Quercus:
Sounds like the guy I heard about, except he wanted to make sure he wouldn’t just wound himself enough to keep him from jumping off, so he jumped and then shot himself as he was falling.
But in the turbulence of falling, he missed his temple, the bullet ended up severing the rope, and after landing in the water, he swallowed so much brackish water that he vomited up all the poison.
Reminds me of the now-legendary murder of Rasputin: Grigori Rasputin - Wikipedia
BigT
April 29, 2010, 3:14am
62
For a non-Kryptonian object to be able to cut him, wouldn’t he have to be weakened by kryptonite? He’s even weaker than a normal human when that stuff is around.
Really, if any dopers are planning to try this, they ought at least to work out a way of letting us know whether a decapitated head remains conscious at the same time.
How about using a draw knife ? You could hold the blade behind your neck, and put the front of your neck on a solid chopping block. Pull down sharply with both hands…
Spiff
April 29, 2010, 6:43pm
66
Hey, I wrote the headline for that story in my local paper.
I wrote:
Man drills five holes in head and lives
July 4, 1906 Edward Sanderson of Los Angeles murdered his wife then decapitated himself with a straight razor . Only a flap of skin held the head to the body.
From Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary :
SCIMETAR, n. A curved sword of exceeding keenness, in the conduct of which certain Orientals attain a surprising proficiency, as the incident here related will serve to show. The account is translated from the Japanese by Shusi Itama, a famous writer of the thirteenth century.
When the great Gichi-Kuktai was Mikado he condemned to decapitation Jijiji Ri, a high officer of the Court. Soon after the hour appointed for performance of the rite what was his Majesty’s surprise to see calmly approaching the throne the man who should have been at that time ten minutes dead! “Seventeen hundred impossible dragons!” shouted the enraged monarch. “Did I not sentence you to stand in the market-place and have your head struck off by the public executioner at three o’clock? And is it not now 3:10?" “Son of a thousand illustrious deities,” answered the condemned minister, “all that you say is so true that the truth is a lie in comparison. But your heavenly Majesty’s sunny and vitalizing wishes have been pestilently disregarded. With joy I ran and placed my unworthy body in the market-place. The executioner appeared with his bare scimetar, ostentatiously whirled it in air, and then, tapping me lightly upon the neck, strode away, pelted by the populace, with whom I was ever a favorite. I am come to pray for justice upon his own dishonorable and treasonous head." “To what regiment of executioners does the black-boweled caitiff belong?” asked the Mikado. “To the gallant Ninety-eight Hundred and Thirty-seventh — I know the man. His name is Sakko-Samshi." “Let him be brought before me,” said the Mikado to an attendant, and a half-hour later the culprit stood in the Presence. “Thou bastard son of a three-legged hunchback without thumbs!” roared the sovereign — “why didst thou but lightly tap the neck that it should have been thy pleasure to sever?" “Lord of Cranes of Cherry Blooms,” replied the executioner, unmoved, “command him to blow his nose with his fingers." Being commanded, Jijiji Ri laid hold of his nose and trumpeted like an elephant, all expecting to see the severed head flung violently from him. Nothing occurred: the performance prospered peacefully to the close, without incident. All eyes were now turned on the executioner, who had grown as white as the snows on the summit of Fujiama. His legs trembled and his breath came in gasps of terror. “Several kinds of spike-tailed brass lions!” he cried; “I am a ruined and disgraced swordsman! I struck the villain feebly because in flourishing the scimetar I had accidentally passed it through my own neck! Father of the Moon, I resign my office." So saying, he gasped his top-knot, lifted off his head, and advancing to the throne laid it humbly at the Mikado’s feet.
j_sum1
March 13, 2013, 12:41pm
69
From
OLD NEW ZEALAND,
TOLD BY AN OLD CHIEF OF THE NGAPUHI TRIBE.
BY A PAKEHA MAORI
In a discourse on suicide, last page of chapter XI
I was acquainted with a man who, having been for two days plagued with the toothache, cut his throat with a very blunt razor, without a handle, as a radical cure, which it certainly was.
Let’s ask the Master.
From a letter to Cecil sent by a U.S. Army veteran describing an automobile accident that he was in in 1989:
My friend’s head came to rest face up, and (from my angle) upside-down. As I watched, his mouth opened and closed no less than two times. The facial expressions he displayed were first of shock or confusion, followed by terror or grief. I cannot exaggerate and say that he was looking all around, but he did display ocular movement in that his eyes moved from me, to his body, and back to me. He had direct eye contact with me when his eyes took on a hazy, absent expression … and he was dead.
I went through a samurai fascination as a teenager, and I read somewhere (translated from an old Japanese text, which proves nothing), that some test or demonstration of skill is when the swordsman beheads someone so that only a flap of skin is left to hold it. Ie only a patzer would need to swing for the fence. My friend and I constantly mentioned this bit of info to each other.
As to OP, I’m working on finding cites for some ancient Rabbi who was so into atonement for his sins, he concocted a scheme for exactly that, and then some. I’m thinking now that it’s in Midrash, and I don’t have the bibliographic skills, on- or off-line, to search for it. But I’m trying…
I was aware of (and indeed referring to) that topic when I posted the quoted remark.