Paul Tilley, the ad exec who killed himself because blogs were mean to him (or something), continues to inspire the most self-righteous and least self-aware of scribes to put quill to parchment, adjust their oft-dropped monocles, and write, more in sadness than in anger ("I think I'm more saddened than pissed off"), strongly worded letters to whom it may concern regarding those mean, mean bloggers. Today, Bob Garfield, who blogs at Ad Age, helpfully explains "the difference between commentary and vandalism." "Commentary" is when smart, mustachioed professionals who've written books and things blog. "Vandalism" is when people are mean to those people, on the internet. [AdAge, UnRelated]

Two doctors are being investigated by the feds in connection with actor and Soho resident Heath Ledger's death. The Daily News reports that one doctor in California and one in Texas supplied Ledger with Vicodin and Oxycontin, and the feds want to know if the whole deal was legal. Nothing has been established yet. The two painkillers were among the six drugs in Ledger's system when he died of an overdose in January. [NYDN]

Why let your abandonment of this mortal coil prevent you from continuing to be a self-impressed techno-utopian schmuck? Now you can alert the world that you read BoingBoing ever after death with the "Public Domain Donor" sticker. Put it on your license today so that when you die your Twitter will revert to the Public Domain where fellow Twitterers may build upon it with further Twittering. [Public Domain Donor via Kottke]

Nicole Paultre-Bell, the widow of Sean Bell—who was shot to death by the NYPD on his wedding night in 2006 while unarmed—is now starring in an ad campaign for Rocawear. With her two young children. On the eve of the trial of the cops who shot Sean Bell [NY Post]. Tacky, or uplifting? This one is almost too close to call. Photos of the full ads, below.

Dangerous animal wrangler Steve Irwin died in 2006 after a run-in with a sting ray. Daughter/strange cave creature Bindi has her own documentary series in which she deals with potentially dangerous animals, just like daddy. She's nine. So it's not surprising to hear that the littlest Irwin, tiny four year old Robert, has received his first snake bite, and is proud of it. Or maybe it's just his mum who's proud. Terri seems ever eager to exploit this dangerous handling of animals that killed her husband and threatens her children, saying "He picked one of them up and it bit him on the finger, and he was so proud to have copped his first hit." [Showbiz Spy] After the jump, The Soup's Joel McHale (our love) riffing on Bindi's rapping skills.

Your iPod will lead to your own bloody death, according to this ad campaign for the Ontario Workplace Safety & Insurance Board. Fair warning. [via Adrants]

As you may or may not have heard, Heath Ledger, the celebrated young actor who died unexpectedly last month, was memorialized this weekend in Australia with a hideous beach blanket bingo party. The wacky weirdos who celebrated his life by diving, fully clothed, into the sea he so loved are definitely tapped in the head. Bizarro! [Daily Mail]

Gawker video guru Richard Blakeley MASHED-UP two of the New York Times' interactive newsmaps: one showing the deadly path of Tuesday's tornadoes, the other showing which Democratic candidates won which states on Super Tuesday. The results: does God hate Hillary? (And note: Obama won Alabama, but Hillary won each county in that state with a recorded death from Tuesday's storms.) Click to enlarge map. [NYT, NYT]

Hey, everyone remember how Heath Ledger did all that cocaine and heroin at Hollywood "Drug Parties"? And how it killed him? Turns out, he was killed by legal drugs—perhaps ones given to him by doctors! The establishment killed him! Not, shockingly, all that deadly Mary Jane. No, the pills that did Ledger in are a bit more respectable, and all quite familiar to your standard self-diagnosing doctor-shopping members of the creative under- and over-classes.

The New York medical examiner's office declared today that actor Heath Ledger died of an accidental overdose of anti-anxiety drugs and sleep aids. Autopsy and toxicology results find that Ledger wasn't under the influence of illegal substances at the time of his death at his SoHo apartment on January 22nd. "The medical examiner released results of the toxicology report Wednesday, saying Ledger died as the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam, and doxylamine." [WNBC]

A "shocking video" of Heath Ledger "snorting what appear to be drugs off a table" at noted Hollywood drug haven the Chateau Marmont has "surfaced." Entertainment Tonight bought it for $200,000, teased it, then backed away from playing it. Same with The Insider. Not, according to the Daily News, the case with Australia's Channel 9, which will play the tape tonight. Expect to be shocked! Shocked to see an actor attend a party, after an awards show (2006 SAG Awards), and snort a line of coke! Ledger expresses "remorse" at his life of habitual drug-taking, saying he used to smoke a lot of weed. "'I'm going to get serious s—t from my girlfriend,' Ledger tells his companions. 'We just had a baby three months ago.'" Does this seriously sound like a man in the grip of, according to today's Post, a major drug habit?

