Did anyone hear something?
I’m terribly afraid that Cecil won’t be advising us anymore.
Man, I’ve got to get my ears cleaned. I swear I hear hoofbeats.
I’m still a bit shocked over the method chosen by Elliott Smith in 2003: He *stabbed himself through the heart.
TWICE*.
Jesus. That’s some determination.
(The Wikipedia page linked there indicates that there’s at least some suggestion that it was homicide. This was news to me.)
That. Is the first geek suicide I’ve ever heard of.
[Dr. Weird]I have to lose five more pounds! Or I’ll never be pretty![/Dr. W]
More to the topic at hand: I’m imagining a Far Side comic with the caption “Determination is a good thing, but this is just ridiculous.” Hee hee.
I am a bad person. Hee hee.
It was a “swing arm” guillotine. How exactly does that work? 'Cause right now, I’m just picturing a giant paper cutter.
I would imagine either:
-A big long arm with a heavy blade at the free end - sort of like a huge axe constrained to fall in the right place
or
- A big long arm with a weight at the free end, and a blade near the pivot, so as to use mechanical advantage to perform the cut.
I’m not sure which one would be the best choice.
When I read about this on cnn.com, I immediately thought of this short by Richard (“Rocky Horror”) O’Brien:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0169703/
Here’s a YouTube link:
VCNJ~
If you want it done right…
It’s a DIY DOA
You can do it. We can help.
I am SO GLAD you posted that! That movie was on TV when I was at a New Year’s party in maybe 1988 or so. I saw enough of it to be enthralled, but had no idea what it was called or who made it. I never forgot it, though.
(I guess I could have done some Googling, but it never occurred to me, the question being older than Google.)
It has always stuck with me, too. I just totally pictured that poor man doing the same methodical thing. Sad.
VCNJ~
Just goes to show how rare someone like Cecil really is.
Jeez, I wish Zebra would drop by this thread.
Is there anybody out there?
Can anyone hear me?
Hello?
Hello?
I first saw that clip when I was at a friend’s 15th birthday party. We were watching “Faces of Death”, or “Traces of Death”, I forget which. It creeped me out more than any of the others, and once I saw the clip, I remembered exactly what it was. The twitching at the end is morbidly funny.
[side story]We were doing Dynasty shots that night (where you take a shot every time something predetermined happens). Every time somebody died, we had to take a shot. We decided to quit when a plane crashed, and 212 people died. [/ss]
Along the same line it seems that the terrorists in Iraq have a new secrect weapon
I am not sure if our military can come up with an effective counter measure.
I knew a morbidly obese man who committed suicide by slashing through the veins in his thighs…with a paring knife.
He was a chef, I know he had better (bigger?) knives than that.
There’ve been other cases of suicide with homemade guillotines, but I can’t recall the particulars of any offhand.
A while back I saw photos (in a textbook, if you’re wondering) of a suicide who had assembled a wood-and-rope structure to support a large hunting rifle at the head level of a man sitting down. He then put on a 3-piece suit and tie, tied a string to the rifle trigger, sat in an armchair facing the structure, and pulled the trigger. The result was actually pretty close to decapitation, only even messier.
Then there was a case report I once read of a man who had on two separate occasions attempted suicide by shooting himself in the heart with a crossbow. His aim was fine; he punctured his left ventricle both times. But both times the bolt remained in the wound and mostly stopped the bleeding, so doctors were able to save him (even though the second time he suffered a near-fatal reaction to the anesthesia, which was what the case report was actually about, believe it or not). I think Uncle Dirtnap just didn’t want this guy. Not yet, anyway.
Ugh. Head scissors.