Selections from Nothing To Do With Arbroath

This past week I've been in "retro" mode, taking care of things I've bookmarked in the past.  In the to-blog folder are over two dozen items from Nothing To Do With Arbroath.  I've previously featured Kevin's site in my recommended blogs category, because I like his whimsical attitude toward the ephemera of the world.  Here are some items I've set aside in the past year-and-a-half that I would have liked to feature individually, but there just isn't time. 

A man performed a tracheotomy on himself with a small steak knife.  It wasn't a situation where a Heimlich could have been substituted, because his airway was occluded by the sequelae of laryngeal cancer, so cold steel was the only choice.  Includes video (interview - not the procedure).

A man with polydactylism has 12 fingers and 14 toes.  It's nice to see someone who is proud of his variant condition rather than being embarrassed by it and seeking surgical normality.

A 23-month-old toddler was wetting the bed.  So friends of the family, who were "caring" for him, deprived him of water for a week - until he died of dehydration.

A woman's engagement ring was recovered three years after it was stolen - by a magpie, who had kept it in a nest on their property.

Argyria is toxicity from the intake of too much silver in medications and food supplements.  It's not hard to diagnose in the late stages - just look at this woman's face.

A man with nocturnal myoclonus (twitching during sleep) was ejected from an airplane flight because the captain assumed he was having a seizure and needed medical clearance to fly.

A rock carved in the (approximate) shape of a hedgehog was found in a child's grave near Stonehenge.

If you have an aquarium, you for sure don't want to have one of the giant (4-foot-long) worms eating the inhabitants and the coral.

Acts that are considered immoral don't have to be illegal.  Romania wants to decriminalize consensual incest.

An artistically-inclined woman with dermatographia uses her skin for a canvas - with a link to a photo gallery.

One of those taser/WTF stories.  A prison officer decided to "educate" children about prison life by tasering them.

A woman is awakened from sleep by body fluids dripping through her ceiling from a corpse upstairs.

An eight-year old boy with leukemia is "married" to his eight-year old sweetheart the day before he dies.

Video of a gentoo penguin escaping orcas by jumping into a boat.