Valhalla needs jesters too, I guess
I supposed it's not such a fine line between going out in grand epic style and bleeding to death because you comically screwed up your own suicide, but a Belmont, NH man achieved just that nonetheless.
From the Mancheste rUnion-Leader:
With common items such as concrete blocks, a saw blade, bare wires and gasoline, a despondent David Moore devised systems that would first kill him and then turn his home into a funeral pyre.Neither worked as planned.
On Monday, Belmont police discovered Moore dead in his bedroom, some 20 feet away from a homemade guillotine he had built in his living room. He had gone as far as bolting tracks of metal piping to a ceiling beam to guide the blade, authorities said.
Flawless it was not.
Upon entering Moore’s home, police found dried blood throughout the living room. Moore’s body had a deep gash to the back of the neck, said New Hampshire State Police Sgt. Andrew Parsons, the commander of the state police bomb squad.
The badly wounded Moore had crawled or staggered from his guillotine to his bedroom to die, Parsons said.
Police also discovered hard-wired Molotov cocktails that had never detonated at the 10 Silkwood Ave. home.
Belmont police called in the bomb squad when they found eight to 10 plastic water bottles stuffed into holes punched into the living room wall. All held a couple ounces of gasoline. All were wired to two electrical timers and a power strip.
But the strip’s switch was in the off position.
All kidding aside, imagine for a moment not dying in a flash but instead groaning in agony as you drag yourself bleeding through your house, having managed to cut your own head halfway off. What a sad way to go.
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It's sad, but I'm focused
It's sad, but I'm focused more on the Wile E Coyote Acme suicide system.
What a weird way to do things. What a weird way to do yourself, when a good ol' 38 in the temple would do it fast and easy.
Yeah. I was all set to mash
Yeah. I was all set to mash on the Wile E Coyote button, but then I got a little regretful because that punchline just sort of writes itself.
The thing about extravagant suicides is that - and I think this is something that planners of extravagant suicides never quite grok - is that in the best case, you're not going to be around to care that it went right. And in the worst case you drag yourself groaning through your house, your senses hazed with pain and your perceptions reduced to two hard nuggets: the overriding animal instinct to crawl somewhere safe to die, and the knowledge that you did this to yourself because you're a f*ckup.
Thinking about it, I don't
Thinking about it, I don't believe the Valkyrie bring you to Valhalla if you botched your own suicide.
As best I can recall- you know, from the many times I've visited the place- only warriors who are stout of heart and who fell bravely to mighty enemies are privileged enough to make it to Valhalla. Where they fight each other for all eternity for the amusement of Odin, who dines on the hearts of the vanquished.
Then again, given the Asgardian penchant for causing mayhem among humankind, I can see Odin thinking this affair enormously funny.
Why don't we ring our Asgard offices and see what the reaction is up there?
Rube Goldberg a bit more than
Rube Goldberg a bit more than Wile E. Coyote. Dr. Death meets that weird mousetrap game my cousins had in the seventies.
I feel for the average suicide. Driven by dark thoughts, a conception of a complete failure to cope with life, and despair of there ever being even an absence of pain, let alone joy. For them, suicide is the only answer.
But there is a line. Past a basic attention to detail in planning your demise, you drift into something like megalomania. That failed plan reeks more of ego than depression.
I gotta agree with
I gotta agree with Greeklethal. If I fall in battle and rejoin my comrades in Valhalla, I had better not see this jackass there!
Sad that natural selection
Sad that natural selection can sometimes seem so cruel.
True that, coyote.
True that, coyote.