1,001 Facts That Will Scare the S#*t Out of You: The Ultimate Bathroom Reader (14 page)

76

FACT :
40 percent of women admit that they
have thrown footwear
at a man.
Women love shoes, so if she’s willing to hurl one at you, you know she’s pissed.

Bernice Kanner, Are You Normal about Sex, Love, and Relationships? (Macmillan, 2004).

77

FACT :
A Nevada couple were charged in 2007 with child neglect after their kids became malnourished
while the couple played online video games
for days at a time. Their eleven-month-old’s hair was so matted her head had to be shaved, and her twenty-two-month-old brother had difficulty walking due to lack of muscle development.
Video games may or may not be addictive, but being an asshole certainly is.

Associated Press, “Parents Neglect Starved Babies to Feed Video Game Addiction,” Fox News, July 14, 2007,
www.foxnews.com
.

78

FACT :
In 2005, a fifty-seven-year-old woman
gave birth to her own granddaughter
, a baby conceived with an egg donated by her twenty-seven-year-old daughter.
Let me guess: Arkansas?

Lucy Lawrence, “Woman of 57 Who Gave Birth to Her Own Granddaughter,” Sunday Mirror, August 14, 2005.

79

FACT :
In 2007 a British climber reached the summit of Mt. Everest, but ran out of air during his descent.
As many as forty climbers passed the dying man
, unwilling to risk using up their own oxygen to help him.
They’ll need it in Hell.

Associated Press, “As Others Pass, Climber Dies Alone on Mount Everest,” ESPN, May 27, 2006,
http://sports.espn.go.com
.

80

FACT :
In 2006, Claude Allen, a former domestic policy adviser for President George Bush, was charged for
stealing $5,000 worth of items
from several Washington DC-area stores.
It sounds worse than it was. All he stole was a coat rack from Pottery Barn and a set of bookends from Restoration Hardware.

John Files and Robert Pear, “Former White House Aide Is Arrested on Theft Charges,” New York Times, March 11, 2006,
www.nytimes.com
.

81

FACT :
A former U.S. soldier who was wounded in Iraq was
billed for his bloody body armor
that was discarded as a biohazard. The man, who left the Army because of his injury, had to borrow $700 from friends to make the payment before the Army would discharge him.
Oh, and thanks for serving!

Allison Barker for the Associated Press, “Wounded Soldier Made To Pay For Armor Pulled Off His Bleeding Body,” The Huffington Post, February 8, 2006,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

82

FACT :
Multimillionaire David Pizer has arranged to
freeze his body in liquid nitrogen
when he dies in hopes of being brought back to life someday. Pizer has also left his entire fortune to himself.
I hope he’s not counting on his heirs to unfreeze him.

James Langton, “Rich Freeze Their Assets for Chance to Live Again,” Telegraph UK, January 30, 2006,
www.telegraph.co.uk
.

83

FACT :
A French woman who survived the first face transplant in history in 2006
took up smoking again
once she regained feeling in her mouth and lips.
She spent months in the hospital and had umpteen surgeries after having half of her face chewed off by her dog while she was passed out after attempting suicide with a handful of sleeping pills. Let the woman have a damn cigarette.

Ariane Bernard and Craig S. Smith, “French Face-Transplant Patient Tells of Her Ordeal,” New York Times, February 7, 2006,
www.nytimes.com
.

84

FACT :
In 2006, a forty-one-year-old British woman married what she called “the love of my life”:
a male dolphin named Cindy
. The woman had met Cindy fifteen years before and said it was “love at first sight.”
I’m not sure what’s more disconcerting, the marriage or the fact that someone would name a male dolphin “Cindy.”