This week's poll from the Lester & Charlie Institute of Forward Thinking!
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die." ~Mel Brooks
Is it just us or does it seem that there are a lot more open sewers lately?
First, there's that guy in Michigan who shot himself in the head trying to demonstrate to his girlfriend that guns aren't that dangerous. As proof, he put each of his three (supposedly bullet-less) handguns to his head and pulled the triggers. The first two demos went OK. The third: BANG. (The girlfriend later said the man was drunk. Lesson: People probably shouldn't play with guns when it turns out both of them are loaded.)
In other news, you may have read about the man in Iraq who blew up an entire class of suicide-bomber wannabes during a demonstration of how to use live explosives to kill unsuspecting people. That demonstration was, we guess, more or less successful. The bomb went off, killing a whole bunch of unsuspecting people. Not exactly what was intended, but more or less the idea.
Mel Brooks himself would probably appreciate how the news of the deaths of the suicide-bomber students was received by some Iraqis. One man (who lost a friend to a suicide bomber in 2007) got the news from a friend who was "so happy as if he was getting married," wrote the New York Times. Another Iraqi burst out laughing, adding later as he passed out beers to customers, "May they burn in hell."
Like we said: more open sewers. Hilarity ensues!
Another example: a recent study out of Columbia University concluded that hating gay people can kill you. (Really!) "We found evidence that anti-gay prejudice is associated with elevated mortality risk among heterosexuals, over and above multiple established risk factors," read the report in the American Journal of Public Health. Wow. What are the chances that a single Bible-thumping Christian will consider this increased mortality risk a judgment from God? And is it the stress of all that hatin' that kills, or is there perhaps a shortage of manhole covers in, say, downtown Phoenix?
All of this might make us less afraid to open up our newspapers -- if they keep bringing us fewer "cut my finger" stories and more "fall into an open sewer and die" news! Assuming our luck holds out, what's the next open-sewer story YOU want to read?
"What's the "fall into an open sewer and die" story YOU want to see?"
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