The day she died the neighbors came to snicker: "Well, thats what comes from too much pills and liquor."

Whatever our feelings about a woman who throws her mind away and lets herself become a punchline, the death of Vickie Hogan, alias Anna Nicole Smith seems so, so sad. Am I the only one paranoid enough to wonder about the timing?

Didn't some Frenchman say "I can't hear what you say, because who you are screams so loudly"? Step away from our prejudices about her, and it's all damn peculiar. There's almost 500 million waiting for someone to claim it; the full estate was $1.6 billion. Old Man Marshall's heir, the son who contested the widow's claim, died in June. Smith's 20 year old son dies while dozing in a hospital of a methadone and anti-depressant cocktail without much history of serious abuse. The Marshall family said the court fight would continue. Five months later the boy's mother is dead, after a very public history of substance abuse, self destructiveness and erratic behavior, and depressed about the loss of her son, as all the people appearing on television are quick to politely remind us. This is someone begging to be shoved from behind for the money. And a five month old baby daughter with no clear title to the money and a disputed paternity. That much money, someone could be set for life just catching whatever spills on the ground during the court proceedings. Or is all this just a series of unhappy coincidences? Sigh.

I used to have a girlfriend
known as Elsie
With whom I shared
Four sordid rooms in Chelsea
She wasn't what you'd call
A blushing flower;
As a matter of fact
She rented by the hour.

The day she died the neighbors
came to snicker:
"Well, thats what comes
from too much pills and liquor."
But when I saw her laid out like a queen
She was the happiest corpse
I'd ever seen.
And as for me,
I made up my mind back in Chelsea,
When I go, I'm going like Elsie.