Drunks Shooting Stuff: …And God’s Mercy on the Wild Lawnmower Man

Continuing our series on drunken shotgun violence (see Friday’s entry on a moose being sent to that hunting lodge wall in the sky [though the moose was the drunk party in that one]), we would be remiss if we failed to report on the case of a Milwaukee man who engaged in armed combat with that highly tempting target – a gas-powered lawnmower.

The duty to mow a lawn on a regular basis is enough to make anyone, even those who don’t break out into hives at the mere sight of anything green and outdoors, want to permanently live in an apartment. (And the sound of some inconsiderate lawn-loving prick starting up his lawnmower bright and early on a Saturday morning while you’re trying to sleep off a hangover should be a justifiable cause for homicide.)

When your lawnmower is a piece of junk that takes numerous pulls and expletives to get started, it’s not surprising that you might be tempted to do the thing grievous harm. And such was the case with our Milwaukee friend (Editor’s Note: Given its size, Wisconsin is amply represented on this website. See here for more), who had spent the morning drinking, decided in the early afternoon to mow his lawn (the best time), couldn’t get it started, and ended up shooting the thing with a sawed-off shotgun. A neighbor, of the rat-fink variety of neighbor, phoned police and he was arrested, charged with drunken disorderly conduct and also for having the sawed-off shotgun in the first place (the ‘sawed-off’ part makes it illegal).

The weapons charge is likely the one that sees him facing an incredible potential six-year prison term, however the defendant in this case offered a defence that we’d accept if we somehow were unable to dodge jury duty and found ourselves listening to this case. “"I can do that," he told police. "It’s my lawn mower and my yard, so I can shoot it if I want." And damn it, he’s right! It’s not like the shotgun blast ricocheted and fell some neighbor out trimming the bougainvillea. The only victim here was a crap lawnmower that had it coming anyway. And if a man can’t get drunk and disorderly in his own home, then where exactly can he? Being able to shoot up your lawnmower while pie-eyed before the PM is exactly what freedom is all about.

And as a tribute of sorts to our lawnmower man friend for sticking up for everyone’s right to get a bit ripped and reckless, we have compiled here some clips of others doing just that. As any seasoned emergency-room nurse will tell you, drinking and guns do mix and here is video proof of just how often:

First for those of you who need a visual to fully comprehend what the destruction of a lawnmower entails, here it is:

A scenic train ride in the Russian countryside isn’t complete unless you take a moment to fire a few shotgun blasts out the window. Bonus: the guy doing the shooting is a well known Russian politician.

Camping: An attempt to commune with nature while shooting up whiskey bottles and going on drunken wheelbarrow rides.

The William Tell legend but with two drunken buddies instead of the father and son and a stuffed animal in place of the apple. No word on whether this pair of Darwin Awards contenders continued to be as lucky.

And of course, a blog like this would not be complete without a mention of the patron saint of intoxicated people shooting up stuff, a man who spent the last quarter of his life pretty much doing exactly that, the good doctor Hunter S. Thompson. A classic clip from Conan O’Brien:

via videosift.com

Drunk Moose on the Loose! Justice is Swift and Final for Drunken Toddler-Biting Beast

If anyone, Ben Stein for instance, needs proof that Darwin offered more than just creative fuel for the Nazis (a key point in the ironically-titled film featuring one-joke Ferris Bueller prof [and former Nixon lackey] Stein: “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”), one need look no further than at how our animal friends seem to enjoy fermented beverages just as much as your second-cousin Murray the Mooch (who incidentally also looks like a stork, thus further strengthening the point).

We did not leave out the wild kingdom (Mutual of Omaha version or otherwise) in our compendium of drunken exploits, “The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death: And Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery.” Indeed, two chapters are devoted to it – “Man Bites Dog and Dog Bites Back,” (the animals were sober in most of these stories, but the humans – like the guy who broke into a zoo late at night so his buddies could watch him wrestle a bear – were not) and “Crapulent Critters,” which features, among others, a raging drunken chimpanzee, an alcoholic and foul-tempered parrot, and ripped royal corgis. Also in that chapter is a small “Dishonorable Mention” entry about elk (the kind of elk that in North America we would refer to as moose) hopped up on fermented apples and terrorizing a senior’s center.

When you’ve been covering drunks in the news for as long as we have, certain patterns begin to emerge: at Christmas time, drunks in Santa suits will gather en masse and start a riot, and, it’s just as certain, that Swedish moose will never know when it’s time to push away from the bar and go home once they start gorging on fermented apples. The connection between moose and alcoholism presumably explains why the worst themed bars you can possibly set foot in that aren't ersatz Irish places like Mickey Mcfinnigan's Macgregor Pub & Grill are those with “Moose” in their names -- “The Loose Moose” etc. (though we're sure that the place is a first-rate establishment, or at least the best you can hope for so far removed from civilization.)

