{"id":937,"date":"2007-07-06T08:21:48","date_gmt":"2007-07-06T12:21:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/06\/proving-once-again-that-the-real-world-is-at-least-as-good-as-fiction\/"},"modified":"2007-07-06T08:38:58","modified_gmt":"2007-07-06T12:38:58","slug":"proving-once-again-that-the-real-world-is-at-least-as-good-as-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/06\/proving-once-again-that-the-real-world-is-at-least-as-good-as-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Proving Once Again That The Real World Is At Least As Creative As Fiction&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Man, that&#8217;s one hell of an obituary:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/main.jhtml?xml=\/news\/2007\/07\/04\/db0402.xml\">Count Gottfried von Bismarck<\/a><br \/>\nCount Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies.<\/p>\n<p>The great-great-grandson of Prince Otto, Germany&#8217;s Iron Chancellor and architect of the modern German state, the young von Bismarck showed early promise as a brilliant scholar, but led an exotic life of gilded aimlessness that attracted the attention of the gossip columns from the moment he arrived in Oxford in 1983 and hosted a dinner at which the severed heads of two pigs were placed at either end of the table.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I bet the writer had fun writing that. &#8220;a life of gilded aimlessness&#8221;, that&#8217;s some good phrasing.<\/p>\n<p>Go read the whole thing. You won&#8217;t believe it.<\/p>\n<p>After reading it I had to dig up a picture. Apparently he looked like this:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/2007\/07\/bismarck.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"328\" alt=\"Count Gottfried von Bismarck\" title=\"Count Gottfried von Bismarck\" class=\"aligncenter\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">Man, that&#8217;s one hell of an obituary: Count Gottfried von Bismarck Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies. The great-great-grandson of Prince Otto, Germany&#8217;s Iron Chancellor and architect&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/06\/proving-once-again-that-the-real-world-is-at-least-as-good-as-fiction\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-one-and-done","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-f7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}