More Newspaper oddities

                          More Newspaper oddities

       There are times when a newspaper headline just grasps you by the throat and squeezes until you cave in and read the article. Sometimes that’s unnecessary because the headline screams “Darwin Award contestant!”  So, it was this morning, as I read “Coroner: Taco-Eating Contestant Died By Choking.” Say whaaaat?

        Apparently, desperate to “widen” their fan base, a northern California minor league baseball franchise, the Fresno Grizzlies, hosted a pre-game taco eating contest. What could go wrong with that? Well, for Dana Hutchings, a 41year old fan, the rule that you don’t inhale solid food was apparently forgotten. After emergency personnel failed to remove enough solid food from his airway to restore airflow, he was pronounced dead. Hutchings participated in the ballpark’s annual taco-eating contest before the annual "Taco Truck Throwdown’" held this Saturday. Predictably, Fresno Grizzlies President Derek Franks said, “We are devastated to learn that the fan that received medical attention following an event at Tuesday evening’s game has passed away. The Fresno Grizzlies extend our heartfelt prayers and condolences to the family of Mr. Hutchings. The safety and security of our fans is our highest priority." 

       All the drama notwithstanding,  the baseball game did not end after the incident, and The Taco Truck Throwdown event will continue. It is unlikely that the “prayers and or condolences” will resurrect Mr. Hutchings.  If I were a cynical and callous arsehole, I might suggest the funeral be held at Taco Bell. But I’d never do that.

        It would appear that humans aren’t the only species for whom food binging  can cause problems. In another saga of attempted overindulgence, students at a Daytona Beach high school found stiff competition for the sweets in a vending machine in the form of a resident racoon living therein. The presence of numerous wrappers sans sweets indicated that the ring-tailed raider had kept himself well fed during his inadvertent self-imposed captivity. He was released, unharmed but bloated.

        Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, the saga of Howard Miller, 39, “professional” welder and recent Darwin Award Winner, illustrates the pitfalls of ignoring high school chemistry with a time-saving invention. Always helpful, Miller offered to help a friend weld an exhaust pipe onto a classic Holden Kingswood sedan (note: Holden Motors was an Australian GM subsidiary making both GM and original design vehicles). 

       He arrived at the garage shed with an experimental welding kit: a small LPG bottle, similar to a propane tank, in which he had mixed both components that make up oxy-acetylene welding gas: acetylene and oxygen. As a Navy gas welding school graduate, this scares my mule, because these components are, usually, but not in this brief bad example, kept in separate tanks because, when combined, they burn hot enough to cut metal. The mixture, in a safe situation, which this was about not to become, is mixed in a regulator which has inputs of both gases separately, and one outlet hose of the now highly inflammable and hot burning mixture. This terminates in a metal torch tip with a stop valve. There is no way gas can back flow through the regulator. Unfortunately, our helpful buddy, in a scene worthy of Breaking Bad, had a tank of mixed acetylene&oxygen + no flow regulator, in other words a nasty accident ( or more descriptively- bomb) waiting for a spark

        Once Miller unveiled this jury-rigged device, his friend, apparently having paid attention in chemistry class and recognizing a truly bad idea on sight,  hauled ass out of the shed while Miller, undeterred by his buddy’s panic, attached a torch head straight onto the bottle, opened the bottle stop valve and lit’er up! Sans regulator, the flame crept back into the bottle and the inevitable explosion flattened the shed, which also contained about twenty liters of paint thinner and gasoline. The force of the explosion was so intense it shattered the windows of neighboring properties.

        The friend, who escaped, needs a new car, Mr. Miller on the other hand has no more earthly needs.

        Oh well, as I am fond of saying (Props to Ron White) You can’t fix stupid!