In the latest case of a drunken moose terrorizing a Swede, a three-year-old girl was playing in a sandpit when a moose, intoxicated on fermented apples, sauntered by and bit her on the arm. Reports were vague as to whether the child had been drinking at the time or had done anything to provoke the beast. Regardless though, any such actions on the tot's part would have to be balanced with the 500-800 pound weight advantage that the moose had on its side. The girl let out the kind of piercing shriek that one images one would (even in one’s 30s) when bit by a giant drunken animal, her mother came rushing to her aid and the moose made a drunken zigzag for higher ground.

Unfortunately for the moose, escaping backwoods justice would not be so easy. A renegade posse of hunters, bent on vigilante justice, waited for him at the site of the fermented apples. When he returned for another intoxicating gobble, the hunters shot his ass. Wildlife officials said it was extremely rare for a moose to actually bite a person, though it would be far more common for a moose to kick to death or trample somebody, basically like a bunch of bikers at a social function. The summary execution then seems understandable given that other unattended Swedish children might have met such a fate.

And since we have a yearly limit of stories about misbehaving animals drunk on fermented fruit -- we keep them to one such story per year (unless by eating the fermented apples the animal somehow gains the ability to speak, in which case we'll blog about little else for a long while) -- here is a scene from the documentary "Animals are Beautiful People" of more than one species getting blasted on the stuff (and yes, as suspected, giraffes do make for dignified-looking drunks).

Nanny State in an Uproar Over Generous Jagermeister 'Spirit Dwarf'

Bars and booze companies have all sorts of ways to facilitate that all important transition between bottle and gut. Liquor companies quite often engage the services of good looking people stuck in that gray middle world between legitimate modeling work and chrome pole duty at the local Gawk and Whistle to hand out samples of their product, while refusing requests for phone numbers as politely as they can. For some reason, these sorts of promotions don’t make headline news or inspire the wrath of politicians, but you put just one muscular dwarf in a tophat and…

A pub in Melbourne Australia called “The Saint” caused a hubbub recently when it hired a dwarf to walk up and down the length of the bar with a bottle of Jagermeister from which he'd pour shots into the expectant gobs of pub-goers. Two possible causes of concern with this would be, first the lawsuit that would likely result if the unnamed dwarf in the photos slipped on the bar and injured himself. (Editor's On-A-Tangent Note: For an excellent film in which a drunken dwarf stands up on a bar and curses out an entire pub full of backwoods hicks, we recommend The Station Agent, starring Peter Dinklage). That said, the man in the photos appears to be having a good time, and we can assume that he was paid damn well to don a top-hat and march along a bar half-naked. Had someone fell asleep drunk at the bar earlier and awoke to the site of a bare-chested dwarf in a tophat proffering a bottle of booze, this might have had a disquieting on the person, but that didn't happen as far as we know.

But of course in the world of the nanny state this bizarre method of getting people to drink the sickening-when-served-warm concoction that is Jagermeister – which is not, to our shock and surprise made from the blood of the newly dead – became a matter of such national import that Australian lawmakers were going on the record about it, and comment was even sought from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (though he has yet to issue a public statement on the matter, presumably weighing the significance of the top hat with his key advisers).

Nanny-state politicos were up in arms about the promotion, with the Victorian Minister for Consumer Affairs (the Victorian being a reference to the Australian province of Victoria not the time period, though he would have fit in well then) going as far as to say that "Patrons accepting these free drinks will have no idea how much alcohol they have consumed."

While patronizing government officials believe that a promotion like this will somehow bring bar patrons to ruin -- it's not like the dwarf was forcefeeding them the Jag, even though he does appear to be doing so in the second photo here -- the drinkers themselves have a clear message for politicos: Get lost. "It's just a bit of fun," said one patron. "Why politicise it?"

Russian Drunk Forgets Small Fortune on Train : Six reasons why the attendant should have kept it

Many Canadian children will recall having their mittens sewn onto the sleeves of their jackets in the winter. This was a practical measure on the part of parents, as mittens would otherwise be lost when a youngster drops them in a rushed attempt to fire a snowball at a moving target – like, say, a school bus or a police car – the kind of throw that requires nimble fingers unencumbered by mittens. We sometimes wish there were something similar for drunk adults, but we have yet to come up with a way of tying one’s mobile phone, wallet and house keys to one’s person without looking like the guy who gets the rubber hook at the institution’s yearly fishing trip.

What most of us lose while we’re out on the piss though rarely amounts to more than can fall out of a person’s pocket while horizontal in the back of a taxi. A drunk passenger on a train in Volgograd, Russia, however, forgot more than just a box of Chiclets and his membership card to the meat of the month club when he disembarked.

An attendant inspecting the train after he left found a bag containing eight million roubles, or about US$340,000, in one of the train’s expensive cabins. The attendant remembered that a cheerful passenger had been in there sucking back the vodka – three bottles (!) – and figured that he must have forgotten it when he left.

