On a funnier note, I heard on CNN early this morning (when the market was down 4%) one of their financial commentators say it was a good time for the average investor to buy, because the professionals were panicking and the rest of us could pick up some "deals".

Speaking as someone who owns mutual funds and exactly one stock (a few shares of Hain Celestial, which I bought simply because I like the illustrations on their boxes of tea), how unreasonable is that piece of advice? I can still toss $1K more into my Roth for 2007, and it seems to me that for a long-term investor like me (I won't retire for another 30 years), this might actually *be* a good time to buy.

Am I totally off the rails here?

Totally bitchin'.

That is all.

Age 34, reared up in New England. 3 inches of snow? Man up and go to school! Hilarious! I think we should clone her.

Pull a stunt like that in the working world and your whiny punk ass would be driving through 3 inches of snow to the unemployment line. He's 17? Time to learn how the world works.

If in November he was double-dosing Ambien to cover only 1 hour, I can imagine he accidentally overdosed trying to sleep before his massage appointment that afternoon. Why book a massage at your apartment if you are planning on killing yourself? And he was found face-down at the foot of his bed, which doesn't sound like suicide to me.

The NYPD held a press conference recently today, saying they found, and sent off for drug residue testing, a rolled-up $20 bill found next to his bed. I hope that this wasn't what it seems... but in the end, I'm just sure the world lost a real talent. I hope he wasn't a lost soul too.

In case you're curious, the NYPD has posted all of their findings up til now, to wit: he was found *in* bed under the covers, unresponsive, about an hour after the housekeeper heard him breathing as she went into the bathroom to change a lightbulb. He was moved out of bed by the EMTs who tried to zap his heart. The $20 was just a $20, it had no drug residue, and no illegal drugs were found in the apartment. He had 6 prescription meds in the apartment, including Ambien and an antihistamine. That can't be a good combination. His family said he'd had a little pneumonia.

Sometimes, really bad shit just happens by accident.

Drug instructions are pretty clear; drug *interactions* are tough to spot, they're not always listed on the package insert, and the print is so freaking tiny that even if they're there, they're impossible to read. I'm not talking about "may cause drowsiness" with antihistamines, but "will cause internal bleeding" with coumadin and prozac.

Additionally, if you get medications from multiple physicians (i.e. a GP and a specialist) they might not know what other meds you're on. If they ask you to fill out a form, they might not read it or enter it into their electronic system (which is designed to catch drug/drug interactions) until *after* they've written you a prescription for a new drug.

Also, and fundamentally, when they say that a drug "caused adverse reactions in 1% of test patients" consider that *you* might be in that 1%. Body chemistry is mostly predictable, but not 100%. Some people just react very badly to drugs or drug combinations.

Before I got a chance to vote for him!

James Dean/Marilyn Monroe/Janis Joplin/Jim Morrison/Jimi Hendrix/River Phoenix/Nicole Smith. . . Now you have him, a handsome, young man with talent untapped. How we worship the headlines of untimely death. Who intervened in any of these tragedies? Would witnesses and paparazzi rather take pictures than call 911?

Who would intervene? In the case of River Phoenix anyway, that would be his brother. The 911 call that Joaquin (then calling himself "Leaf" I believe) was in heavy rotation following Phoenix's death. There's nothing quite like listening to the voice of a teenager calling desperately for help while he watches his older brother die, let me tell you.

In the case of Mr. Ledger, he was already dead when they found him. The two ladies who did find him attempted CPR (apparently), as did the EMTs but they were far, far too late.

The comparison isn't particularly apt in any case because Heath Ledger wasn't a drinking, drugging, whoring celebutard train wreck. He was -- by all accounts I'd read *before* he died -- a pretty normal guy. Intense, to be sure, which may have been what did him in in the end, but regular enough to putter around Brooklyn with his bag of laundry, or with his tiny daughter on his shoulders teaching her "left" and "right", or running out of a coffee shop to see if a guy who fell off his bike was OK.

THAT, my friend, is the real tragedy: that someone with such a regular life, not only blessedly free of the Hollywood moral sinkhole but actively rejecting it and *still* being successful and well-regarded (see? It can be done!), who didn't court danger or death got it anyway, because of a stupid, meaningless, un-sought-after accidental reaction when he was just trying to get some sleep.