| Location | Culross, Fife, Scotland |
| Age | 30 years |
| Cause of Death | Road Traffic Collision |
| Date of Birth | 11/1965 |
| Date of Death | 01/01/1996 |
| Visitors | 944 since 16/02/2007 |
| Creator |
'The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while.
Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question, is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, "Hey - don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride..."
And we... kill those people.
"Shut him up."
"We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real."
Just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter because:
It's just a ride.
And we can change it anytime we want.
It's only a choice.
No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money.
A choice, right now, between fear and love.
The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one.
Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defences each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.'
BILL HICKS
Reading Toby’s posting made me realise how many conversations I still have with Sandy about lots of things. The main area we kick around is the permanent gulf between expectation and reality – one of the zones where Sandy applied so much of his own brain power and humour. Stupid things like seeing ‘Olu’s World Business Centre’ painted onto a tin sign outside a dilapidated shop front in Peckham High Street immediately brings his wry deflating logic into my mind. Olu would be perhaps commended for his vision and ambition but benchmarked against stiff multinational competition in the arena of world business.
Bill Drummond’s brilliant and militantly absurd and Scottish ‘45’ also triggered lots of internal Sandy discussion. Funny how we got the Pet Shop Boys from the off but somehow didn’t give the KLF more attention.
This isn’t meant to be a eulogy but Sandy was getting lots of things together when he died and I’m curious as hell to know the unknowable - what he’d be doing now. Would he be having a version of the ennui-laden mid-life crisis so many of us are limping though now? Or did he get his over with in that dark spell in the late 80s? Either way I’d appreciate his advice.
I’m not sure what Sandy would make of this cyberspace tribute – I can imagine him deploying words like “absurd” or “nonsense” in reaction to it, but at the same time be quite keen to use it to subvert conventional ways of commemorating his life. He certainly wouldn’t want it to be sombre or mawkish. I think he would want it to be dynamic, talking about him as if he was still alive, full of debate and argument, unrestricted by tradition or social mores, and always welcoming in the way Sandy made one feel when visiting his gaff. And I’m sure Sandy would delight in contributing to it himself – in that authoritative voice of his, with the verbal equivalent of his outstretched arm and finger for added emphasis.
What it has done is made me look at the letters and cards I still have from Sandy, bringing back all sorts of memories. Going to visit him when he was teaching English in Madrid – not entirely happily, but he found other ways of entertaining himself. While we were there Sandy gave us a swift lecture tour of recent Spanish history, reminding us that it was only 8 years since the Spanish army had attempted a coup, and taking us out to Franco’s grotesque mausoleum. That ludicrously small car that Sandy had while he was at Bristol, full of cassette tapes and football kit – if you could call those Marxism Today t-shirts a proper kit (though we always obediently wore them). And I will be eternally grateful to Sandy for shaking me out of my ambivalence about going to Ibiza and summoning up 62 pages of Ibizan holidays on ceefax (this was pre-internet – talk about ‘back in the day’) to persuade me to go. It worked and I owe you massively for that Sandy, because if I hadn’t gone I’m pretty sure my life would not be as it is now in so many good ways.
It also makes me wonder what Sandy would be doing with himself, and making of the world in general if he were still alive. I can imagine Blair and Mourinho being lashed by his tongue, while Sandy might be delighting in the antics of Pete Docherty and The Thick Of It. Showing distinct ambiguity over the promotion of Nu-Rave, and Bristol City to the Championship. And probably he and I rowing about the Colombian FARC, the relative merits of Dogme 95 films, and whether Jarvis Cocker and James Murphy are both musical geniuses. What would he make of ‘New British Artists’, reality TV, and “socialism with Chinese characteristics”? What do you think?
It would certainly be good to hear from others who knew Sandy – not solemn tributes but anecdotes, memories, opinions of the man. A conversation about him, not a static memorial. I think it’s what he would want.
At Least 23 Reported Dead in Mexico Border Bus Crash
By: Clark Staten
(write-through@15:45CST-Reduces injuries count, adds Rescue Details)
Phoenix, AZ., January 1, 1996 (ENN) -- Two buses collided 13 miles south of the Mexico/Arizona border at approximately 03:30a.m. today. One of the buses reportedly crossed the center line and careened into oncoming traffic, hitting the other bus head-on. At least one of the buses is reported to be a tour bus. The accident was reported to have happened on Highway 2, near the border town of Sonoita, Mexico. Sonoita is located approximately 100 miles SW of Phoenix, and near the town of Lukeville, AZ. The deadly accident reportedly killed at least 23 people and may have injured as many as fifty others. Several of the dead are believed to be children, according to an Arizona State police source.
Some dispute continues in regard to actual casualty counts. Mexican authorities in Sonoita had originally reported only 23 people to be injured, but Pima County, Arizona Sheriff's Department personnel said that as many as 100 people may have been hurt. Secondary reports by emergency medical personnel vary between three dozen and the original one hundred. The confusion is reportedly being compounded by the fact that the injured were taken to hospitals on both side of the border and that there was no unified incident command system at the scene.
The extent of injuries are also not immediately known, but it was reported that several people were entrapped and had to be extricated from the demolished buses. Sonoita police officer Rafael Almaraz reportedly told the Associated Press (AP) that half of one bus was completely destroyed. All available air ambulances in the area have been sent to the scene, and several seriously injured people were seen being flown to hospitals in Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona. A trauma center in Phoenix says that they have received at least five (5) critical patients with multiple-trauma injuries.
The accident remains under investigation by Mexican police, and the actual cause may not be determined for hours or even days. One thing is certain; the crash is a lethal start to 1996 traffic fatality statistics.
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