Shaming Steve Martin or Why Trump Won

In his tribute to his friend Carrie Fisher, Steve Martin dares to call her beautiful and SJWs of the world unite in their outrage. This demented political correctness police is part of the reason why Trump has won.

Arabic and Anal Sex

Today I was going to tell some bloggers important things about life, but then I thought I put it here.

Jonah Falcon, Longest Penis

We have previously written about the longest penis, although it was most likely a fake. Here we go again.

Mica rugaminte! (Sergiu feat. Andrei)

I’ve recently discovered a Romanian song. I have a feeling I’ll be referring to it later, so I am posting it here together with its lyrics and Romanian translation.

the longest penis vs the shortest man

I always wondered what do people find interesting. There was a time when Google published Zeitgeist - a top of queries for each country, but that fizzled. Here we'll have a look at what a tabloid finds its most viewed articles..

Natalie Wood, truth drowned

I finally heard a few days ago news that I longed to hear ever since reading about the weird circumstances of Natalie Wood’s death.

Amy Winehouse, 27, found dead

Though we’re all saddened by Amy Winehouse’s joining “Club 27”, I reminisce about some of her songs and also remember other similar deaths.

Gary Moore and The Thrill Is Gone

Gary Moore is gone. Not much to say. Just listen.

top 10 causes of die-offs

Whenever I drive around with my hunter friend watching the wild geese on Canadian roads, he tells me that "you can never go hungry in this country; look at'em!". Then the hunting season starts and I don't hear from him for a while..

Nicolas Cage would die 4 honor

..but not for cold. At least that's what we make of a recent scandal in Bucharest. See it for yourself!

Save a life, get accused of murder

A man, awakened late at night by some major hubbub, woke up an jumped into the freezing water to save a woman from a sinking car.

Farmville infanticide

Recently, the Supreme Court has been debating suppressing violent games. There is clear evidence that they should be taking a closer look at the "innocent" Farmville (or, better yet, do nothing). We’re looking not only at Farmville, but also at South Korean game addictions and Supreme Comedy.

We do not believe that violent games cause violence anymore than so-called “click-games” the epitome of boredom and addiction on Facebook. As if to prove this assertion in the most vile manner, a Jacksonville Florida mother entered a guilty plea in the death of her son:

Alexandra V. Tobias, 22, was arrested after the January death of 3-month-old Dylan Lee Edmondson. She told investigators she became angry because the baby was crying while she was playing a computer game called FarmVille on the Facebook social-networking website. She told investigators the baby cried loudly as she played the game, which prosecutor Richard Mantei identified as FarmVille, a simulation game in which players raise crops and livestock with the help of Facebook friends.

Furthermore,

Tobias then put the baby on the couch and stepped out for a cigarette to regain her composure, the arrest report says. When she came back in, the family dog knocked the baby off the couch. The crying started again and Tobias shook the baby a second time before calling for an ambulance, the arrest report says. (..) She told the judge she'd graduated from high school. Court papers say she went to Samuel W. Wolfson Senior High School in Jacksonville. The paperwork also said Tobias did not have a job. (..) According to court records, her child abuse arrest violated a six-month probation she began serving just a few weeks before after pleading no contest to a domestic battery charge.

Farmville may have had other, even more counterintuitive effects. A story from just a few days ago in SeattleWeekly suggests that 27 y.o. Gary A. Veldhuizen from Ferndale, FarmVille player, pleaded guilty to raping a goat (i.e., bestiality):

The billy buggering took place at a farm near Enterprise Road at Willeys Lake Road in May. Apparently a family member caught Veldhuizen in mid-shag and called sheriff's deputies who came and arrested him. Veldhuizen's Facebook page shows the pudgy Ferndalian's love of ranch life extends to the virtual world as well, as he is a big fan of the game FarmVille. One of the more recent posts says he wants to "share some grape bushels with you."

Incidentally, Farmville has also other similar “click” games, one involving Mafia and organized crime, but that game has yet to result in someone’s death.

South Korea Online

Sad as it may be, this is not the first time addictive, non-violent games were involved in the death of children. Only a few months earlier, in February-March 2010, a South-Korean couple was arrested for starving their 3-month-old prematurely born daughter.

Once a day, between 12-hour stretches at a neighborhood Internet cafe, they fed their baby.  Instead of nurturing their own daughter, they became obsessed with raising a virtual child in the popular role-playing game called Prius Online. The couple were arrested in Suwon, a suburb of Seoul, 5 months after reporting the death of their baby.  The baby’s autopsy showed that she’d died due to a long period of malnutrition. (..) This is the dirty underbelly of South Korea’s fast and cheap Internet connections.  Over the last ten years, there have been many stories of Internet addiction and compulsive gaming leading to serious consequences and even death. In 2007, South Korea established an Internet addiction camp to help people overcome their addiction to the Internet.

According to PBS, in the more than 20000 Korean “PC Bangs” (i.e., Internet cafes), the more time you spend playing, the less you pay:

• Roughly 50 percent of South Koreans play games regularly, and 75 percent of gamers prefer online games
• Currently, the most played game in Korean "PC bangs" (Internet cafes) is Aion, a massively multiplayer online role playing game. It is due for release in the U.S. in fall 2009.
• In December 2008, the Korean government announced it would invest $237 million in the game industry to help expand gaming exports, which topped $1 billion for the first time in 2008.
• The South Korean online games market is expected to exceed $1.7 billion by the end of 2009
• Korea hosted the first Global Online Game Awards in 2008
• One-third of South Korea's population of 48 million has registered to play the game KartRider at least once
• Video game consoles, such as Sony PlayStation or Nintendo Wii, are less popular than PC games, in part because of widely available broadband Internet and a previous ban on Japanese cultural imports.

In 2005, a 28-year-old Korean man died after playing Starcraft almost non-stop for 50 hours. He inspired (or was he inspired by) the South Park WoW episode. He had just been fired for playing games too much. The government solution is Jump Up Internet Rescue School, a boot camp to cure online gaming addiction. According to New York Times,

South Korea boasts of being the most wired nation on earth. In fact, perhaps no other country has so fully embraced the Internet. Ninety percent of homes connect to cheap, high-speed broadband, online gaming is a professional sport, and social life for the young revolves around the “PC bang,” dim Internet parlors that sit on practically every street corner. (..) Up to 30 percent of South Koreans under 18, or about 2.4 million people, are at risk of Internet addiction, said Ahn Dong-hyun, a child psychiatrist at Hanyang University in Seoul who just completed a three-year government-financed survey of the problem. (..) To address the problem, the government has built a network of 140 Internet-addiction counseling centers, in addition to treatment programs at almost 100 hospitals and, most recently, the Internet Rescue camp, which started this summer. Researchers have developed a checklist for diagnosing the addiction and determining its severity, the K-Scale. (The K is for Korea.)

NYT offers even insight into how such addictions get started:

One participant, Lee Chang-hoon, 15, began using the computer to pass the time while his parents were working and he was home alone. He said he quickly came to prefer the virtual world, where he seemed to enjoy more success and popularity than in the real one. He spent 17 hours a day online, mostly looking at Japanese comics and playing a combat role-playing game called Sudden Attack. He played all night, and skipped school two or three times a week to catch up on sleep. When his parents told him he had to go to school, he reacted violently. Desperate, his mother, Kim Soon-yeol, sent him to the camp. “He didn’t seem to be able to control himself,” said Mrs. Kim, a hairdresser. “He used to be so passionate about his favorite subjects” at school. “Now, he gives up easily and gets even more absorbed in his games.” Her son was reluctant at first to give up his pastime. “I don’t have a problem,” Chang-hoon said in an interview three days after starting the camp. “Seventeen hours a day online is fine.” But later that day, he seemed to start changing his mind, if only slightly.

The Supremes

In USA and especially California, addiction is not seen as a problem. The “problem” is solely violent games. Recently, the Governator signed a strict law to control game violence, a law eventually appealed by a Game producers association all the way to the Supreme Court. The hearings were, according to the Hollywood reporter, cause for comedy:

1. Justice Alito getting a sly dig at his colleague over "original intent" in the U.S. Constitution: "I think what Justice Scalia wants to know is what James Madison thought about video games. Did he enjoy them?"
2. Justice Kagan, the junior member of the high court, trying to show she's hip: "You think Mortal Kombat is prohibited by this statute? It's a candidate, meaning, a reasonable jury could find that Mortal Kombat, which is an iconic game, which I am sure half of the clerks who work for us spent considerable amount of time in their adolescence playing."
3. Justice Breyer creating, excuse the pun, a tortured metaphor about a 13-year-old playing video games depicting violence: "I have tried to take as bad a [scenario] as I could think of, gratuitous torture of children. OK. Now, you can't buy a naked woman, but you can go and buy that, you say to the 13-year-old. Now, what sense is there to that?"
4. Justice Scalia muses about whether it would be a good thing to let juries act as censors: "Juries are not controllable. That's the wonderful thing about juries, also the worst thing about juries."
5. Just about anything out of the mouth of Justice Sotomayor, including these questions:

• "One of the studies, the Anderson study, says that the effect of violence is the same for a Bugs Bunny episode as it is for a violent video. So can the legislature now, because it has that study, say we can outlaw Bugs Bunny?"
• "Could you get rid of rap music? Have you heard some of the lyrics of some of the rap music...?"
• "Would a video game that portrayed a Vulcan as opposed to a human being, being maimed and tortured, would that be covered by the act?"
• "So if the video producer says this is not a human being, it's an android computer simulated person, then all they have to do is put a little artificial feature on the creature and they could sell the video game?"
• "What happens when the character gets maimed, head chopped off and immediately after it happens they spring back to life and they continue their battle? Is that covered by your act?"

It seems to me that Schwarzenegger, though not a big fan of such a law, signed it stating “children must be protected” not because he believes that, but rather because he thinks that reason is unconvincing for parents. All hopes that such ill-conceived legislation will be stopped so that it does not push game development to Asia rest now with the Supreme Court.

Video: PBS: Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier, 1 Game Too Many, sp-mlnw, sp-s10e08-inside

Sources / More info: [yt-fv-parody], [yt-fv-tr], [yt-h8-fv], [yt-h8-fv], [yt-h8-fv], [yt-fv-prblm], [yt-h8-fv], [yt-h8-fv], [Supreme Court], SC-hearing, Jacksonville-mom, jacksonville-sentencing, huff-j, /.-exodus, /.-sc, atlantic-arnold, nxtwb-sk, st-kd, nyt-kbc, gzm-bsy, Kogia-study, wiki-lv,notwc, sw-veldhuizen, fb-veldhuizen, bbc-spanish-piglet

VerbaVolant, farmville, violence, game, games, online, online games, supreme court, supremes, mmog, mmorpg, massive multiplayer, massively multiplayer, schwartzenegger

Top 10 Basic News Stories

In a recent article, a management consultant opines that the "so-called Third-Wave age of information, as futurist Alvin Toffler named it, the commercial news process is actually imprisoned in a Second-Wave model, i.e. an industrial model of news production". We are quoting at length from this captivating article.

Some – well, pundits as well – believe that the relationship between pundits and the media is symbiotic at best, if not far more intimate and polarized. Rarely do we see pundits biting the hand that feeds them, like Dr Karl Albrecht does:

Any subject expert who is regularly called upon to appear in news cameos (such as I am, as a business consultant) soon discerns the unmistakable factory-like hum of the news operation. The process by which video editors interweave the live performances of news readers, the cutaways to remote units at the crime scene or the lawn of the White House, the obligatory establishing shot of the professor walking across campus to the laboratory, and the stock footage (the Rodney King beating, the Clinton-Lewinsky hug, or the lab technician testing the DNA samples) pays little homage to Toffler's Third Wave concept. Instead, it's straight out of the Industrial Age. Probably the closest product analogy to the news is a fast-food operation, something like making hamburgers or baking pastries.
Each little piece of news rolls down the line like a tidy, production-controlled PopTart (with due respect to Kellog's popular product): flavored, sweetened, glazed, and baked to perfection. Whatever the sacrifice in depth or insight, the fast-food news model is undeniably efficient and remarkably cost-effective.
What makes any industrial production process efficient and cost-effective is the use of standard products. In the news industry this translates into a few well-proven, reliable story structures. A basic inventory of about ten standard news stories makes the process of baking the news easy to manage.

Here’s his top 10 cookie cutter news report phenotypes:

1. Shock and Horror. ..Murders, especially multiples, acts of unusual violence, brutality, or sadism, shark attacks, and the carnage left by explosions..
2. Tragedy. ..natural disasters, airplane crashes, and hotel fires..
3. Hot Sex. ..It ranges from the intimate lives of celebrities to "socially responsible" stories about teen-agers having oral sex. It also includes derivative pornography, such as stories about the exotic dancers at the local club who are fighting to unionize..
4. Scandal. ..misdeeds of government officials or corporate bigwigs..
5. The Fall of the Mighty. ..powerful people get knocked off their high horses..
6. Conflict. ..whether in the schoolyard or in Taiwan's Parliament chamber, conflict and the imminence of physical violence will always arrest attention.. War.., conflict between political parties, or among advocacy groups pursuing various social agendas..
7. Worry. Journalists seem to suffer from a constitutional aversion to being perceived as naive or overly optimistic. As a result, they seem compelled to find the dark side of just about any issue..
8. Voyeurism. The bizarre, the perverted, the weird, the sick and twisted, and the deviant, ..suicide jumper, the hostage standoff, the execution, and the demented old lady living with the 300 cats..
9. Dilemmas. ..conflicts that can't be solved. The abortion issue, cloning, capital punishment, euthanasia, and the right to die, all arouse strong feelings and polarize opinion.. The frequent use of two-sided moral Dilemma stories helps perpetuate the myth of "objective journalism."
10. Gee-Whiz Stories. ..usually has to be a novelty segment, a curiosity piece, or a heart-warmer. The local spelling bee, the dog that rescues the baby, astronauts in space, the Olympic athlete's mom crying tears of joy, and the President's hemorrhoids..

It’s not enough that journalism is dieing. We now have a vivisection!

(Or was that death followed by autopsy?)

Sources / More info: ka, pt

VerbaVolant, news, media, mass-media, newz, network, top10, top 10, top ten, journalism

Toilet brush jammed in her butt = death

A woman died in UK as a result of doctors' attempts to remove a toilet brush handle from her buttock.

The original story leaves much to the imagination (photo added by us):

Cindy Corton, 35, was left with the bizarre injury after a drunken fall in a friend's bathroom in 2005. She was twice seen by hospital staff in the aftermath of the incident and an X-ray was carried out. But an inquest heard it took Mrs Corton, of Sleaford, Lincolnshire, two years to convince doctors that the handle was lodged in flesh of her bottom. By then what should have been a routine procedure to remove it had become much more dangerous. After two unsuccessful operations in 2007, Mrs Corton underwent further, much riskier surgery and died from massive blood loss at Nottingham's Queen's Medical Centre in June last year. Recording a narrative verdict, coroner Stuart Fisher criticised Dr Killian Mbewe, who first examined Mrs Corton at Grantham hospital. After the inquest, husband Peter Corton said: "Cindy got a very poor service from the NHS. "I'm sure she would have got better treatment in foreign countries."

This seems to be a case of doctors assuming that the patient is crazy and refusing to do their job. Yet the assumption that the situation would somehow ameliorate in a pay-per-use system is false. The main problem is that MDs, like lawyers, are a self-governing profession. They have no direct responsibility to the public – only to other MDs. As long as their colleagues vouch for them and they maintain good relationships with others in their profession, it does not matter how they treat their patients or whether they serve their patients at all – they are guaranteed to carry on.

Sources / More info: telegraph, Davis

VerbaVolant, butt, ass, buttocks, toilet, brush, handle, death, doctor, doctors, MD, NHS

Chef bowels consumed by eel

In a prank that's gone horribly wrong, a man succumbed to his own drunkenness and his friends' idiocy.

The hapless chef fell victim to a prank while drunk in the Sichuan, China. Doctors extracted the creature from the 59 year-old’s rectum after his death. The eel had devoured his bowels.

Apparently, this eel is an amazing survivor, being able to move even over dry land. It can even survive temperatures below freezing, months without water. It is mostly found in warm fresh-waters locations such as muddy ponds, swamps, canals, and rice fields. And now, in dead chefs’ rectums.

Considered a voracious predator, little is known about this fish:

Locals of Thailand report that the female swamp eel watches over the eggs until they hatch. Young swamp eels reportedly stay at the surface of the water in shallow areas and group together in dense schools as the female stands guard by observing their surroundings. Although it is unknown whether the female defends the young from predators, observations have shown that a protective nature is prevalent. This fish is known to have a hearty appetite and feed on a wide assortment of prey. The Synbranchus marmoratus, which is another swamp eel found in Central America and the northern part of South America, is known for it's interesting color changes. Aquarium observers have reported that these color changes are related to the different states of the fish and ranges from brown, blue to black with a violet sheen. Swamp eels are used for human consumption in areas where they are found and often sold live in market places since they can survive without water for extended periods of time.

Sources / More info: sun-eel, wiki-monopterus-albus, swamp-eel-FAQ, eels-what-r,

VerbaVolant, eel, fish, prank, death, mdk

The Trekking Lynx and the 911 Fail

We recently learned about a lynx who traveled thousands of kilometres to return to Canada, only to die in a trap. Similarly, a person stranded who was denied 911 assistance died while trying to go back to civilization.

A lynx relocated to Colorado in a program to repopulate that state’s wilderness has come back to Alberta, only to die in a registered trap.

"It came at least 2,000 kilometres, wandering around feeding, cutting up valleys, crossing rivers, dodging cougars, grizzlies, wolves, eagles and other trappers," said Bryan Anger of Rocky Mountain House, Alta., the trapper who found the lynx, dead, in a registered trapline he shares with his brother an hour west of his home at Nordegg, just outside Banff National Park.

The cat, known to biologists as BC-03-M-02, was captured seven years ago near Kamloops, B.C., researchers said Friday. It was sent to Colorado as part of a reintroduction program involving 218 lynx after the species died out in the state.

For the next four years, biologists at the Colorado Division of Wildlife tracked its movements with a radio collar. The animal is shown to have fathered two litters, a set of two in 2005 and a set of four in 2006, likely with the same mate.

The collar's last recorded signal came April 20, 2007.

Then, for more than 2 1/2 years, all human contact ceased – until Jan. 28, when Anger found the animal in his trapline.

"I wasn't surprised to find a cat but I was surprised to find where it had come from," Anger said.

Anger immediately reported the find to Gabriela Yates, a PhD student running the University of Alberta's Project Lynx.

"This was huge," Yates said. "It must have crossed many highways, many rivers, probably desert – difficult habitat it is not adapted to."

Lynx rank as one of the world's most mobile land mammals, she said. On the other hand, top known travels until now have been in the 600-1,000-kilometre range.

In this case, the 9-year-old male lynx covered about 2,000 kilometres as the crow flies between Silverton, in southwestern Colorado, and Nordegg. Yates is in the third year of a four-year study assessing lynx movements in relation to its main diet, the snowshoe hare. When the hare population crashes, lynx travel widely in search of pockets of them, she said.

The migration of BC-03-M-02 adds a piece to the puzzle, suggesting a homing sense as it was found near where it was originally captured. The lynx was healthy, weighed 26 pounds and sported an excellent coat of fur, she said.

Big River, Saskatchewan – home of a significant aboriginal population – was the scene of a human tragedy. A woman with children was stranded in a car but when she called 911 no help was dispatched.

Saskatchewan RCMP extended their condolences and launched an independent investigation of their 911 system after a woman died and three others were stranded for seven days in their stuck car.

Sgt. Carole Raymond says two women and two children had been driving to Loon Lake from Prince Albert when their car got bogged down in mud and water on a poorly maintained road in a remote area near Big River.

Records indicate a person from the car called 911 on April 8 but no officers were dispatched. The person asked for a tow truck but it appears one wasn't sent, Raymond said.

On Monday, four days later, someone called police about a woman's body on the side of Highway 942.

"It appears that she walked 60 kilometres from where the vehicle was in the water to the road," Raymond said.

On Tuesday, police got a report of a missing person and they learned that the dead woman had been travelling with another woman and two children.

"The connection was made," Raymond said.

A search by both air and ground began.

On Thursday searchers spotted the mired car.

Rescuers had to use all-terrain vehicles to get to the car due to the remote, difficult terrain.

"It was wet ... it took a good 2 1/2 hours to get to them once the airplane had spotted them," she said.

Finally, about 9:30 Thursday night, a week after someone from the car made the call for help, rescuers reached the car and found the woman and two children alive. They were taken to hospital in Shellbrook where they were in stable condition.

The family has asked police not release any information on the ages or relationships of the people involved, Raymond said.

Whenever we hear about such massive failures – one has to wonder if racism did not play a role in the decision to deny emergency services to those who needed it. It is incredibly sad to face death after trying so hard to cling to life, yet both stories manage to end on a high note.

What do you think? Is there good in everything? Is every crisis an opportunity? Is the upbeat tone sometimes misplaced, but necessary in order to make news readable?

Sources / More info: lynx-2k, 911-ignored

VerbaVolant, government, ems, ers, police, lynx, cat, cats, home, treck, trip, trek, trekk, journey, lassie

She killed BF by sitting on him

Only in America.. This obese woman sat on her 120 lbs boyfriend during an argument, killing him.

Only a few months ago we were decrying the disastrous state of north-americans’ gut. This Cleveland woman got only 3 year probation for killing his much thinner boyfriend, also the father of her children.

Police said Mia Landingham and Mikal Middleston-Bey, who have three children together, got into an argument in August. During the altercation Landingham sat on Middleston-Bey.

Landingham pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter.

Her attorney told said there was a long history of domestic abuse in the relationship. He asked the judge for leniency and pointed out she has no prior criminal record.

Landingham she was sorry for squashing the father of her children.

"I just want to say that I am sincerely sorry about this situation. I wish I could take it back,” she said.

Landingham was sentenced to three years probation and 100 hours community service. She was immediately released from jail.

The victim’s family said they were surprised that she got no additional jail time.

"So basically you can say that I can go sit on somebody and get probation? I feel there wasn't no justice. My brother's gone and all she gets is three years probation," the victim’s brother said.

Sources / More info: dmail, fox, yt-killer-woman

More videos of female domestic violence:

yt-wbm by Philgood37

 

yt-Female Domestic Violence by vaderkenniscentrum

VerbaVolant, woman killer, kill, mdk, murder, deaths, murder death kill, Mia Landingham, obesity

2010 Darwin Awards

The Darwin website has published the results of the annual vote and accordingly gave out its prizes. As almost every year, there’s also a book: Chlorinating the Gene Pool.

The prizes are given each year to commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it:

DOUBLE DIP (2009 runner up - 7.4, 2074 votes)

For the first time ever, a woman--yes, a member of the safer sex--made it into the year's Top Darwin Awards Contenders! 2009 Antepenultimate Winner is the North Carolina woman who jumped into a swollen creek to rescue her drowning...moped.

