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Monday, December 17, 2007

Slightly Suicidal Gadgets


"QUANTUM SHOT" #337
link



A healthy doze of "black humor" to set you straight

Life is not always rosy, and it's not always black. Mostly it's featureless gray with rare splashes of absurd color.

If you deliberately "paint it black", though, you may not live long:











Cheer up, however... there may be someone who feels worse, much worse than you:


(image credit: ellustrator)

Some photographers do it for fun:


(image credit: Jan Saudek)

Headshot:


(image credit: Martin Gommel)

Some "musicians" play only for the (Sicilian) "family":



Some guns are made in a way that makes you wonder... -






Some gifts are morbid enough to make your skin crawl: this ax has been given as a prized award to one of the Stalin's secret police NKVD officers:



Here is the more recent "lethal" gadget:
Bathduck Suicide Device

It has a proper disclaimer, of course: "make sure you are making the right decision"


(image credit: Nicolas Gaudron)

If your thing is to stick your fingers into electrical sockets, there is a device for this, too (an adapter for fingers) -


(image credit: Artemi Lebedev)


Some kids play this kind of the "russian roulette" quite innocently:





But even they can become new Calvins and drive multitude snowmen to despair:





For those who ever felt slightly suicidal, here is a story, well-known on the internet, but spectacular enough to keep on record.

Ronald Opus's Puzzle

Don Harper Mills actually made up this story. But it should be true because it is so good:

"On March 23 the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a gunshot wound of the head caused by a shotgun. Investigation had revealed that he must have jumped from the top of a ten story building with the intent to commit suicide. (He left a note indicating his despondency.) As he passed the 9th floor on the way down, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, killing him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that a safety net had been erected at the 8th floor level to protect some window washers, and that the decedent would not have been able to complete his intent to commit suicide because of this...

Further investigation led to the discovery that the room on the 9th floor from whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. He was threatening her with the shotgun and became so upset that he could not hold the shotgun straight. Therefore, when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife, and the bullets went through the window, striking Ronald Opus instead.

The old man was confronted with this conclusion, but both he and his wife were adamant in stating that neither knew that the shotgun was loaded. It was the longtime habit of the old man to threaten his wife with an unloaded shotgun. He had no intent to murder her; therefore, the killing of Ronald Opus appeared then to be accident, as the gun had been accidentally loaded...

But further investigation turned up a witness that their son was seen loading the shotgun approximately six weeks prior to the fatal accident. That investigation showed that the mother (the old lady) had cut off her son's financial support, and her son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that the father would shoot his mother. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus...

Further investigation revealed that the son became increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to get his mother murdered. This led him to jump off the ten story building on March 23, only to be killed by a shotgun blast through a 9th story window.

The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide."

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Category: Funny Pics, Humour

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COMMENTS:

5 Comments:

Blogger garibaldo2 said...

check this img
http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/2184/russianroullette4dummiezv5.jpg
Dark Roasted Blend rox
Garibaldo2 o/

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OpenID danvolodar said...

Here is the source for the surgery image.
There are other funny pics in this journal as well.

Pic with the axe is a well-known fake.

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Anonymous Oscar said...

I'm pretty sure this story is shown in Paul Thomas Anderson's 1999 Magnolia.

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Anonymous jamesmarten said...

The picture of the woman with a gun in her mouth was used in 1998 (in sepia) on the cover of the Beautiful South album "Welcome to the Beautiful South". The cover was changed for some markets, for obvious reasons, so it may not have been seen everywhere.

___  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Cool story, it's been added at http://www.gearcult.com

___  

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  • Huh. That picture of the Russian ship in trees is interesting. The Russians have a lot of ships on dry land around the Aral sea because they've diverted so much of the water for irrigating crops that they've ended up beaching boats in the middle of what looks like desert (well I suppose technically it is desert). But the trees are interesting, since it seems that if there wasn't water for the lake there wouldn't be water for the trees. I guess it could be a tsunami.

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    Cargo Law.

    The 47-foot motor lifeboats are self-righting under all conditions--they can be flipped completely upside down and they will right themselves quickly. While on a tour of the US Naval Academy in 1992, I saw a video of an actual test in which a lifeboat was flipped over and righted itself--maybe you can find this video around the Web somewhere.
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  • lol... "no one could take a picture of a tsunami because no one survived"
    uummmmmmm... what about the 2005 tsunami- hundreds of thousands dead, millions of videos and pictures taken-?
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  • There's a great write-up in Wired this month about saving the "Cougar Ace" boat that you have pictured under "Some ships fare worse than others:" (the one on its side)...
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  • Uh, I live in Nova Scotia and have several friends in the Canadian Coast Guard. They don't do anything like what the US Coasties go through in training in Morro Bay, California
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    http://photos.birdfamily.id.au/?p=48
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  • Well done Anonymous, that's precisely that...
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    http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/28/1075088090949.html?from=top5&oneclick=true
    Read more

  • Actually, the hoax was also a hoax - it wasn't made in 1890.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickled_dragon
    Read more

  • More specifically, it was made by a professional firm:

    http://www.crawley-creatures.com/creatures/pickled.htm
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  • Search the web for "femtroopers" and you will get more interesting troopers (safe for work!).
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  • I found you site via Flickr Stats. DragonCon is a blast.

    Russell Limprecht
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  • realy funny pics ! I love it ! :D
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  • haha ver funny
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  • The third image without credit is from Jonathon Bowser: http://www.jonathonart.com/nati4.html
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  • It is Heart of Stone, and interestingly enough, that album cover was recalled because it was thought to be too morbid. That's the one I have, though, and I've never seen what they replaced it with.
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    im such a blonde!!
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    Its from the beginning scene of the movie Hannibal and it's Hannibal Lecters face made out of pidgeons.
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  • Neat article.
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    I have motion sickness now.
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  • The meteor photo has been found to be the reflection of the sun off ice particles left by a airliner's engines. Here's another photo from about 10 kilometers away http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=031013_fireball_heywood_02,0.jpg
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  • The multi-coloured Beetles ("afterlife") were sold as such from the Mexican production line. They took 4 different-colour beetles and a small team just took the various parts off and assembled them on the other bodies just as they felt inspired that day. They then were sold as "clown"-version.
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  • please consider not using "[wiki]" if the link goes to wikipedia, as a "wiki" is the type of software in general that wikipedia and many other sites use. in that sense it is as useful as using "[blog]" or "[site]" or other generic terms.

    in short: "wiki" is no good abbreviation for "wikipedia".
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  • will do!
    Read more

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  • Karamazov is absolutely right. The aerosled is Finnish. The German Wehrmacht never used the swastika on their vehicles. Trucks, tanks kubelwagens, etc., always used the standard German Cross.

    Only in need, when there was aerial support, did they put a flag (with the swastika) over the tanks and trucks to signal them to Luftwaffe.

    The Finnish used a blue swastika over a white background, as can be perceived from the black-and-white photograph.
    Read more

  • in case you were wondering, the three b&w pictures with the different variants of the one snow mobile , written in russian and translated as follows : passenger variant, business
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    great stuff. i wish that last tank/ship had been made.
    Read more

  • An interesting, but topical aside is the US prewar entry for the Antarctic. The Antarctic Snow Cruiser. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_snow_cruiser

    Somewhere it now seems at the bottom deep sea buried.
    Read more

  • Great post! Don't forget Bombardier's beautiful snow buses, some of which are still used for ice fishing in Canada. http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w90/sugarzebra/BRPBusPOTN.jpg
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