Here is where she made her terrible mistake. To quote the source: “While many would have been tempted to hang on to the money, Alla had no such ideas. She says other people’s money can’t bring you happiness, so she called the police.”

Six Reasons why she should have kept the money:

1) Other people’s money can bring you happiness. First, all money was probably at some point or another someone else’s money. Secondly, when money comes without you having had to toil and sacrifice leisure time in order to attain it, the pleasure of having it just goes right off the charts. This is why they have lotteries.

2) It would have taught this idiot a lesson. As mentioned earlier, every drunk misplaces things from time to time, but $340,000? If you lose that, it’s time for a wakeup call, and what better way to give somebody a valuable life lesson than doing it in a way that enriches you significantly.

3) It could have been drug money. While the original report specifically rules this possibility out by saying that the man in question did produce documents to show how he legally obtained such a small fortune, perhaps he was just a really good forger and he got this money after having some poor slob traffic drugs in a body cavity. Do you really want to reward that sort of behavior? Neither do we. Keep the money and buy your own drugs.

4) If he drank three bottles of vodka, he’s probably dead. The story does not mention the size of the bottles, but assuming that the man was drinking regular-sized bottles of vodka, three might be enough to have induced fatal alcohol poisoning. This didn’t happen, but the stewardess could have comforted herself with believing that it did and that she was just sparing his family a lot of painful bickering over his funds.

5) By returning the money you are implicitly encouraging other rich drunks to repeat this sort of behavior. Now that rich people know they can party on the train and be reckless with their money, they are sure to abuse this knowledge and become a public nuisance. Thanks, on behalf of the union.

6) You might not get a reward. We can understand that one’s moral compunction might result in giving back the money with the implicit understanding that a nice fat slice will later be cut out and given as a reward for honesty. What’s alarming in this case though is that according to the source story, there was no mention of the attendant receiving a reward for her honesty from the drunkard. Giving the money back and not getting a reward for doing so would result in such unspeakable bitterness that you would likely lose 10 years of your life due to the stress of it.

Soon to be Dancing Behind Bars: Drunk Dancer Does a Backflip onto a Police Car

For those of us who are not secretly pining to shimmy beneath the bright lights of Broadway, dancing in public is something that requires a considerable amount of inhibition-killing liquid courage to even consider. Before you can respond to an invitation to dance, you must first ensure that you are sufficiently drunk – i.e. that you have reached the point where you can hit the dance floor fully confident that you will not sober up and realize what you’re doing mid-boogaloo.

Drinking and dancing has its benefits though; providing you don’t slip on a puddle of beer, strutting your stuff on the dance floor slightly lowers your odds of going home alone. Slightly. However, there are some times when drunk dancing really only benefits the kind of people who chronicle and laugh at feats of drunken stupidity – namely, well, us.

A 25-year-old man in Australia’s Northern Territory was drunk in a casino parking lot at 3am and felt the need to keep the party going. A paddy wagon and police car were stationed at the casino to corral drunks just like him. Our drunken friend did not take the presence of the paddy wagon as a hint to walk as quickly and as upright as he possibly could in the opposite direction to avoid a night of having Barfy Ben whisper the secrets of life in his ear at the local drunk tank. Instead, he decided, he must dance, and thought that the top of the paddy wagon’s cage would be just the place to do that.

He hopped up first on the bonnet of the paddy wagon and then this lush Lord of the Dance did a little of the ole’ soft-shoe shuffle on top of the wagon’s cage. Clearly a showman, the man knew that every truly memorable dance performance needs a spectacular finish and decided to cap his act off with a backflip onto the police car behind the paddy wagon.

According to a local sergeant, the two cops sitting in the patrol car “got quite a surprise”, when the drunken dancer came hurtling toward them, crashing through the car’s windshield and severely damaging the hood. The officers weren’t hurt and neither was the dancer, the sergeant said: "He was very, very intoxicated -- maybe that's why he didn't get too hurt from the fall.''

Man Streaking at Horse Race: And it's 'Drunk Idiot' by a nose!

As we noted in 'The Shark Book', horses once served man as a primary mode of transport and then were thanked for their years of service with new posts in society as fodder for glue and rendering plants and as a key ingredient in the nation's dog food.

Another popular use for horses has been to gather them at tracks, put lilliputian men atop them and force them to race one another while the audience bring ruination upon themselves through gambling, softening the blow of every lost dollar with a fortifying drink.

Occasionally, this spectacle of soaking up hooch like a dish rag, cursing and haggling with hookers is undertaken with pretension, as is the case with the running of the Royal Ascot. There, in '94 as we chronicled in the book, a drunk galoot, aiming to get a closer look at the 'gorgeous' (source newspaper's quotation marks) women in the Royal Enclosure, nearly got trampled to death in front of Her Majesty, the Queen Mother and the Duke of Edinburgh.

