xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
A 26-year-old man will be hospitalized “for months” in Illawarra, Australia, following an August accident that authorities speculate might have been inspired by the film “Jackass.” The man was apparently walking across a room with a lighted firecracker between his posterior cheeks when he slipped and fell backward to the floor. The explosion resulted in a fractured pelvis, severe genital burns, hemorrhaging from the buttocks and ruptured urethra, leaving him incontinent and sexually dysfunctional.
A 69-year-old man, on the job as an employee of a surveying company, stuck his head up from a manhole in the driveway of a residential development and was fatally hit by an SUV (Greenwich, Conn., September).
A 16-year-old boy died from a punch in the chest during a game in which schoolboys take turns smacking each other to see who is the toughest (San Jose, Calif., July).
Extreme body-piercing in Arizona was a subject fit only for the alternative newsweekly New Times Phoenix in 2001, but in August 2003, Tucson’s mainstream press (Arizona Daily Star) followed an 18-year-old man, who was having four modified deep-sea (8-gauge) fishing hooks threaded into his back so that he could be hoisted toward the ceiling and suspended for 20 minutes of what the man said was the worst pain he’d ever felt (for the privilege of which he paid $150). Said the piercing shop’s wrangler, Chris Glunt, “For some it’s like a spiritual thing. I’ve suspended to clear my head. You can focus and concentrate on where you stand in life.” Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD
