dumb, dumber, dumberer

the idiocy!

A psychology student in New York rented out her spare room to a carpenter in order to nag him constantly and study his reactions. After weeks of needling, he snapped and beat her repeatedly with an ax leaving her mentally retarded.

In 1992, Frank Perkins of Los Angeles made an attempt on the world flagpole-sitting record. Suffering from the flu he came down eight hours short of the 400 day record, his sponsor had gone bust, his girlfriend had left him and his phone and electricity had been cut off.

Two animal rights protesters were protesting at the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn. Suddenly the pigs, all two thousand of them, escaped through a broken fence and stampeded, trampling the two hapless protesters to death.

A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen, shaking frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waist towards the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current she whacked him with a handy plank of wood by the back door, breaking his arm in two places. Till that moment he had been happily listening to his Walkman.

The average cost of rehabilitating a seal after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska was $80,000. At a special ceremony, two of the most expensively saved animals were released back into the wild amid cheers and applause from onlookers. A minute later they were both eaten by a killer whale.

A man in Clifton, Colorado apparently got so caught up in his "Tomb Raider" computer game that he forgot he wasn't supposed to use a real gun. Sheriff's deputies confiscated Douglas Miller's shotgun after he fired it at his computer screen.

The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.

A company trying to continue its five-year perfect safety record showed its workers a film aimed at encouraging the use of safety goggles on the job. According to Industrial Machinery News, the film's depiction of gory industrial accidents was so graphic that twenty-five workers suffered minor injuries in their rush to leave the screening room. Thirteen others fainted, and one man required seven stitches after he cut his head falling off a chair while watching the film.

A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in St. Louis, but by the time police arrived on the scene, fourteen pedestrians had boarded the bus and had begun to complain of whiplash injuries and back pain.

A man in Johannesberg, South Africa, shot his 49-year-old friend in the face, seriously wounding him, while the two practiced shooting beer cans off each other's head.

Richard Stone of Cheddar, England somehow managed to get trapped when his own van rolled over him and pinned him to the ground. Stone cried out for help, but no one heard him -- no one except Sonny, a macaw parrot who lives nearby. When Sonny began to mimic the man's cries for help, two passers-by heard the parrot and freed Stone.

AT&T fired President John Walter after nine months, saying he lacked "intellectual leadership". He received a $26 million severance package. Perhaps it's not Walter who's lacking intelligence...

Fire investigators on Maui have determined the cause of a blaze that destroyed a $127,000 home last month - a short in the homeowner's newly installed fire prevention alarm system. "This is even worse than last year," said the distraught homeowner, "when someone broke in and stole my new security system."

A man in Taormina, Italy was hospitalized after swallowing 46 teaspoons, 2 cigarette lighters, and a pair of salad tongs.

More than 600 people in Italy wanted to ride in a spaceship badly enough to pay $10,000 a piece for the first tourist flight to Mars. According to the Italian police, the would-be space travelers were told to spend their "next vacation on Mars, amid the splendors of ruined temples and painted deserts. Ride a Martian camel from oasis to oasis and enjoy the incredible Martian sunsets. Explore mysterious canals and marvel at the views. Trips to the moon also available.". Authorities believe that the con men running this scam made off with over six million dollars.

In Ohio, an unidentified man in his late twenties walked into a police station with a 9-inch wire protruding from his forehead, and calmly asked officers to give him an X-ray to help him find his brain, which he claimed had been stolen. Police were shocked to learn that the man had drilled a 6-inch deep hole in his skull with a Black & Decker power drill, and stuck the wire in to try and find the missing brain.

A 25-year-old Argentine man pushed his 20-year-old wife out of an eighth-floor window after an argument, but her fall was broken when her legs became entangled in power lines below. A police spokesperson told the state-run Telam news agency that when the husband saw the woman dangling beneath him, he apparently tried to throw himself on top of her to finish her off. He missed, however, and fell to his death. Meanwhile, the woman managed to swing over to a nearby balcony and was saved.

Pierre Beaumard, a French factory worker suffering from various obsessional fears and an inability to relate to others, decided to join a therapy group. Mr. Beaumard was encouraged to sandwich himself between two matresses, and allow other group members to walk on him to "stamp out his complexes." After several minutes of this treatment, Beaumard was crushed to death.

In our Likely Story department this week, the crew of a trawler that sank in the Sea of Japan claimed their ship went down after "being struck by a cow which fell out of the clear blue sky". According to Flying magazine, no one believed this absurd explanation-- except the Russian military. It seems that the crew of a military cargo jet had stolen a cow they found wandering on a Siberian airfield, and loaded it aboard. While cruising at 30,000 feet, the terrified cow ran amok and jumped out of the plane.

Florida motorists are watching their rear-view mirrors this week after an appellate court ruled that rectal searches by police are legal. According to the Fifth District Court of Appeals, the removal of 54 grams of cocaine from a suspect's rectum by a member of the Orange County highway drug squad was "part of a legal patdown to make sure the man wasn't armed..."