Results tagged “suicide”

It's not murder on the Holland America cruise ship Zaandam, says a spokeperson, but it may be suicide. Alaska state troopers say Washington's Amber Malkuch, 45, went missing Monday morning while the ship was visiting Glacier Bay National Park, northwest of Juneau. A woman's body was found in the 57-degree water at 4:30 p.m. Monday, but hasn't been positively identified.

• Delicious pix of the last time Seattle had rail over at Vintage Seattle.
Continue reading "Neighborhood News And Local Blog Round-Up"

A man thought to be on PCP broke though a window at Rainier Beach's Unity Church of God in Christ Saturday. Because this was not a movie, the glass cut him in various places, and he left a trail of blood as he went on an "unholy rampage" KOMO's Joel Moreno says. Church volunteers were starting to clean up the blood when they were told the man was HIV-positive and had hepatitis C, which made the scene a biohazard. A parishioner speculated the incident was related to the man's brother's suicide in 1980--he hanged himself from a plum tree on the church's grounds. Ever get the feeling you're only hearing about one percent of the full story?

Yesterday we reported that a woman's body was found at Golden Gardens. Today the coroner's office has details on a 35-year-old woman who died yesterday from a stab wound and drowning. The police haven't made an official announcement, but the coroner's office is saying their case was suicide. We're guessing this is the same woman found at Golden Gardens. By the way, if you ever want to bring yourself back down to earth, emphatically, just give the coroner's office a call. After listening to three or four cases on their voicemail, we nearly threw the phone across the room.

Seattle mental health blogger Philip Dawdy is less than impressed with the notion that CNN's Sanjay Gupta could be the nation's next doctor-in-chief. Says Dawdy, "As a reporter, Gupta strikes me as a lightweight outside of neuroscience and neurosurgery, who either gets his information straight from pharma companies and establishment doctors or is too incapable or incurious as a reporter to look for contrary information." And he offers as evidence Gupta claiming that there were no child suicides related to antidepressant use back in 2004. To Dawdy, who can think of four questionable cases prior to the broadcast, that's of a piece with Gupta's inability to see much wrong with Vioxx, which was later taken off the market. Vioxx-maker Merck would be hit by class action suits totaling just under $5 billion.

Traffic was snarled on Aurora for about two hours this morning, as police closed lanes to try to talk down a man threatening to jump from the Aurora Bridge. The P-I says he is in his mid-30s, fell 150 feet into a parking lot, and survived the fall. He was alive when taken to the hospital--probably Harborview, we imagine. This local blogger saw the traffic jam and wondered how hard it would be to justify increasing mental health coverage, given the cost of the stalled commute. But we seem more likely to build a fence instead.

Seattle mental health blogger Philip Dawdy got some blogosphere blowback for a short piece he wrote mentioning David Foster Wallace's suicide. Dawdy's contention is that psych meds are falsely touted as failsafe lifesavers, when he estimates they work only 30 to 50 percent of the time, and of course come with substantial side effects. In response to commenters who accused him of going too far, in his criticism and in pulling in the shade of DFW, Dawdy responded with a post that sums up the mission of his site, ending with: "Besides, compared to Keith Olberman, Bill O'Reilly and Lou Dobbs I am a goddamned Zen Buddhist." [Arrested Development Narrator VO: "And that is how you close a post!"]

The Medical Examiner's office now says that the lone hold-out who died in the Marion Apartments fire, Ed Jackson, shot himself in the head. We'd been wondering about that ever since CHS mentioned yesterday that a gun had been found at the scene. It's beginning to seem likely that Jackson, a former apartment manager there, set the fire himself on the morning he was due to be evicted, then committed suicide. The Marion Apartments were going to be demolished and the lot developed.

The Aurora Bridge has a long tragic history of being the final structure some hopeless Seattleites ever stand upon. Since its opening in 1932, more than 200 people have jumped to their death from the bridge. It is second only to the Golden Gate Bridge in suicide deaths. Now it would seem those who live around the bridge, and the state of Washington, have decided to do something about that.

Besides being in the running for Owner of the World's Most Glamorous Name, Katjana Vadeboncoeur plays the maternal hen Aunt Julia in blahblahblahBANG at On the Boards. To make a point of it, she sips then spits up her tea into a cup, complete with birdlike neck spasms, and hands it to her beloved, coddled nephew Yorgen Tesman -- who drinks it, onstage, to an audience of wrinkled noses. If you're an Ibsen fan (blahblahblahBANG is WET's precocious interpretation of Hedda Gabler) this subtextual underlining may just elicit a desire to see the original. The difference here is that it's not a matter of moral fiber or willfulness. WET's cast reacts to their socially caged life with the stereotyped behavior of unhappy parrots, literally climbing the walls. Again and again, WET reminds you that they are real people doing real things, disgusting, sexy, risky things. If it's not "perfect," it's compelling as a high-wire act.

Only his current cause keeps [Gardner] much interested in living — this and one other goal: to connect with his son, Doug, whose growing up Gardner missed as he took power in business and politics, and who is repelled by his father’s campaign.

