulars). I suppose if you took all the drugs and guns...and shoelaces, paring knives, belts and bedsheets...and locked them up somewhere, the crisis would simply go away and we wouldn't have to confront what is likely a symptom of the social breakdown engendered by decades of propaganda and toxic policy. Then again, it is the most sensitive who will take themselves out leaving the sociopaths and those who can blissfully ignore the cognitive dissonance to inherit the earth, perhaps it is all part of some plan .