Thursday, August 26, 2010

The New Year's Eve Bullet, and Some Reminiscing

"How drunk do you have to BE, Lamar?"
Oddly Enough, Reuters blog (August 24, 2010)

".So Doc, tell me. How did the operation go to remove that cyst? I feel great!

"Well Lamar, surprisingly it wasn't a cyst at all. It was a bullet, lodged right there in your head, I'd say for five or six years. You've been carrying it around all this time.

"A bullet, huh? I'll be! I guess that would be from a New Year's Eve party.

"What? How do you know that, Lamar?..."

The rest of that Oddly Enough post is - well, pretty much what you'd expect. Whether or not you think it's funny depends on your sense of humor.

Although Oddly Enough's author went a bit past what was in the news: he didn't have to stray too far to make the situation sound, well, odd.

That photo, of an x-ray, is legit, and from a Bochum Police handout, via Reuters.

The constabulary in that German town is taking that bullet seriously. Finding out who pulled the trigger probably won't happen - and besides, they're assuming that it was an accident.

Just the same, according to The Local, they're going to try to convince folks in their area that it's not a good idea to load a gun, and then yourself, at a party.
In the news:

"Bullet found in man's head years after drunken New Year's Eve"
The Local (Germany's News in English) (August 24, 2010)

"A 35-year-old man in North Rhine-Westphalia has lived for the past several years unaware a bullet became lodged in his head one drunken New Year's Eve, police told The Local on Tuesday.

"The Polish construction worker in Herne doesn't quite remember whether it was in 2004 or 2005, but he does recall feeling a forceful blow to the back of his head around midnight as he celebrated in the city centre, said Bochum police spokesman Volker Schütte.

"He recently noticed a cyst on his head and went to the Herne hospital, where X-rays revealed the culprit – a 22-calibre bullet lodged in his scalp.

" 'He must really have a strong constitution,' said Schütte, who spoke with the patient while he recovered in the hospital following an operation on Friday. 'He was of course intoxicated at the time he felt the blow. It was New Year's Eve so naturally he'd had a bit more than usual to drink.'..."

Seriously? The Lemming is glad that the fellow got that bullet out of his scalp. Another news report had someone speculating that the bullet might have been fired in the air, and hit him on the way down: which would explain why it stopped where it did.

The Lemming's also not going to go into the conventional hand-wringing over the dangers of guns or Demon Rum, or New Year's Eve parties.

Come to think of it, I haven't heard about Demon Rum for a long time.

It's not that the Lemming is apathetic - I've explained that before - it's just that I think that guns and beer aren't problems: it's the folks who can't handle guns and beer, at least not at the same time.

Which reminds me of another story. This one's true:

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