This recent example from NSW, Australia, though less benign (unless you count all the angry punters willing to put this man's life in danger for having nullified the race results) involved a man celebrating a stag party with his closest mates, who decided to strip down and offer up a photo finish [seen here]

Firewalk with me: Drunk burns feet in bonfire promenade

Firewalking is a technique that has been popular for centuries, ever since some fakir with a cart full of placebos to unload first gathered yokels around a coal pit and took the fiery walk in the hopes that they would believe he escaped burned feet because he was wearing the deity’s own socks and that the stinking concoctions he was doling out actually had some medicinal value.

Motivational speaker Tony Robbins was able to use firewalking to much the same effect – in his case unloading tapes and books featuring innumerable hours of him giving you advice that could be boiled down to the Fred Flintstone soundbite “Think big, be big Barney.” It should be noted that Robbins was not suggesting the intervention of a deity, but rather that spending a whole wad of cash to listen to him go on at some retreat in the woods somehow equips one with the mental juice necessary to make such a run without injury. Science-minded spoilsports later put the mysticism surrounding firewalking to rest.

The practice, far less impressive than a demonstration of one’s ability to walk on water would be, has carried on at motivational seminars across the world. (You know you’re at a bad motivational seminar when: a) you are made to pass an orange from under your chin to under that of a coworker without using your hands, and b) you cap off the penultimate day of the retreat with a firewalk.)

As surrounded as it is by an undeserved mystique, firewalking can result in injury, and some basics ground rules must be observed – chief among them that you should do your hotfooted dash across coals, rather than attempting to sprint through a bonfire. A drunk in Wigan England was evidently not a details man.

Drunk at a bonfire with a number of underage companions, the 24-year-old was said to have given in to repeated calls for him to do a “fire walk”. Stripping his shoes and socks off he dashed through the bonfire, burning himself badly. Melted bits of plastic trays that had been used by the environmentally-shocking bunch to build the fire along with rubbish were also stuck to the man’s skin.

Police found him when they went to extinguish the fire and later said after sending him to hospital that the stupidity of the man’s actions “beggared belief”. The upside for his youthful companions, presumably, was that there was one pair of sneakers no longer in use up for grabs following the episode.

Drunk Teen Swallows Apartment Key! Gives 'key parties' a new meaning

We all have our different ways of dealing with the inevitably of “last call”. Some of us order a tray full of enough high-octane booze to blind an elephant before the dreaded hour strikes. Others might drink only at places where the bartender is a childhood friend and a misguided sense of loyalty might persuade him or her to risk closure and/or heavy fines in order to keep the drinks flowing past the legally mandated hour.

But few of us are likely to be as dedicated to keeping the night alive as one British student -- pictured in the inset -- was. The 18-year-old was attending a party in the student residence and had drank six beers, along with some vodka and whiskey when his friends decided they had had enough of him and told him to go home and sleep it off.

Presumably at the stage of intoxication where not even this not-so-subtle invitation to leave was registering, the young Brit chose to fight for his inalienable right to party in a way that one might not expect from those out of short pants. In a tribute to those bizarre stage performers who consume things not meant to be taken internally, the youngster swallowed his key, figuring that all invitations to leave would have to be rescinded since he couldn't very well go home now.

Waking up after a night spent on a communal couch in the hallway of the dormitory, the youngster had no memory of his exploits on the night previous and thought that friends who told him about the key-swallowing were just winding him up. Abdominal cramps and a sore throat were enough to get him to reconsider this assumption and he went in for an X-ray -- pictured above -- which even made the attending physicians snigger (one wonders where doctors draw the line at laughing at patients? There ought to be a pamphlet for those just starting out, lest offence be given). He was told to "let nature take its course", and that he would be fine.

Nature did take its course and in what is the most disgusting aspect of this entire story... well let's just say he didn't have to pay his landlord the 20 pound replacement fee for a lost key.

Drunk graffiti artist all washed up... and The Joker's Wild Life: Heath Ledger

[From the recently spit-shined, mahogany editor's desk:


This morning, we figured we'd steer clear of commenting on the early demise of the talented Heath Ledger as revelling in the morbid is more the province of the folks over at The Darwin Awards. So, we figured we'd focus on a different Australian-themed story, a 'near death' one in this case.



Hip hop is universal and responsible for much of the pop culture we do our best to shield our eyes from on a daily basis, ideally, with a ball cap pulled way down and a hoodie.

It's given us, among other things: over-sized duds for fat and non-fat alike, athletic footwear thrown onto overhead wires to mark drug territory (a stern warning against crack dealers bold enough to ply their trade in penny loafers) and seizure inducing ditties.

Purists often cite the four pillars that prop up the Temple of Hip Hop, which include DJing (of the type not done at your cousin's Bar Mitzvah when a drunk uncle yells out for 'Hotel California'), emceeing, breakin' (not advisable beyond, let's say, the age of 25, or for anyone with lower back problems) and of course-- graffiti.

