Ridiculous

After yesterday’s heavy offering, I thought I’d give you something a little lighter and more entertaining — death. To be precise, ridiculous death. “1001 Ridicuous Ways to Die” by David Southwell and Matt Adams is an irreverent, hilarious and often touching round-up of some really rather silly or ironic ways that people have checked out.

David and Matt are well aware of the pitfalls of tackling such a taboo and sensitive subject:

In writing this book we have come to learn that death is arbitrary – impersonal, uncaring, totally indifferent to any force you care to invoke for protection against it. Death can strike anyone at anytime. The most frightening thing is that while many of the deaths we have chronicled here occurred because of ridiculous stupidity, an equal number of them happened due to ridiculously bad luck.

[...]

All death is a tragedy for someone, and even the most ridiculous death leaves the deceased’s family and friends in pain. Our thoughts and sympathies are with all those who have been left behind. However, it seems to us that instead of obeying the cultural influences that see death as taboo subject – or turn it in a complex dance of fetishes and mythology – laughing at its most outrageous manifestations is a healthier way to go. [...] Both of us have already faced moments when we could have exited the stage of life in manner ridiculous enough to gain an entry in this book. From falling into a bear pit to choking on a bit of carrot or getting death threats from the Albanian Mafiya, we have seen first hand that death can always lie just around the corner. The only sane response to this knowledge is to laugh, love and live as much as possible.

So, with that said, here’s an entirely random selection of some of the book’s entries. If you enjoy them, well, you have the title and author to go find a copy!

DEAD AS A DILDO

When we were both fresh-faced journalists, we worked with an older and wiser deputy editor called Phil Higgins who always used to say: “It is always the priests and ministers you need to watch.” How right he was, as the tale of Baptist minister Gary Aldridge from Montgomery Alabama illustrates.

In June 2007, Aldridge’s body was discovered in his home. He was found on the floor, hogtied, wearing two full wetsuits and a diving face mask. If that was not surprising enough, the full autopsy report revealed that underneath the wetsuit the minister had “a dildo in the anus, covered with a condom.”

The report concluded that Aldridge had died of “accidental mechanical asphyxia” – what the average person usually thinks of as autoeroticism gone wrong. Very wrong. Ironically, the minister was renowned for being a vicious opponent of sex outside of marriage and of homosexuality, and had been a strong supporter of a law that banned the sale of sex aids in the state of Alabama.

IMMORTAL IDIOT

There are idiots and then there are grand spanking idiots who help redefine the whole concept of idiocy. Dmitry Butakov from Lipetsk in Russia was one of those grand spanking idiots. Having survived an accident in 1994 when he came into contact with 10,000 volts of electricity, Butakov became convinced he was immortal. While most of us would have been happy to survive such a close brush with death and taken more care, the Russian decided that nothing could kill him. In 2004, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of his first accident, he called a press conference where he proceeded to drink a half-litre of antifreeze. Halfway through attempting to drink a second half-litre, Butakov collapsed, fell into a coma and died in hospital the next day. Butakov’s only immortality was carving his name into the history books of stupidity.

PAYING THE PRICE FOR PIPER

In 2001, 28-year-old New Zealander Peter John Robinson slipped as he went to feed his cat Piper. He knocked himself unconscious and managed to fall face down into Piper’s water bowl, where he drowned in less than 5cms of water.

PROPHETS’ LOSS

The end of the 20th century saw a lot of pre-millennial madness. Crazy cults proliferated more quickly than bacteria grow on a fast-food burger, and led to some spectacularly ridiculous deaths. Bucking the trend of the believers of frankly insane things topping themselves was one tale of pre-millennial triple death from the east of Java.

Three cult leaders in the village of Sukmajaya were chased by an angry mob of fellow cultists after the world did not end at 9am on 9/9/1999 as they had prophesised. Their followers had sold or given away all their worldly goods in and spent the last nine days locked in their homes in expectation of the imminent global destruction. When 9/9/99 came and went without the four horsemen of the apocalypse putting in an appearance, feelings among the cultists were running high.

According to Saadi Arsam, village chief of Sukmajaya: “The members were really mad. When they caught the false prophets they lost control of their tempers. Nothing could make them see sense, and they beat them to their deaths.” Shame the self-styled seers had not seen that coming.