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Ummm... Other?

Paralyzed By Sand

Did you ever feel you needed more proof that the world was a dangerous place and that you should be allowed to stay home protected by bubble wrap? If you did, here it is: Beaches are death traps.

Jeff Harris was on a beach in The Outer Banks, N.C., with friends, kicking a soccer ball in the surf. Diving for the ball in shallow water, he hit his head on the sand with such force that he couldn't move. He kept trying to lift his head but it became so tiring that he just let it dangle in the surf. He eventually passed out.
...
Harris, 30, is now paralyzed from the neck down.
...
Jesse Billauer, 34, was surfing in Malibu, Calif., riding a wave into one-meter-deep water when he was thrown into a sandbar, severing his spinal cord. Chad de Satnick, 36, was riding a wave in Cape May, N.J., when he hit shallow water, flew off his board and into the sand, fracturing his sixth and seventh vertebrae. Patrick Durkin, 59, was body surfing in Ocean City, Md., when he was caught unexpectedly by a wave close to shore. He rode it in but was thrown into a wall of sand that broke his neck. The list of bathers with spinal injuries goes on.

The article puts forth an ER doctor's hypothesis that beach replenishment was a possible factor in all of these spinal injuries, but nobody knows for sure what the cause is. All i know is that next time we are at the beach and fnord12 asks me if i want to go in the water, the answer is going to be "Hell, no! Are you out of your mind? Do you want to end up paralyzed?? Sit down and read your book, goddammit!".


By min | July 16, 2013, 2:44 PM | Ummm... Other? | Link



The secret is: Stop sending us your filthy wrappers

The nice thing about the internet is when you see some weird ad in your comic books you can look it up and see what the hell they are talking about. I didn't know anything about an Indian Wrapper Legend, but according to Snopes it seems like people somehow got it into their heads that if you got a tootsie pop with an Indian picture on it you could send it in for a free tootsie pop. In fact according to that Snopes article (from 2011), they still get about 150 letters a week asking for free tootsie pops, and some stores feel compelled to give them away because people are so sure about it.

And so this ad seems to have been an attempt to disabuse people of this idea. They started sending out the "secret of the Indian Wrapper Legend" pamphlets and trying to get people to send some money along with their sticky candy wrappers in exchange for hats and towels or whatever.

It seems to me you shouldn't need a winter hat and a beach towel at the same time.

Weird. But that is one smug looking kid with all his tootsie roll paraphernalia. He earned it, though. By eating candy.


By fnord12 | July 12, 2013, 7:28 PM | Comics & Ummm... Other? | Link



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