A piss drunk Australian graffiti artist who might've been overcome by the fumes of his art or vandalism, depending on your aesthetic sensibilities, and inside a storm water drain no less (presumably so that the surf could wash out his aerosol handiwork, Etch-a-Sketch-style) was rescued when he himself was swept out into the bay and nearly drowned.

In eastern Sydney, teens with a nose for trouble and one that's apparently lost its olfactory powers too, have been known to body board, or "sewer-slide", inside the drain when there is no surf.

According to a local witness, "The young kids from the area are always in the drain every weekend. I don't understand what the fascination is."

Man drinks two pints of vodka to avoid confiscation!

We live in a post 9/11 era and will continue to do so barring the apocalypse or a patent on a time machine. Ne’er-do-well terrorists with frequent-flyer miles (entry into the mile-high club being forsaken in this life for an attractive consolation prize in the next) have caused security at airports to tighten like the circle of police officers around a public demonstration for the poor. Restrictions on liquids being brought on board airplanes mean that one can no longer stroll on board with booze, cologne, hair gel and all the other accouterments a gentleman needs to have on hand to be able to properly flirt with flight attendants once in the air.

In Nuremberg Germany, a man getting ready to board a plane to his hometown of Dresden on the final leg of a return trip from a holiday in Egypt was told that he would have to either pour out the two bottles of vodka he had in tow or pay a fee to have the bag containing them checked in with the rest of his luggage.

Now, vodka is the world’s most popular distilled beverage and apparently so entrenched in popular culture that the insane think it a viable Halloween costume (pictured here) and the bathtub version is said to be so strong that copious amounts of it consumed at an ashram luau are rumored to have once resulted in swami Sai Baba being struck temporarily blind in his third eye.

We enjoy vodka as much as that demonstrative bearded fellow at the corner pub who strikes the surface of the bar loudly when ordering up the next round. It’s been described as tasteless, as has our brand of humor, and that’s why we drink it to excess when there’s an oversupply of orange juice lying around that needs to be put to good use. But as much as we enjoy a glass of the hard stuff to toast victory and curse defeat, had we been in the German man’s position, we probably would have just paid the bloody fine.

The man in question chose instead to unscrew the cap and chug the entire two pints worth right there. Now, as we’ve noted in The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death, that kind of vodka consumption is not recommended, although to be fair the downing of one litre of the stuff did, according to medical officials, limber up a Russian gentleman and help him survive a 40-foot fall from his balcony after a misstep while he was out enjoying some much needed fresh air to go along with the equivalent of the 22 ½ shots he had just downed.

The German vodka-lover in this case quickly lost the ability to walk or do much else as the alcohol ran hell over his innards. Acute alcohol poisoning nearly killed the man, however he was taken for treatment to a hospital in Nuremberg where he was expected to make a full recovery and no doubt be stuck with a hellish hangover that will serve as a more than adequate reminder to shove his booze into his suitcase next time.

Drunk Girls on Facebook: The Sh*t-Faced Femmes of Facebook

The Internet has long been a blessing for creeps and stalkers the world over and arguably the greatest gift it has given them has been Facebook, which is at the forefront of “social-networking sites” (anti-social networking having fallen off the typical MBA syllabus in the mid-80s). Facebook, in which Microsoft recently invested millions (a move that this Guardian columnist puts somewhere on the level of going to the racetrack and betting on the horse with the nicest eyes), allows you to stalk comfortably from your home, without having to jump into a thorn-filled bush to avoid being spotted, or ruining your favorite slacks by getting garbage-juice on them whilst sifting through the neighbor’s green bin.

Information that in years past would have required a private detective of Magnum PI-like skills to unearth is now visible to all of a person’s most far-fetched connections (at least those who haven’t been relegated to the shameful “limited-profile” status). While you might have one day expected to cross paths with that guy in elementary school who beat you up because you carried a briefcase to school, you would likely have expected this chance meeting to occur while he was pumping your gas and you were wild-eyed and chain-smoking – not via a Facebook message in which he reminisces on your school days as “such a larf!”.

Despite the privacy concerns it raises, and the doors to one’s troubled past it opens, Facebook has become hugely popular and most users do not fret a bit about keeping their Facebook fold informed of the yawning minutiae of their daily lives – events that, in the past, it would have seemed exceedingly arrogant to detail in a greeting card.

The UK newspaper The Daily Mail recently ran a finger-wagging piece on one group of Facebook members who truly could not give less of a sh*te about traditional public/private boundaries called 30 Reasons Girls Should Call It A Night – 80 reasons fewer than the 110 signposts offered by the tour guides for the recreationally drunk, The Shark Guys, in the seminal “The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery”. (All the reasons referred to in the group's name, including “You find yourself peeing behind random buildings”, can be found here). Postings from this group comprise in part pics of women on the back-end of benders, passed out, exposing themselves, falling into bushes, or, in other words, behaving like 90% of the men their age who go out on Saturday nights.

The Daily Mail's story, the word count of which seems to have been padded by the headline “The ladettes who glorify their shameful drunken antics on Facebook”, achieves a tabloid double-whammy both by striking a conservative pose and churlishly criticizing these girls’ drunken antics, while at the same time finding an excuse to run large photos of young women with knickers in plain sight (the two we've run here being preferable in case nosy-bastard coworkers are a problem where you are).

We speak from experience when we say that journalism is largely the domain of those whose first choice of job, professional alcoholic, was unavailable, and as such we're guessing that the latter reason – Rule 141 of the Tabloid Handbook: When in doubt, think “Girls Gone Wild” and work from there – factored far more heavily into the decision to run the story. (Click here for full article)

The Shark Guys

Dead drunk, but not A dead drunk

They say you cannot put a price on freedom, but that is hooey. Freedom, the best kind too, freedom from work, costs a mere $US19.95 via the Excused Absence Network. The network has isolated a distinct need – that of goldbrickers and hungover partiers to shirk a day’s office duties while not losing pay or stepping into pink-slip lane – and has filled it admirably. For this meager fee you can purchase fake doctor’s notes, as well as funeral programs, which will come in handy if you’ve already tested the limits of your boss’ credulity by both the sheer number of aunts you have (if you’re not in a predominantly Catholic country) and how they seem to drop dead close to a long weekend.

Halloween this year falls inconveniently right in the middle of the week, making a service such as this one quite handy for those who don’t want to worry about a next-day hangover when they don their Eyes Wide Shut masks and hit the nightclubs to grope random strangers and enjoy the only day of the year when it is socially acceptable to go outside the way you secretly dress up in front of your bedroom mirror.

In The Shark Book, we covered more than one tale of the Halloween hammered, including a particular favorite of an Aussie who borrowed a friend’s policeman uniform, possibly thinking that the genuine article would up his odds of winning the giant canned ham or whatever the prize was for best costume. When he later was so drunk that he passed out on a suburban street and passersby who spotted him thought that a policeman had been taken out in the line of duty, things got a bit uncomfortable for both the cop and the partier.

And more recently in Hamburg, we came across another story of Halloween gone wrong, when Die Polizei were called to a train by frightened passengers who believed they had come across the victim of a serious assault. According to officials, "The passengers were alarmed as the man appeared to be bleeding from the face and hands [and] could also not talk”. The passengers tried to revive him and failed (not surprising for anyone who has ever tried to wake up a seriously heavy drinker once he's settled into a serious snooze) and judging by the gore concluded that he had been the victim of a terrible assault.

By the time emergency officials arrived, the clamor surrounding the man caused him to wake up and explain to everyone with a drunken slur that he had just come from a Halloween party. First responders removed the man’s make-up to prevent any further misunderstanding. [Full story here]

The Shark Guys

Crocodile Hunter: After my smile, crocodile?

Excessive alcohol in one’s system can, like the very best cocaine, result in a sense of fearlessness and a Friday night that is a damn sight more entertaining than it would have otherwise been. However, it can also prove dangerous if this lack of fear results in you, say, saying making an ass of yourself at a charity luncheon that was supposed to be alcohol free, or, in the case of the Aussie guy whose horrific drunken night out is currently making the rounds, having a crocodile chomp down on your face.

News sources did not mention if the man had been tilting a few at the travel agent’s office; his motivations are unclear for having chosen to spend part of his camping his holiday in Cow Bay, in Northern Australia, along a strip of beach later described by a local doctor as “crocodile highway”. This is not the kind of place where you’d want to be out backstroking in the moonlight since, as far as crocodiles are concerned, the night time is indeed the right time for munching on careless travelers.

The man in question jumped in the water for a late-night swim and when a wave rolled in he dove headfirst into it – not the right move. He thought at first that he had hit rocks, but with all the movement he quickly realized this was not so, and, in what you would have thought would have been one of those instantly-sobering moments of life, he realized just how wrong he was when the upset crocodile bit him in the face.

Had this story gone the predictable route and the man ended up an intestine-sandwich on the floor of the bay, this would be one for the good people at the Darwin Awards. As it played out, it is a story the authors of The Shark Book gladly add to their compendium of remarkable drunken feats. The drunken vacationer managed to escape to safe ground – remarkable in itself (source story suggests that the crocodile was small, but still) but what merits this guy the gold star in our book (or the “Purple Liver”) is that he was so drunk that he didn’t immediately realize the extent of his injuries, returned to his tent and fell asleep.

Yes, that’s right, he had pumped himself so full of the amber anesthetic that he didn’t see the pressing need to visit the hospital so that the giant bite that a crocodile took out of his face – a wound that later required 40 stitches to close – could be treated. (Full story here).

Call 911! DWI is really 'Dialing while intoxicated'

Before he began to resemble a manatee carrying twins, a lean Marlon Brando once remarked ‘What you got’ when asked ‘What are you rebelling against?’

