DevonDeathTrip

Good grief. I've printed this out and given it to my mum to take to her next Women's Institute meeting. She was only saying the other day that topics of conversation there had become a bit stale.

That can't be right, because I know that I'm going to wake up soon and find out I'm still four years old, meaning I've dreamt everything I think has happened since. Therefore you can't exist at all and neither can this forum. Or maybe we all live inside someone else's dream. But, if this is so, then who is the dreamer?

It's funny, because I did think this fine piece of work would appeal to you. I should have guessed that it wouldn't have passed you by. I might have to take in next year's gathering harnessing cosmic energy near Combe Martin, as it's only a short drive away. Keeping a straight face may be a challenge though. Agree that part of the book's charm is King's straightforward assertion that his various encounters with other life forms are nothing less than the truth. He doesn't waste valuable pages trying to justify himself, which fails to make him any more believable, but adds some literary appeal to his quirky train of thought.

Contacts With The Gods From Space, by George King, a former taxi driver, who, thanks to his encounters with various cosmic deities, went on to found the Aetherius Society. A startling read, mainly due to King's radical departure from traditional Christian teachings when he drops the bombshell that Jesus Christ was actually originally from Venus. Even having read the book, I am unsure how King arrived at this conclusion. However he was convinced that a mysterious cloaked man he met in North Devon in 1958 was indeed our Lord and Saviour. King (who died in 1997) was by his own account a man capable of spiritual networking on a grand scale and regularly communed with extraterrestrials from the comfort of his flat in Maida Vale. This is where, in 1954, he was informed by a hitherto unknown voice that he was to be the Earthly representative on an 'interplanetary parliament' and he appears to have dedicated himself from that day onwards to representing his constituency to the best of his abilities, even moving to California which he believed to be a better location to converse with outer space than West London. Later in the book, King shares his views on UFOs, mediumship, religion, karma, reincarnation, Atlantis, spiritual energy, holy mountains, spiritual ecology, prophecy and the future of life on Earth. Sadly, I fear that King perhaps might have been a little over ambitious in his scope by attempting to cover all of these topics within a mere 173 pages, but then again I doubt incredulous and uninitiated readers such as myself could have coped with much more. P.S I didn't pay money for this book, but instead found a brand new plastic wrapped copy on Yes Tor, Dartmoor at the weekend, which I now understand to be one of the Aetherius Society's holy mountains. As someone went to all the effort of leaving it there, I decided I would review it here. For some reason, I thought @maryportfuncity would approve.

Ron Easton gets the full BBC treatment.

Did you know that for a twelve month period between 1973 and 1974, the UK's highest murder rate per capita was in...Torquay? This was due to unrelated triple and quadruple shootings. Roebuck House murders Torquay Casino murders I would imagine Hungerford's 1987 murder rate will have beaten anything London can come up with more recently. Also, I mentioned this on the gangsters thread a while ago. Corleone in Sicily boasted an impressive 144 murders between 1944 and 1948 - not bad for a town of 11,000.

Another thing I like about Iceland is that convicted criminals need to go on a waiting list before they can start their jail terms. Also, they let their banks fail, as they couldn't afford to bail them out. Still think the UK should have done the same thing

Afraid to say I woke in the middle of the night wondering if the chairman qualified for the Scrabble thread, checked, found out that he didn't and went back to sleep.

Oh, ok dead tag removed. He is Lazarus and I was too hasty!

Yes, just about to say the same thing. Will add a dead tag now and wait for the English speaking press to catch up with DL.

Giuseppe Morabito, 84, the former head of the Calabrian equivalent of the Mafia, the 'Ndrangheta, is pleading ill health (Italian link) in a probably doomed bid to get of jail, where he has been incarcerated since 2004. Incidentally, Morabito hails from Africo, widely believed to be the poorest town in Italy.

Troubled 1997 Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich appears to be missing in action. Ullrich has been in rehab recently, to address his addictions to alcohol and amphetamines, but was last seen on the roof of his villa in Majorca drinking whisky and "clutching a cloth chicken".

Well, scintillating as the discussion may have turned out to be, I'm locking this thread. Mad Hatter, if you're interested in sucking long objects, I'm sure there are better sites than Deathlist to satisfy your curiosity...

Rick Stein - not the UK chef. Nor a man to let death get in the way of practical jokes if his obituary is anything to go by.

The Daily Telegraph and The Times have honoured Maurizo Zanfanti with proper obituaries. The Telegraph's effort is a classic IMO.