This was on the the ABC News website..
US author Hunter S Thompson, who committed suicide last weekend, wanted to exit this world in a style befitting his extraordinary life by being fired from a cannon, a friend says.
It is believed the larger-than-life writer of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas stated in his will that he wanted his ashes to be fired out of a cannon following his funeral, plans for which have yet to be announced.
"I believe he wanted to be shot out of a cannon," friend Troy Hooper told AFP.
"I understand it's in his Will," Mr Hooper said, associate editor of the Aspen Daily News, based near the Colorado home where 67-year-old Thompson apparently shot himself on Sunday.
"That's Hunter's style - that's how he would want it," he said.
"He was a big fan of bonfires and explosions and anything that went bang and I'm sure he'd like to go bang as well."
Mr Hooper, who became friends with father of "gonzo" journalism about five years before his death, cited reports that Thompson told his son, Juan, that his after-life ambition was to become cannon fodder - literally.
"That's exactly the kind of stuff he would say all the time," he said of one of the most important American literary figures of the 20th Century.
It was Juan Thompson who found his father's body in his rural home in Woody Creek, near the ski resort of Aspen, after he apparently shot himself in the head on Sunday night.
Mr Hooper, who saw Thompson last week, says Thompson had been in pain following recent back surgery, following a hip replacement and after he broke his leg recently.
Thompson, famed for his LSD and alcohol-fuelled literary exploits, did not seem "more distraught than usual" in the days before he died,
Mr Hooper says that Thompson was "often either up or down".
Sheriff's department investigators in Woody Creek, where Thompson lived for more than 40 years, say he appeared to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Hmm, I think I may have to read one of his books.
