Trigger happy for medical help

Maybe it's what I have been reading of late, but it seems that there is a sprouting new niche medical procedure that sane people would never consider; something that seems like a good idea (despite all indications that it isn't) only when one is at wit's end.

Hot on the heels of a British man using a shotgun, that allegedly he found behind the hedges, to shoot out a wart from his finger, a Maryland man fired shots in the air from his semi-automatic to get the attention of the police. Why? Because he needed help with a fishhook lodged in his buttocks!

Police responded to a noise complaint from residents that a man “living in the rear entrance of the apartment, Charles Akin Rempe (Rump?), had been making a lot of noise for several hours.”

When police went to investigate they found the man hiding in his closet because he had a “fishhook embedded in his buttocks.” He had started shooting his loaded .45 calibre semi-automatic from where he sat to gain attention to his plight. Thankfully no one was injured.

Apart from the obvious bullet holes in the room there was even evidence that a round had even gone through a side window and lodged itself in the brick wall of an adjacent window.

Rempe was prompting placed in handcuffs and taken to a medical facility for “evaluation.” Apparently criminal charges are also pending.

What I find amazing is that this Rump... sorry, Rempe fellow spent “several hours” shooting in the air to get the attention of the police, rather than dial 911 and call for medical assistance.

Also, is it only me who read the irony that the man lived in the “rear” of the apartment?

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On that same note, it brings me “back” to the first story... that of the British man who used a shotgun to blow a wart off his finger. (He succeeded by the way in removing the offending wart but also managed to blow off his entire middle finger.)

Sean Murphy, a security guard in England, fortified himself with a good dose of anaesthetic (lager at the local pub, naturally) and used a 12-bore Beretta shotgun to “remove” the painful wart off his middle finger.

He admitted that he had tried various creams, ointments and doctor remedies to have the painful wart removed – to no avail, so he tried his own method. But while he stretched out his left arm and aimed for the wart, he did not account for the gun's recoil (which shifted the trajectory of the bullet... resulting in the collateral damage that he was probably not prepared for).

The poor fellow now has no wart, but also no middle finger and a stump in its place to show for his efforts.

Whichever way you look at it, someone named Murphy should have been more conscious of the law of the same name.

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And finally to close on a more trigger happy (and inspiring) note, a California man has rigged up his own H20 Jet Pack invention that helps him soar above the water.

The Orange county man's version of the water-powered jet pack was inspired from a similar device he saw advertised on youtube called the JetLev. The JetLev was, however, priced at US$ 99,500 and so prompted Bob Wilson to attempt to build one of his own.

It took him less than a year to build.

As a man making his living fixing things such as sprinklers, plumbing and electric, he had leftover income to support his passion to tinker. For his hydro-powered device Wilson simply attached his jet pack to a tube that's hooked to a personal watercraft's exhaust; a pilot on the watercraft hits the throttle to power the jet pack, whose occupant then steers by pulling and pushing two handles.

Click the video below for the amazing result.



While Wilson admits that he drew inspiration from Raymond Li, the Chinese Canadian who spent a decade researching, designing and marketing the Jetlev (which has patented technology and will hit the US market this month), he is quick to conclude that his version was not a duplication, but an improvement.