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[EllieT]

New addition to my Gimme a Break blog:


It always amazes me in addition to scratching my head and raising my eyebrows, as to why humans feel the need to do - well - dumb things. What's the attraction in performing life-threatening "tricks" that threaten one's well being?

So this guy, 31-year old Australian performance artist, Chayne Hultgren, a.k.a. The Space Cowboy, took it upon himself to test his body's taste for metal. The metal in question is 18 swords measuring 28.35 inches long, at an outdoor festival in Sydney, Australia, presumably in front of a crowd. I mean, what's the use of doing life-threatening feats of stupidity unless there are people around to witness the so-called feat? Actually, it appears according to the news reports that he did it to get into the Guiness Book of Records to beat the record he had set in 2008.

Talk about a taste for heavy metal!

Acknowledging there was an element of danger involved, he admitted that while the stunt was not dangerous, he trained for a long period of time. I bet.

"Wow, I did it, it feels good, thank you very much, it feels really good actually," he said after setting the record.

Feels good??? Not dangerous?? How could swallowing 18 swords "feel good?" Why don't people who crave metal use cutlery instead, like forks, spoons or even butter knives that could produce the same sensation but don't threaten one's well-being? There is no information available as to what he did with the swords following his accomplishment after having the swords sliding around his insides. Also, there is nothing about whether he followed a special diet before the big show. Good thing nobody had a magnet nearby.

[sharky]

Bugger that! Swallowing swords, I almost choked to death on a teaspoon once, eating icecream in a resturaunt.
An old man with his wobbly wife came in behind us just as I was loading icecream into my mouth.
The old boy tripped on a chair leg, sent his wife teetering off towards the gents toilets and came tumbling across two loose chairs between me and him and thumped into me from behind.
The small spoon almost completely disappeared down my throat, and the icecream on it made me choke as I inhaled it. [not a good thing to do...inhaling icecream].

Luckily my mother reacted swiftly, thumping me firmly between the shoulders. This sent the spoon....and a full mouthfull of icecream, high into the air [mid-resturaunt], to land with a splat and a rattle some six to eight feet away, narrowly missing a young mother bottle feeding a baby.
Nah, you can keep sword swallowing all to yourself, I'm sure I can find easier ways of curing my heartburn than swallowing something designed to kill a human by piercing the body from the outside???

James.