My Morbid Curiosity

While taking a break from wading through pounds of Path notes today (yes they stopped doing pages because the number got too high, now they do pounds); I had the Filter song "Hey man, nice shot," in my head. The song is based on a rather grizzly video of Pennsylvania treasurer Budd Dwyer commiting suicide on national television during a press conference. I won't provide a link but the video is relatively easy to find (watch at your own risk, it is EXTREMELY violent). This got me wondering what would compel someone to do something so terrible, how many other people have met their fate under such strange circumstances? Anyone who knows me knows that I could get lost for days on end on Wikipedia hopping from link to link. Here they have compiled a list called the "List of unusual deaths." You can find along with Mr. Dwyer, several other newscasters and public figures who have extinguished themselves in front of the camera, or simply died during a comedy sketch to much applause for their "excellent acting." I thought "what a strange way to go, to applause..." It's like some sick realisation of the book Fahrenheit 451 or A Brave New World. Other people died actually soliciting, yes, asking someone on the internet to torture and then murder them for sexual gratification, here. A divorced father who hung himself in a chatroom via webcam while people egged him on, and insulted him, thinking it was a joke. And then there was THIS, which is much, much, much, more bizarre and sickening than anything I have ever seen in the worst horror movie (Do not read this if you're faint of heart). There was of course the deaths of Rasputin the Russian Mystic. A pair of brothers one blind and the other a compulsive hoarder who were killed by their own booby-trap, and even a man who literally laughed himself to death over a television skit called "Kung Fu Kapers" in which a kilted Scots-man fights using the made-up martial art of "Hoots-Toot-ochaye." It doesn't sound THAT funny to me but, hey.

At first it made me a bit sick and sad to read all of this, then angry and disappointed in us. I can loose my faith in the inherent goodness of people sometimes. But you only have to go as far as the rotunda at AUC the past few days and look at a single multicolored poster board packed with messages to realise that maybe there is something worth saving after all. Its funny how the most terrible things imaginable can bring out such fantastic things in people, that never ceases to amaze me. I hope that it never does.