From david@es.su.oz.au Tue Jun 10 15:42:18 1997
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 11:37:19 +1000
Subject: [Fwd: The Ballad Of Danny Johns]

Hey matt,

Here's a guy more suicidal than me!!!!
(I like his style)


Vomit Boy wrote:
> 
> If anyone on this god-forsaken planet oughta be six
> feet under taking a dirtnap, it's Danny Johns -- one of
> the most infamous members of my old crowd...

> 
> Danny Death #1: A horribly ugly overdose on Green Monsters
> (1000mg placydils) and beer. Danny was rushed from a party
> at Craig Unger's house (where he tumbled down the stairs face-
> first and gagged up a smelly, soupy, pharmaceutical goo) to
> Evanston hospital to have his stomach pumped and his veins
> flushed, and barely survived to tell the tale. He was just
> seventeen years old.
> 
> Danny Death #2: Less than one year later, Danny drank
> himself into an actual *coma*, courtesy of Jack Daniels
> and G. Heileman. Again put into Evanston Hospital for
> treatment, then into rehab, his dance with the Reaper
> had just only begun.
> 
> Danny Death #3: At nineteen, Danny, in another drunken
> stupor, decided to impress his friends by leaping off the roof,
> head first, into his parents' swimming pool -- a dive of nearly
> *40 feet*. And an impressive sight it was, too. Until he hit the
> water and plunged toward the bottom of the pool, head first into
> the concrete floor below. Broken neck. -- and four subsequent
> months in a head brace. Doctors said he missed death by *a
> centimeter* of vertabrae compression.
> 
> Danny Death #4: At age twenty-one, while drag-racing his
> motorcycle along Green Bay Road, Danny hit a median strip
> and was sent hurdling through (not into -- *through*) a street
> sign (ironically, it read 'Speed Limit 35'), puncturing his lung,
> breaking four ribs, shattering his collarbone and mangling his
> leg. Hospital? You betcha. For two full months, in fact --
> before he could hobble out under his own power. His leg was
> stapled and soldered together like a broken tinkertoy, and his
> body bore the largest, most discolored "street scabs" I had ever
> laid eyes on. We're talking two-foot pavement scrapes here...
> 
> By now, we figured Danny had a survival pact with a higher
> (or lower) power...
> 
> Danny Death #5: At age twenty-two, another drug OD, this
> time Secanol. His sister discovered him in a heap on the bedroom
> floor, gurgling up red dye-tainted vomit. Again Danny was transported
> to the hospital in the nick of time, and again he was pumped,
> flushed and locked away for 90 days of rehab. He was unable to
> breathe without respiration for ten full days before he finally came
> to. As his friends, we figured this *surely* was the final lesson, and
> that, upon his release, we would see a new, reborn Danny -- a
> Danny that *finally* appreciated how precious -- and how fragile --
> life really was.
> 
> Alas, the relentless, destructive beat went on...
> 
> Danny Death #6: While working on his beloved Shelby Mustang
> (a true death machine, complete with 500 HP engine, double-pumper
> four-barrel carb, headers, bald tires -- you know the type), cigarette
> dangling from his mouth, his battery exploded, spewing acid and bits
> of schrapnel into his face and eyes. I was in the emergency room
> at the time (whole 'nother post), and watched as they wheeled him
> in screaming. I didn't even need to see his face (which was covered
> in paramedics' towels). I knew it was Danny from the howling
> and moaning. I'd heard that sound before.
> 
> Docs managed to save his eyesight, but he will always have those
> odd battery acid-scars (which, over time, now resemble purple freckles)
> on his forehead, cheeks and chin. And Danny wasn't all that handsome
> to begin with, so the Sears Diehard Facial didn't help him in the
> romance department, either.
> 
> Danny Death #7: Dwight Perkins Woods -- Danny is drunk and climbing
> a tree when the branch he's standing on gives way, sending him thirty
> feet down onto the frozen forest floor. Both ankles broken, with a
> concussion thrown in for good measure. Apparently he landed on his
> feet, then somehow twisted with the impact, head-first, into a nearby
> tree stump. Sorry I  missed that one. They say he layed there, quivering,
> like a freshly-killed and gutted bluegill, for nearly five full minutes before
> anyone even lifted a finger to see if he was OK.
> 
> Danny Death #8: At age twenty four, Danny picks a fight with a large,
> drunken ape (over a girl -- what else is new?) outside the Riviera
> Theatre and is *severely* beaten about the head and shoulders with
> a motorcycle chain belt. It would later take doctors one hundred and
> sixty-five stitches to close the gaping wounds in his scalp and over his
> left eye, which we thought for sure had *popped out* with the force of
> the assault. To this day, no one is sure exactly how much brain damage
> he sustained by the repeated, heavy blows , but it had to be significant.
>
> 
> 

-- 
David Hughes
Email: david@es.su.oz.au

"Against boredom even the gods themselves 
 struggle in vain" - Nietzsche