On June 3, Greensboro was inundated and cars were stranded on flooded roads. Rosanne T., 50, hopped on her moped and drove the convenience store where she “possibly had a beer,”, according to her mother, to whom she said on the phone “my moped has two rubber wheels, Mom, I'll be fine”. Ms T had acquired her moped 2 years ago after a DUI conviction suspended her driving license. The roads were blocked, but she drove right past the Highway Patrol and road blocks then promptly fell into the creek. The officer rescued her, then she jumped again never to resurface. Her mother thought that it was the moped’s fault: "She loved that thing." (da)

DYING TO GO (2009 runner up - 7.8, 247 votes)

We've all been in his shoes, taking that fateful whiz at the side of the road. After all, "You don't buy beer, you just rent it." Wanting to take a leak while stuck in traffic, Shawn M. got out of the car on that fateful April 12, 2008 day near Pompano Beach, Fla. He then proceeded to jump over the low concrete wall and fell 65 feet to his death, as the car was idling on an overpass above the railroad. "Shawn didn't do a whole lot for a living. He got along on his charm, just like his father" explained his mother. Look before you leak! (da)

CRUSHING DEBT (2009 Darwin award winner - 7.7, 202 votes)

And the winner is... deceased! The city of Dinant, Belgium on September 26 is the backdrop for this rare Double Darwin Award involving two bank robbers attempting to make a sizeable withdrawal from an ATM. Overestimating the amount of dynamite needed, they actually demolished the bank building and perished in the event. In hindsight, a debit card would have been safer.(da)

PRIEST VISITS BOSS (2008 Darwin award winner)

Finally, we retroactively announce a new Darwin Award Winner from 2008, posted too late to earn that year's top spot. The most popular story of the year 2008, beloved by millions of fans, presenting the ludicrous case of the Balloon Priest, Adelir Antonio. He wanted to publicize his plan to build spiritual rest stops for truck drivers where no hookers are allowed so he tried to set a record for clustered balloon flight. Though he packed a survival suit, used a buoyant chair, had a satellite phone and GPS and could have parachuted while over land, he did not manage to set his record, as you have to survive in order to be considered. He could have parachuted while over land but didn’t. He eventually called the coast guard, but his cell phone died while he fiddled with the GPS unit. He probably did the same shortly thereafter. (da)

 

The actual votes and marks seem to be slightly different than the above:

Sparkleberry Lane 7.8 (297 votes) July 31, South Carolina

• 23-y.o. James T. painted his face gold to rob a store. He died from pain toxicity.

Saw It Coming! 7.7 (2136 votes) June 27, New York (possible urban story)

• Miecyskaw Mil, 64, angry over a power brownout, decided to cut a live powerline with his circular saw. Police and firefighters guarding it tried to stop him, but he “won”.

Tennessee Pee 7.7 (736 votes) mid-80s, Middle T State Univ

• A young frat boy gained entry to an electrical installation and seeing a wasp nest hanging from a transformer, climbed on top of it and peed. (possible urban story)

Painkiller 7.6 (574 votes) October 26, 17 - Minnesota

• Lucas William Stenning, 32, avoided registration –required for predatory offenders- by leaping from a moving vehicle and dying. He was trying to get hospitalized in order to get painkillers.

Trifecta Electra 7.4 (995 votes) October 12, Florida

• A Palm Bay couple and their 15-y.o son were putting up a ham radio antenna one evening and hit a power line lurking on top.

She Talks Faster Than She Walks 7.3 (2313 votes) May 30, Louisiana

• Tamera B, 22, claimed that he BF wasn’t driving fast enough, so she opened the door and stuck her foot out while the vehicle was on the highway at normal speed.

Wetting The Bed 6.5 (307 votes) October 27, Arkansas

• Devan LeAnn, 31 decided to “float” on a swelling lake on a egg-crate style mattress which is non-buoyant, “vanishing from sight” shortly thereafter.

Fool's Gold 6.5 (566 votes) February 5, India

• Pravin Kuse dreamed that a pot of gold is buried under his house, an abandoned 100-year-old building. He dug a 15 feet tunnel in a rather long time, which eventually caved in, burying him alive.