Later in his career, when he began rebelling against dynamism and a high fiber diet (he famously bared his fat arse to 100 extras between takes during the filming of the Godfather's wedding scene, causing more than one cast member to upchuck into their tiramisu), he literally became a larger than life icon.

Still, he's remembered more for delivering lines that became catchphrases than being unable to refuse an offer of an all-you can-eat buffet.

An Atlanta teen, exhibiting some Brando-esque bellicoseness of his own, mouthed off at cops with a ballsy ‘Yeah, what of it?’ when asked if he’d been drinking---an admirable retort if it were not the the end result of having drunk dialed 911. (a parting shot worthy of a free copy of The Shark Book too, incidentally, if its authors weren't the stingiest of buggers). The teen had been arguing with his dad about, appropriately enough, underage drinking when the old man threatened to call the cops on his pie-eyed scion. The son interrupted, saying he’d do it himself. He was promptly arrested. (full story here).

As a second public service announcement, (don't say we didn't already warn you about the perils of drunk dialing) it's best to leave such ripostes to the imagination of Elmore Leonard.

Prince Harry: The Boozing Artist Formally Known as Prince

We here at TheSharkBook.com, like many of our Canadian compatriots are pretty ambivalent toward the British Royal Family. Sure, most Canadians have a soft spot for Queen Elizabeth, but that has more to do with her being on the currency and how good it feels to find a forgotten 20 in a pair of jeans you just washed. We included only one tale involving royalty in our who's who of drunks, The Shark Book, and that concerned a footman who was adding whiskey to the water bowls of the royal corgis – an offense which, although funny, resulted in his demotion (and terrible canine hangovers during which the corgis wrote some of their best stuff). However, when a story like the following breaks, we get all misty-eyed and almost regret the fact that this colorful family is no longer cracking the colonial whip and sending the degenerate misfits among their nobility to oversee our affairs.

Prince Harry, the third in line to the throne (the one the kings sit on, not where you can be found the morning after a night at Uncle Chili’s House of Hot), has long impressed us. Unlike his elder brother, who has of late made a half-hearted effort to paint himself a drink-loving fun guy, Prince Harry has delivered time and again with drunken partying antics that, had they taken place in the 70s, would have caused someone to go wake up Rod Stewart, tell him all about it, and no doubt have him remark after a stunned silence: “Bloody ‘ell!”

Prince Harry has partied with strippers, been involved in drunken scuffles with paparazzi and… well… dressed up like a Nazi for a bit of a Halloween laugh. (Editor’s Note: In his defense, he’s not alone when it comes to good taste and not having any at dress-up time: In The Shark Book we covered the tale of another British drunkard who caused a full-scare terror panic by outfitting himself in a suicide bombers’ “outfit” [complete with wires and candles made to look like explosives] for a costume party taking place near a British army base.)

This time round though, Prince Harry gets the prize for making headlines by participating in a drinking game that even had the authors, themselves not unacquainted with boozing that could collapse a fair-sized mule, remarking to each other: “His nose? What a wildman!”

The British tabloid The News of the World broke the story of a video its editors obtained of the young prince’s holiday last November in Namibia where he partied with a bunch of his nipple-tweaking army buddies (See strange pics – I just don’t trust that guy being so close to the royal nipple – and full story here). In the video (no mention of how this 'weekend in Namibia' tape made it into the hands of the paper's editors), the prince is shown drinking a capful of vodka, swishing it around his mouth, spitting it back into the cap and then hoovering it all up his nose.

We’re not certain if this is a convention with this newspaper, but note the dramatic ending to the first sentence of The News story: “THESE are the shocking pictures that show Prince Harry inhaling vodka through his nose in a drinking game medical experts warn could KILL.” Fear not though News of the World faithful: Death is pretty unlikely, unless all that talk you hear about incest and the royal family is true, and Harry is a delicate hemophiliac for whom a nosebleed could mean the end.

Prince Harry’s vodka snort took place in November of last year, which was around the same time as the BBC issued a report saying that bartenders were becoming concerned about people snorting vodka and then immediately keeling over, not dead mind you, but stunned drunk from the alcohol hitting their bloodstreams far faster than it otherwise would have. More "traditional" methods of snorting vodka up one's nose (does this work just as well for whiskey or other drinks? A quick sampling of a Bacardi Breezer via this method did not bring the desired results) involve the use of straws and tubes for a cleaner, more efficient snort.

And no doubt Prince Harry will need a strong drink up both nostrils and possibly a splash of something in the eye once he sees the sculpture that an American artist is planning to unveil in London next Thursday. The artist’s work, part of a display on the Iraq War, depicts a dead Harry laid out on a slab with his ears cut off and pennies covering his eyes and to cap it all a vulture standing by ready to feast on the corpse (Full story here).

Duck Hunting!

“You hand in your ticket, and go watch the geek, who immediately walks up to you when he hears you speak, and says, ‘How does it feel to be such a freak?’
And you say, ‘Impossible’ as he hands you a bone."