The script to Birdie Blue is the sort that, if there was any justice in this world, would have been unceremoniously trashed by every producer whose desk it crossed. Unfortunately, this being the real world and all, this awful script has been produced off-Broadway and in regional theatres all across the country, despite the fact it's guilty of every terrible conceit and device you could associate with the modern theatre. Nothing would have made us...

Yes, it's actually been 14 years since Unplugged in New York aired the first time, on the TV channel that once stood for Music. Fourteen years since you perched on the edge of the couch, possibly stoned, wearing intentionally crappy clothes, your bleary eyes glued to the set. Since Kurt Cobain had just a few months left of his short, tortured life.

Next year’s publication of Itch, Love Stories About Heroin means that if you've been waiting for a full-length, in-depth book about Alice in Chains' Layne Staley—well, don’t get your hopes up.

Melbourne-based quartet The Drones are a little bit country, a little bit blues, and a lotta bit rock 'n' roll. And check it out, they've got one of the most eclectic list of influences we've ever seen: Van Morrison or Dylan or Suicide or Bad Brains or Nina Simone or Black Flag or the Scientists or Ornette Coleman or Thelonius Monk or (australian)X or Townes Van Zandt or John Lee Hooker or Karen Dalton...

Yeah, yeah, yeah… we’ve bawled a bunch about the blahness of Queen Anne cuisine, from the "exotic" Chinoise at the top of the hill to the "exotic" Racha at the bottom of the hill. So we lowered our expectations a bit to try some good ol' American food at Floyd's Place, which reviewers consistently Yelped as, well, "decent."

Tomorrow, the biggest, bestest band to ever emerge from Seattle—there, we said it—releases a new concert DVD. You can buy (or Netflix) Immagine in Cornice (Italian for "Picture in a Frame") and watch it in the privacy of your own condo, or—lucky us—catch it big-screen-style at the Metro.

Yesterday the CDC released the news that one of the smallest subsets of people who kill themselves saw an 8% increase from 2003 to 2004.

For all young people between ages 10 to 24, the suicide rate rose 8 percent from 2003 to 2004 -- the biggest single-year bump in 15 years -- in what one official called "a dramatic and huge increase." ... The biggest increase -- about 76 percent -- was in the suicide rate for 10- to 14-year-old girls.

Alice in Chains’ former lead singer would be blowing out candles today had he not said yes, yes, yes to drugs. The Chains gang would likely still be making both crunchy (Dirt) and beautiful (Sap) music. Jerry Cantrell, who co-founded the band with Layne, probably would have written some lighter lyrics and cut his hair. Seattlest would have had the pleasure of seeing Alice in Chains—or the supergroup Mad Season—live.

Both the Mariners and the Sounders are in second place in their respective divisions, and both played the teams ahead of them last night.

--Galloping towards the new Narrows date.

A decomposed body was found in the house of ex-radio guy Mike Webb. We heard that first on the television, but we've been reading about Webb on the excellent Blatherwatch blog for a while now--they've been following Webb's fall for months, even from way back in the days before they had a special category for "Mike Webb Missing" on the blog.

Laser Rocket Arms hates it when we call them "the new Husker Don't."

--David Postman of the Seattle Times saw Sicko over the weekend and talked with Michael Moore about it.

This week the weather's cooperating a bit more. Nothing like escaping rainy days with a film festival (except if you get stuck in a downpour while waiting in line, so pack that umbrella). Once inside you'll be golden thanks to your perusal of Seattlest picks. Trust us. Golden!

Once the dust had subsided, after we'd sawed through a concrete wall and brushed the rat droppings from our heads that rained down on us as we demolished our basement bathroom, we began to find unusual things. Old toys stashed behind sheetrocked walls, left there to mourn their solitary confinement at the hands of a former owner who was too lazy or cheap to free them amidst the detritus of the dump.

We've heard that people commit suicide by jumping off of bridges instead of going a less spectacular route like pills or closed garages precisely because it does create a spectacle. Going out with a bang, so to speak, after failing to make an impact in life. Well, the person who jumped from the Aurora bridge late this morning succeeded in the spectacle-making department above and beyond the usual depression in the Adobe parking lot. The guy landed on some wires causing a transformer in Fremont to blow and power is currently out to some homes in the Center of the Universe.

Two people were killed in a shooting on the UW campus at 9am this morning. Medics responded to the shootings and found the victims inside Gould Hall, and the Seattle Times is reporting that campus police are investigating a murder suicide. Gould Hall is the building off 15th that houses the Dean's office, a couple of departmental offices, classrooms and the Court Cafe.

Lovely and melancholy Twiggy lookalike El Perro Del Mar (née Sarah Assbring) sings about parties and candy like she's about to place a call to the suicide hotline. Alright, it's not quite that depressing, but she's able to make her 60s girl group harmonies and "shoo-bee-doos" sound downright despondent, and that takes a special Debbie Downer-ability. How very Swedish. Of course, we say all of the above in the nicest possible way. Her poppy sadness is really quite pleasant.