You know what really cracks up Fox News host John Gibson? The untimely death of Heath Ledger! The one thing John Gibson knows about Heath Ledger is that Heath Ledger kissed a boy in a gay movie for gay gays, and therefore, he was probably a total gay himself, in real life. Therefore, his death is hilarious! On his radio program the other day, the hero journalist mocked Ledger's death something like half a dozen times, opening his show with a hilarious quip about Ledger quitting us and wondering if perhaps the actor killed himself after witnessing the poor performace of John Edwards in the last presidential debate. It's funny 'cause the authorities no longer suspect suicide! Even the guests joined in, with funnyman Tom Sullivan calling him "Keith Bledger" and the lady cohost whose name we didn't catch wondering, mockingly, if Keith was perhaps a "deep thinker." Can you believe that wacky morning zoo crew went there? They're saying what we're not really thinking, because what the fuck? Listen and sputter! [Think Progress, MSNBC, Previously]

Everyone is always destroying New York all the time. Now the damn National Geographic Channel has decided to borrow a page from Animal Planet and direct their focus away from mating gazelles and toward death and doom for us all. The video below popped up on the front page of Dailymotion today. It's a promo for the upcoming NatGeo special "Six Degress Could Change the World," which is about global warming and not how we're all connected to '80s leading men (or Sidney Poitier). Remember: in the event of 25 feet of water drowning New York, stay inland or with Dennis Quaid. [National Geographic]

The New Yorker's lengthy, depressing story on the MySpace prank that became a tragic suicide is up. If you're looking for a bright spot to a story of adults driving a depressed 13-year-old girl to suicide, it might be author Lauren Collins' description of how that whole MySpace thing works: "MySpace has a pliant grammar, and its users manipulate lowercase and capital letters for visual effect. 'Z's trump 's's, so that 'Miss Honey Love' becomes 'Mz.Hon3y Luv.' A boy named Shane writes his name '$h@NE,' in the pasteup style of a ransom note." Little old ladies from Dubuque are presumably thankful for the brief. (MySpace would like you to know that they're holding a press conference at 11 today about "security" with "Hemanshu Nigam, Chief Security Officer, MySpace and Fox Interactive Media and others.") [New Yorker]

In Great Britain earlier this week, the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals stumbled upon a veritable horse death camp—"dead horses everywhere," according to one rescuer, with 32 bodies "as well as emaciated survivors, many covered in excrement, mud, scrapes and cuts at Spindles farm, at Hyde Heath, near Amersham, Buckinghamshire. Three more had to be shot because of their condition." It gets worse!

Andrew Olmstead just updated his blog to announce that he's been killed in Iraq. He seems mostly good-natured about the whole ordeal, unlike suicidal blogger Theresa Duncan. No mournful poems or ghost stories here, just straight talk and, well, a Team America quote. And seven Babylon 5 quotes. Let us forgive the dead their taste. [Andrew Olmsted via Metafilter]

Writer/artist Theresa Duncan, subject of a January Vanity Fair cover story (among plenty of other coverage), is updating her blog from beyond the grave. Cries for help: now available months after they'd be useful. Duncan—whose intentional overdose on pills last July led to the suicide of her partner Jeremy Blake a week later—had become, according to acquaintances and friends interviewed by Vanity Fair, increasingly erratic, paranoid, haggard, hard-drinking, and depressed in her last year or two. She was convinced that Scientologists were harassing her and Blake, trying to sabotage her stalling career (movie and TV projects that never got off the ground, including one that was supposed to star erstwhile friend of the couple and famed Scientologist musician Beck) and his ascending one (a scheduled retrospective of Blake's work at Washington DC's Corcoran Gallery ended up going on posthumously). So: what does a dead woman blog about? Dick Cavett, Sherlock Holmes, and T.S. Eliot.

Salvatore "Bill" Bonanno, media hound eldest son of late mob boss Joe "Bananas" Bonanno, died early this morning of a heart attack. Bonanno joined his father's business early, spent years as Joe's adviser, ended up as a subject of a Gay Talese book, then wrote his own cash-in mob memoir, and even "co-produced a 1999 miniseries based on the autobiography of his father." He was 75 and spent a good decade longer in prison than his murderous father, so let's not begrudge him the crappy books too much. [AP]

Private security firm and deadly, answerable-to-no-one mercenary army Blackwater was involved in yet another shocking display of deadly gunplay in Iraq. Just months after Blackwater guards shot 17 civilians in cold blood on the streets of Baghdad, they SHOT THE NEW YORK TIMES'S DOG. Which, wow. The New York Times had a dog? And Blackwater just... shot it? "State Department investigators have made two follow-up visits to the Times compound to investigate the shooting of Hentish [the lovable, and no doubt absolutely adorable dog belonging to the Times]," according to Reuters.

New York Times in Iraq: "Blackwater shot our dog" [Reuters]