Bob Dylan “Ballad of a Thin Man”

One of our favourite sections of The Shark Book comprised tales involving alcohol and animals (in the Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom rather than the John Belushi/ National Lampoon sense of the word) – a sure bet when it comes to hilarity as anyone who has ever been bored with nothing but a house-pet and a 24 to entertain themselves with will know. This section entitled “You Animal” chronicles animals with alcoholic tendencies – among them “Bongo”, the NYC chimp who raided his family’s liquor cabinet and went on a wild, destructive bender that ended in the biting of an interfering human’s toe – and also daring drunks who challenged mother nature while drunk and found out that mother nature can be, well, a mother.

Recently we’ve been following a story (full story here) that could have fit among the latter, though unfortunately in this case the disturbed drunkard had all the odds. He committed an act that one would have hoped had went the way of the pay-a-dime-and-glimpse-the-freak circuses of the past – geeking, which has nothing to do with this, but rather refers to the act of biting the head off an animal, usually a live chicken (though it is said a snake will do in a pinch), in public (Alan Prendergast, from the “Latest Word” blog, found quite a telling description of what it takes to “get a man to geek” from a 40s noir novel here).

In this case , it was a duck, one of many that a hotel in Minnesota had purchased as mascots to fill their lobby (the bird is pretty popular in the land of 10,000 lakes and immeasurably more hunters once duck season begins). The man in question, who in a nice twist was a visiting health auditor from Colorado traveling on the taxpayer’s dime, arrived at the hotel drunk in the wee small hours and proceeded to chase down the duck (one of a crew of “domesticated ducks” that the hotel had brought in for $400 a head), trap it in a corner and, in an unexpected finale, tear its head off.

As other customers and hotel staff looked at him in shock and revulsion the man explained, “I’m hungry, I’m gonna eat it”. Now, while both of us can attest to the fact that duck, particularly when prepared with just the right sauce, is rather toothsome, the man’s explanation points to alcohol’s tendency to push one toward the irrational. It is unlikely that the hotel, where the duck was later referred to as “part of the family”, would have prepared it for him in the kitchen, and it is unlikely indeed that the man’s room had any means by which he could properly cook such demanding fare.

Arrested for his actions, the man who, weirdly, already has a record for wrongful duck death, couldn’t figure out what he’d done wrong. “Big deal, it's just a *sensitive eyes spared an expletive* duck,” he said. The auditor was freed on $10,000 bail (!), put on administrative leave and now faces charges in duck-loving Minnesota of animal cruelty, which, given the potential jury pool and his “devil may care about our wetlands friends” attitude, could mean a big headache down the road.

Crazy Drunk Stuck in Chimney: Talk about blowing your stack!

The term "chimney sweep” conjures up, for us at least, thoughts of Dickensian pickpockets with toothless grins at the age of eight and quips at the ready working in an environment rife with epidemic poisonings and all of the adults off on freewheeling sexual escapades that predated penicillin.

Chimney sweeps in these times were unfortunate children (note the accompanying graphic, presumably the showpiece of Royal Daulton’s “Celebrating Child Slavery Through the Ages” specialty collection) popped into chimneys by exploitive employers who figured, rightly, that their small sizes would be ideal for giving the insides of chimneys a good scrub. What’s more malnutrition in those days was far more successful at keeping the kids trim than modern-day physical education classes. By the time more civilized labour standards become fashionable and laws concerning child labour were enacted, grownups began taking over the work – their size disadvantage overcome by a big long brush that essentially did the same job. The importance of the brush in the task of chimney sweeping was likely apparent to the very first grown man who looked at a chimney and thought “Hell, I can’t fit down there! Someone should make a real long brush [or hire a kid off the books]”.

Such common sense escaped one lovelorn man in Evansville Indiana who figured the chimney was a good option when he found the door to his ex-girlfriend’s apartment locked. Of course he got stuck and firefighters were called to the rescue. His irate ex, who said she had “dated a lot of psychos” but nobody quite like this, went on to decree: “I told them to leave him in the chimney and let him die" (words that were backed up with actions, as she was charged with disorderly conduct for blocking firefighter access to the chimney).

The man, whose impassioned defence included, “Everyone does stupid things sometimes when they’re drunk”, [Indeed, they do] returned and was captured by local media getting pelted with bottles and garbage by the still fuming ex.

Editor's Note: Keeping up with chimney-related drunks in the news is an onerous task. No sooner had we posted the above then another game drunk, this one German and celebrating Oktoberfest (the original in Bavaria, not the one that street cleaners in Kitchener, Ontario get overtime for every year) repeated a similar stunt -- this time while trying to get into his friend's locked apartment. Though he didn't have an ill-tempered ex to contend with, this poor plonker did have to wait an incredible 12 hours before an 82-year-old janitor heard his screams and called in help to pull him out.