A Lot Of Idiots Kill Themselves….But….

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

A lot of idiots kill themselves accidently. I’ve highlighted a few examples on this blog of people whose stupidity led to their demise.

But some do it on purpose.

If they are really dumb, however, they don’t quite manage to do it the way they had planned.

Here are some examples.

1. Objective Attained – Method Unexpected

Frenchman Jacques LeFevrier left nothing to chance when he decided to commit suicide.

He stood at the top of a tall cliff and tied a noose around his neck.

He tied the other end of the rope to a large rock.

He then drank some poison.

Then he set fire to his clothes.

He even tried to shoot himself at the last moment.

The plan seemed foolproof. Alas it was not.

As he jumped he fired the pistol.

However, the bullet missed him completely and instead cut through the rope above him.

Free of the threat of hanging, he plunged into the sea.

The sudden dunking extinguished the flames and made him vomit the poison.

He was dragged out of the water by a kind fisherman and was taken to a hospital, where he subsequently died of hypothermia.

There must have been an easier way.

2. Strike another one Elvita!

One Sunday while on a visit to the Empire State Building in New York City, Elvita Adams clambered over an 8 foot high iron fence surrounding the observation deck at about 8.25pm.

She jumped off the building and plummeted earthwards.

But only for a few feet.

A strong gust of wind, possibly as high as 30mph, pushed her back towards the building and she landed on a balcony on the 85th floor, with nothing more than a broken leg.

Asked why she had wanted to commit suicide she said it was because she had been a failure at everything she tried.

Strike another one Elvita!

3. She Fell For Him Big Time

Back in France again, suicides in the Eiffel Tower are apparently quite common. In fact France has one of the highest suicide rates at 17.5 suicides per 1000 people!

Killing yourself with the 1,063 foot “Iron Lady” is the third most popular French suicide method behind poisoning and hanging (both of which the guy in the first incident tried unsuccessfully).

A few times, people have attempted to kill themselves but failed to do so. One man was blown onto a rafter by the wind and he was spared. But the most curious case was one in which a woman who jumped, landed on the roof of a car and later married the man who owned it!

Boy did she fall for him!!!

4. Taxi!

In Buenos Aires, Argentina, a woman threw herself off the 23^rd floor balcony of the Hotel Crown Plaza Panamericano in an apparent suicide bid. However her attempt failed when a taxi caught in traffic below cushioned her fall.

Although the impact of her landing on the car shattered its windscreen and made a huge dent in its roof, the impact was not hard enough to end her life.

Instead, the 30-year-old woman was left with broken hips, ribs and significant internal bleeding.

The driver of the taxi, Miguel Cajal, told a local TV station that he noticed policemen stopping traffic and were looking upward. This made him instinctively jump out of his car.

“I got out of the car a second before. If I had not got out, I would have been killed,” the BBC quoted him as saying. The impact, he added, “made a terrible noise.”

Never Hitch Your Wagon To Another Man’s Horse

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Strangely this blog post is neither about wagons nor horses, but I thought the title was catchy. It is related though, I haven’t reached the stage yet where I have to deceive people into reading my blog.


This post is about Chief Petty Officer Roman Styles, U.S. Coast Guard Station, Jacksonville, Florida who decided to repair some damaged shingles on the roof of his house himself, instead of paying a contractor to do it for him.


Ever conscious about the dangers of working at heights and on sloping shingles in particular, Chief Petty Officer Styles tied a safety rope to the trailer hitch of his truck prior to climbing up on his steep roof. Then, once he had climbed up to the peak of his roof he secured the other end of the line around his waist and slid over the top of the roof to repair the shingles.


So far so good. 


He started his repairs.


As luck would have it, bad luck that is, shortly after he started to work, his teenage son called for a ride home from a Boy Scout trip. Mr Styles’ wife, Jane, took the call and went straight out of the house, got into the truck and yelled to her husband that she’d be back right away.


"I didn't see the rope," Mrs. Styles said later, "until I saw it in the rear-view mirror. By then I was half-way down the street."


Bill Schlimm, a next door neighbor, said, "I'll never forget the look on Roman's face as he came sailing over the peak of that house. If it hadn't been for that tall cedar tree he would have been really hurt."


After realizing what had happened, but not before she had dragged her poor husband quite a ways down the street, Mrs Styles summoned emergency help.