Race To The Bottooommm 6.2 (1578 votes) September 5, Oregon

• Jake, 18, went down Saddle Mountain in a “controlled slide” down the cliff face. His body came to rest in a steep ravine 1000 feet below.

Missed (But Not Missed By) The Bus 6.2 (280 votes) August 13, Quebec

• A 24-y.o. woman tried to flag down a bus she had just missed by jumping into a restricted area of a bus terminal. She did not succeed.

Collateral Damage 5.6 (2462 votes) April 30, York, UK

• A 41-y.o. attempted to demolish a large brick garden and succombed to a cement slab.

Nutty Putty Cave 5.5 (385 votes)

• Made of soft brown clay, this naturally formed thermal cave is 1400 feet long. John J., a veteran spelunker, went into a small cavity head-first and never came out, despite 137 trying to save him. He died after 27 painful hours.

Sources / More info: www.darwinawards.com, amazon-darwin, yt-DA-puku, yt-DA-gnooble

VerbaVolant, darwin, darwin awards, premiile darwin, prosti, stupizi, morti stupide, stupid death, deaths, accidents, accidental, accidental death, suicide

Better suicides

Every month, a significant number of Afghan women choose to end their marriage and “hopefully” life through self-immolation. There is yet another way of interpreting this Al-Jazeera video..

Afghan women are so frustrated at the abuse suffered in the hands of their fathers or husbands that they choose to burn themselves rather than continue to live like that (self-immolation). This involves pouring petrol on top of their head and setting themselves on fire. This is a particularly painful way to die. The few who survive, are condemned to live a much shorter life in atrocious physical pain. Furthermore, in a failed state such as Afghanistan, it is unlikely that anybody can take care of them, so they most likely end up in the care of those whose “will to power” they were trying to escape.

While horrifying, the situation described by the Arab TV network Al-Jazeera seems to suggest a better way to die for would-be suiciders. Rather than burn yourself in a slow, painful death like Afghan women, one could choose the much more civilised Western way. It’s the way warrior westerners die – namely in long, drawn-out, vitality consuming, never-ending, Kafkaesque trials. Or the alternative reserved for Muslims: imprisonment at Gitmo, or CIA renditions to torturing states.

Sources / More info: rferl-afghan, wpr-afghan, rawa-march-8, yt-self-immolation

VerbaVolant, suicide, discrimination, sexism, afghan, status, women, woman, arab, muslim, islam, feminism, self-immolation, burning, death, kafka, kafkian, kafkaesque

Daul Kim – the penetrable beauty

Daul Kim, Karl Lagerfeld muse, has passed away. Requiescat In Pace, Daul!

I wish I could tell you why she did it, but I don’t know. The best I can do is try to figure it out and speculate. Her death reminds me of Ruslana Korshunova’s suicide, who was also beautiful beyond belief yet empty inside, suffered from depression and apparently chose to end her life.

There are some troubling circumstances surrounding Ruslana’s death. Her family raised questions but the police was unwilling to oblige. Her hair had suddenly become shorter, and her body was not where it would have ended up after a fall from her apartment.

Daul Kim’s death is however more likely a suicide. She is the 9th Korean celebrity to commit suicide this year. She was fascinated by kinky Klaus Kinski (the deliciously crazy German actor) and collected forks as a hobby. She was also a painter. But despite these outlets, she felt a void in her existence. She had quit school at 15.

As far back as 2007 she had left often violent posts of self angst related to self-mutilation and suicide and, exhausted in April 2007, had posted “I am going to smash my face… My life as daul was so miserable and lonely. Please join my loneliness in another world. I love you all. Daul.” She then added. “KIDDING. I'm fine. Just tired.”

Find a playlist with the soundtrack to her death below.

Sources / More info: telegraph, wiki-daul, wiki-ruslana, blog, yt-ruslana, yt-music, yt-daul

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VerbaVolant, model, models, modeling, modelling, ruslana, daul, daul kim, ruslana korshunova, suicide, murder, mdk, beauty, inxs, michael hutchence, michael hutchense