TO A CARPENTER, EVERY PROBLEM LOOKS LIKE A NAIL.

January 25, 2001 9:17 AM

TO A CARPENTER, EVERY PROBLEM LOOKS LIKE A NAIL. Pennsylvania Man Cuts Off Hand, Shoots Self in Head With Nail Gun.
posted by crunchland (13 comments total)

I read this yesterday on Obscure Store and must say, it is absolutely the most insane story I've heard in a long time. I can't imagine what it must have been like to have been this guy.
posted by Doug at 9:34 AM on January 25, 2001

Doug, I think you hit the nail on the head with that comment.
posted by locombia at 9:46 AM on January 25, 2001

Nailed it!
posted by Karl at 9:47 AM on January 25, 2001

Most likely he was in shock.
posted by internook at 10:04 AM on January 25, 2001

As one poster said on the Plastic.com thread, "I guess there was no aspirin available."
posted by waxpancake at 10:19 AM on January 25, 2001

I heard this on the radio show, Y100's Bizarro file, this morning on the drive to work. Talk about your out of the ordinary ways to commit suicide. They were saying he has to be the toughest person alive, along the lines of Unbreakable people, just missing body parts here and there. Some of the things PMS (Preston, Marilyn and Steve) come up with are incredible. Just today was "Urination Island" where people were subject to water sounds while drinking 20 oz, 40 oz, 60 oz, etc. etc until they had to go. How long could you last? The last one to hold won a DVD player. Other contests are much better but they sure do come up with some funny stuff.
posted by brent at 10:21 AM on January 25, 2001

I recall an old "Dubious Achievements" item in Esquire about a fellow who killed himself by drilling 43 holes in his head with a power drill. Headline: Man Drills 42 Holes in Head, And Lives."
posted by lileks at 11:38 AM on January 25, 2001

Apparently, some people put holes in their head for good karma or something along those lines. I can't remember who linked to it where, and I can't find the page now (it's probably somewhere on BMEzine). I read a story once about a guy who had someone drill a hole in his head in order to gain a higher level of consciousness. *Shudder*
posted by tomorama at 4:23 PM on January 25, 2001

With fear and trepanation, I pass this link on to you.
posted by crunchland at 4:28 PM on January 25, 2001

Ah, it's all coming back to me now. I recall learning about trepanation among cavemen in intro to psychology. When a member of a tribe exerted symptoms of a psychological disease, the other members of the tribe beleived it to be supernatural possession. Of course, the only way to get a bad spirit out of a person is to split open their head (duh), so they would hold the troubled tribesman down while another person would use a long, pointed pole (kind of like a javelin) to ram a hole through his skull. Carbon dating and lots of other scientific-sounding procedures have even shown that victims of this procedure sometimes survived and lived out the rest of their lifespan (although reduced to a vegetable, no doubt).
posted by tomorama at 7:39 PM on January 25, 2001

Our carpenter cut off his thumb in our basement once. My Dad packed it in ice and my mom called 911. They reattached it, though he had to write left-handed after that.
posted by dhartung at 7:51 AM on January 26, 2001

The book "Ancient Inventions" has some information on trepanation in ancient societies. In some cases, the survival rate was higher than that of the same procedure when performed in 19th century European hospitals. There is a lot of speculation regarding why such procedures were peformed; including the removal of parasites (ew!). There is even one account of someone who had a "magic stone" which allowed him to see into people's heads and other body parts, possibly indicating a natural x-ray source (but the where is the phoshporous screen to convert the x-rays to visible light?). A very interesting topic indeed.
posted by Potsy at 6:43 AM on January 27, 2001