Mr Styles’ bad luck was compensated by the good luck that he only had to be treated for a slight concussion and a few scrapes and bruises. 

Optimist Or Pessimist?

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Yesterday I wrote about whether your glass is half full or half empty.

Closely related to that, though also slightly different in degree perhaps, is whether you are an optimist or a pessimist.

I have a friend who has gone through life with a “when one closes another one shuts” philosophy. He also says things like, “Behind every silver lining there’s a cloud”.

It’s amusing, but in his case and I would guess in a good many others, that attitude eventually becomes a self-fulfilling predicament. He’s never taken any chances in life and he has been in a job that he never really cared for, for the past 30 years or so. He’s just counting the days until he can retire and he has been doing that for many, many years, not just recently. Sad, but it can’t be helped, or rather he can’t be helped.

As well as creating an aversion to any sort of risk, if you think things will go wrong then they usually will, and more often than not it’s your own fault. If you set out to do something with failure uppermost in your mind, you psych yourself out of giving 100 percent to the task at hand. If you don’t give it that 100 percent effort then it will either not turn out as good as it could have, or it will fail completely. In such cases the pessimist always blames things like bad luck, or other people, never their own defeatist attitude from the outset.

An optimistic person, on the other hand, will approach a task thinking it is going to succeed. Therefore in their case they will put much more care and effort into it (even sometimes subconsciously) thereby raising their chances of succeeding. Don’t get me wrong, starting off with an optimistic viewpoint will not guarantee success, it will just make for a better attempt at the job, and the better the job you do the better are the chances it will succeed.

Failure will stop a pessimist dead in his tracks because he is sure he is going to fail from the beginning and when it happens he shrugs his shoulders and packs up and goes home.

But failure won’t do the same for a person with an optimistic outlook. An optimist is surprised by failure. He usually wants to know why it happened, so he will analyze it and then try again.

And that is one of the great secrets to success. Sir Winston Churchill probably defined it best when he said that “success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm”, and although Churchill is now remembered for his notable political victories and war-time leadership, he also had his fare share of defeats as well along the way.

I have been part of several projects that have been complete failures, but that never stopped me from getting back up, dusting myself down, and trying again. And if you stay optimistic and work accordingly giving 100 percent of your effort then sooner or later you will succeed.

I’m very optimistic about that!

PS: I haven’t tried this out, but they say you should always borrow money from a pessimist, because he doesn’t expect to get paid back!

Is Your Glass Half Full, Or Half Empty?

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

“Some people see the glass half full.

Others see it half empty.

I see a glass that's twice as big as it needs to be.” 

George Carlin

Just a short post today, but it covers a big philosophical question.


How do you look at things in life?


Is your glass always half full or half empty?


The Australian airline Quantas has never had a major accident. Does this mean that you have confidence that it is the safest airline in the world? Or does it make you think that maybe the odds are that it’s due for an accident?


If you’re playing the tables in Vegas or Atlantic City or somewhere, does the fact that you’ve lost the last ten hands make you think that your luck is out for the night and you leave. Or do you think the laws of probability mean your luck must be due to change shortly and you hang in there?


There’s no right or wrong answers here. It just depends on what type of person you are.


People who are naturally in the glass half empty category tend to be the ones who play it safe. Work for someone else, are content with a lesser but safer position, don’t over extend themselves financially, etc. For that type of person such decisions make for a much happier and contented life.


Other people, me for example, are more in the glass half full category. More prone to taking risks, trying new things (like blogging even!), and starting their own businesses. That can bring great rewards, but it can cause more than a little turmoil financially and otherwise in your life too, particularly in the economic times we are currently living through. The safe option it is not!


It takes both types to make the world go round and both are equally important.


There’s no point in starting your own business if there’s no one willing to be employed; and there’s no point in looking for a job if there’s no one willing to take the risk and start a business (they all had to start somewhere, even the giant multi nationals).


So what’s the best? It depends on you.


What’s right? Again, it depends on you.


Just don’t waste your time with the stupid pursuit of wondering if the grass is greener somewhere else if you don’t have the courage to go and find out.


Whatever way suits you at least be content with your decision.


That my friends is the simplest secret to enjoying your life. 


(According to me anyhow!)

Here's a video. 


Enjoy!