Stories tagged bad dude
You deserve it Avis: Be careful though—it may be a trophy, but it really fires. Golden bullets.
Courtesy davidaugspurgerRata a tat tat tat get yourself psyched a tat rat rat rat rat…
The award goes to Avis Blakeslee of Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania!!
Now, before we get into Avis’s specific accomplishments, let’s have a little background on the Sara Connor award itself.
A female-only award, meant to recognize the truly hardcore ladies out there, the Sara Connor award is, in fact, a precursor to the Otzi the Iceman Medal of Badassery. The OtIMoB, was created more than a decade after the SCA, under social pressure to acknowledge that men can also, on occasion, be pretty tough. But the Sara Connor is truly the original, and as deserving as the Otzi winners are, the Badassery medal is in a different—and frankly lower—league.
Originally the Sara Connor and Lt. Ellen Ripley Medal of Valor, the award was split after the selection committee could not agree on a recipient. Those members who would eventually form the Lt. Ripley Organization wanted to give the award to Margaret Thatcher, for eating the eyes out of a living goat, while the charter members of the Sara Connor board felt that an Argentinean woman who gave birth while clinging to the wing of an airborne Learjet was more deserving. The board members of the award parted ways amiably, although the Sara Connor Award has since received greater attention and respect, on account of widely held opinion that the Lt. Ripley Organization is simply unable to “keep it real.”
The Sara Connor Award is given regularly, but not necessarily every year. For example, in 1995, the SCA was given to Svetlana Kovach of the Ukraine after she removed her own cystic kidney using only a bottle of grain alcohol and a claw hammer (while trapped in a mineshaft, although this was only discovered after the ceremony—Ms. Kovach was tremendously modest), but in 1996 no suitable recipients were nominated. The award was given once again in 1997, posthumously, to Nozomi Chinen of Okinawa, who clawed her way out of a shark’s belly, and drowned fighting a second shark barehanded.
Avis Blakeslee, this year’s deserving recipient, is being recognized for an epic battle with a rabid fox in the garden of her farmhouse.
Although Ms. Blakeslee’s accomplishment is perhaps not as immediately impressive as those of past recipients (it pales in comparison even to 1999’s formidable runner up, a 15-year old Jordanian who slapped a mortar out of the air), extenuating circumstances must be considered. Again, the fox was rabid—and if you read last week’s post on the bat-pantsed Scotswoman (who is unlikely to receive a nomination), you’ll know that rabies is serious business. Paralysis, insanity, hydrophobia, etc; rabies is no cakewalk. The disease is no doubt what lead the fox to leave its habitat to attack an unsuspecting gardener. Ms. Blakeslee had never even seen a fox in person before, and believed the creature to be a small dog (before it went crazy on her). Another important factor here is Avis’s age: 77. Avis is a grandmother, and not used to fighting wild animals, and yet she wrasseled that pooch into submission, even after sustaining seven leg wounds, an arm wound, and severe blood loss. She then pinned the rabid fox to the ground, holding its jaws shut with one hand, until help arrived to dispatch the creature with a firearm. I have no doubt that, had Mavis a free arm, she would have simply driven a finger into the fox’s brain. As it was, however, she did her two-armed best and subdued the fox ultimate fighting style, until the cavalry came to do its own thing.
A job well done, Avis, a job well done. You’ve taught us all a little bit about what it means to be hardcore, and for that…we salute you.
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Thought you were tough, huh?: Not until you take this, and cut open your own windpipe with it in your kitchen in the middle of the night.
Courtesy Don SoloLast week a man gave himself a tracheotomy in his kitchen. That means he took a knife, and cut a hole in his own throat.
The man has suffered from throat cancer and breathing problems. He awoke in the middle of the night last week with his throat swollen shut. You know the rest.
Apparently Rambo lives in Omaha.
Does everyone remember Otzi the Iceman? The little frozen mummy they found in the Alps, back in the early Nineties? Of course you do. How could you forget something like that?
Otzi, at about 5300 years old, bears the distinction of being one of the oldest natural mummies in the world. Also, a five feet, five inches, and eighty-four pounds, he is one of the smallest people I am afraid of. And not just because he’s dead.
And the award for "most hardcore death" goes to...: That's right, to Otzi the Iceman for dying high on a mountain, covered in tattoos and the blood of his enemies, and shot though the shoulder with an arrow. We envy you, but only slightly.
New research has finally put to rest (as it were) the question of Otzi’a death. It turns out that Otzi died as he lived: on a mountain, and totally hardcore. I will now list the evidence for this conclusion, in order of increasing bad-assness.
1) Otzi dressed all in leather. His cloak was made of woven grass, but his belt, vest, leggings, loincloth, and shoes were all leather. We know that’s what tough people wear.
2) Otzi wore a bearskin hat. I would never mess with anyone in a bearskin hat. Bears don’t give up their skin easily.
3) Otzi carried around a prehistoric medicine kit. Maybe this isn’t that hardcore, but it seems like a good idea. He had a string of two kinds of polypore mushrooms, which have antibacterial properties. Way to think ahead, Otzi!
4) Otzi had 57 tattoos. No elaboration needed.
5) Otzi carried an axe, a knife, a quiver of bone-tipped arrows, and a longbow. For comparison, I usually carry around my house keys, and sometimes a pen. John Rambo and Otzi probably shopped at the same stores, come to think of it.
5) The blood of four non-Otzi people was found on Otzi’s cloak. Whoa! After DNA analysis revealed this, some people began to speculate that Otzi may have been part of a raiding party. After baby showers, these are the roughest, toughest kind of parties around.
6) A recently constructed 3D model of Otzi’s body shows that he died of blood loss after getting shot with an arrow under his left collar bone. Previous examinations had revealed a wound beneath a matching tear in Otzi’s (leather) vest, inside of which was lodged an arrowhead, but the new CT scans clearly show that the arrow had torn an artery, which would have caused severe bleeding, shock, and eventually death by heart attack. A large haematoma, or a collection of blood from internal bleeding, was also revealed, which might suggest that the arrow was pulled out of the wound, shortly before death. The chances of surviving this sort of wound, even today, would be around 40%.
Wow. My hat goes off to you, little iceman.
There have been some cool shows about the iceman, but even wikipedia’s article is pretty interesting.
And here’s an article about the recent research on Otzi’s body.
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