For Stupid Contest Names, God Demands A Sacrifice
Super Burning Crusades Massacre Edition!
Yet another video-game related death, and this time it's murderrrrrr!
From Gamasutra:
Woman Killed In Wii-Related Competition
A twenty-eight year old Sacramento mother of three has died of water intoxication after taking part in a local radio competition to win a Wii console.
Jennifer Strange was found dead on Friday at her home after taking part in a contest named “Hold your wee for a Wii” at the studios of radio station KDND 107.9. The competition involved drinking large quantities of water, with the last person to go to the toilet winning a Wii console – currently out of stock in most of North America.
Okay, okay, yes it's a stupid way to die. Whatever. But pardon me a moment while I lapse into a pedantic fit and rail on an even more important issue than the death of a mother of three. You see gentle reader, the woman wasn't killed, she died. Killed=active, Dies=passive. Yes I know it's grammatically and probably even technically correct, but in the polite circles in which I roll, we wrinkle our lifted noses at such stylistic faux pax.
Now, if the water happened to be Zan, who, upon seeping into the woman's every pore, decided to return to non-watery form, then yes, she would have been "killed" in perhaps the most spectacularly messy and disturbing way a Super Friend has ever made a surprise entrance. I mean, if you're going to die from water consumption, that's definitely the way you'd want it to happen. Um…right? But sadly Ms. Strange (best death-by-water-intoxication name ever!) succumbed to the very boring but less messy fate of electrolyte imbalance, which only qualifies for the equally boring and passive "dies in Wii-Related Competition." Also, while I'm being a pedant, the death occured after the Wii-Related competition, not in.
I'm now being told that I've used my allotment of italics on this post, so in closing, death by shape-shifter=active and cool, death by Evian=passive and lame.
In other news, massive online game expansion launches. I wonder if anyone will notice.
Edit: I'd just like to point out that, of all posts, I misspelled "sacrifice" in the title of this post, and nobody caught it. I…um…did it on purpose you know, just to see if you all were paying attention. I'm very disappointed. As punishment the next 5 posts will be on sentence diagramming.
January 17th, 2007 at 6:48 am
You should try reading some quality news sites then, like “The Register” or, I don’t know, Tabula Rasa which don’t use the incappropriate terms in reference to this tragic and, somehow, very amusing story.
And what MMO expansion?
January 17th, 2007 at 6:49 am
in
cappropriateJanuary 17th, 2007 at 7:08 am
These guys get the WKRP award for poorly planned promotions. What genius decided it was good enough to just tell the contestants not to do it if they didn’t feel like they could do it. Did they consult any health professionals?
January 17th, 2007 at 7:14 am
By the way, I don’t know what value this zoomcloud stuff adds to your site, but for me it is adding several seconds to the page load time..
January 17th, 2007 at 8:48 am
I’ve had several people say the same thing. As soon as I get a free moment (maybe this weekend) I’m going to remove it.
@Dragon: Ahh, I missed your take on the story. Nicely done sir.
In The Register story, I love this bit:
January 17th, 2007 at 10:26 am
I am somewhat ambivelent about this. Most people have heard that you can die from drinking too much water. Given that, the contestants should have known it was stupid and dangerous. On the other hand the people running the contest MOST CERTAINLY should have looked into whether their contest posed a serious risk to the contestants. After all they sponsered the event. Personally I think they should be crucified, if only to keep other dumbasses from running foolishly dangerous competitions in the future. Any sort of query to any qualified health professional would have let them know not to run that contest as they did. The point is that they didn’t bother to ask. Either that or they ignored the advice, which then makes it murderrr. Yep I’m thinking some crosses and some big ass long nails.
January 17th, 2007 at 10:49 am
So… did she win?
January 17th, 2007 at 11:00 am
lol. I think by any measurement, she definitely lost. But the article mentions that she was the runner-up. No word yet on if the radio station will compensate the 3 orphans with a consolation Wii…
January 17th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Bless you for being evil enough to post about this story because lord knows I didn’t have the balls to do it. I do have to say that you totally missed out on the delicious linguistic irony of the whole thing:
Woman dies competing for Wii by not going wii.
I know, that was wiik.
Damn, I’m good. The Wii keeps on giving, will the wordplay ever end?!
BTW, Jerwii says hi.
January 17th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
That’s what I get for writing on the go. Let me clarify my stupid comment. What I meant was that you didn’t do any wii wordplay in your whole post. Opportunity lost on something so tantalizingly easy. Not like Jared. Oh nevermind.
January 17th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
[...] Contest Tragedy For Stupid Contest Names, God Demands a Sacrafice Radio Employees Fired In Wake Of Wii Contestant Death[Killer Betties] Radio Employees Fired In Wake Of Wii Contestant Death[FiringSquad] Too High a Price for a Wii Price is too high for a wii Wee Wii contest nets mass firing Ten Fired From Radio Station After Wii Contest Death 10 Fired from Radio Station after Woman dies in Contest [digg] Radio station cancels show, fires 10 over deadly Wii contest Radio station fires 10 over deadly Wii contest [...]
January 18th, 2007 at 3:11 am
Re: sacrifice. I noticed but thought it was one of those cute Americanisms - you know, like the way you always mispell “colour” and “honour”.
January 18th, 2007 at 3:58 am
I’d just like to point out that, of all posts, I misspelled “sacrifice” in the title of this post, and nobody caught it.
Let me make it up to you, Amber.
…we wrinkle our lifted noses at such stylistic faux pax.
You fucked up the spelling of faux pas. There, happy that I’m taking a red marker to your rants?
Some people are *never* happy.
January 18th, 2007 at 4:47 am
I actually did notice that you misspelled sacrifice. However, I chose not to notify you on the chance that you would threaten us with your sentence diagramming posts.
On another note, I wasn’t able to add the numbers in the “required” field in order to post so I had to log in. Plus, the “required” word is like…in pink. Doesn’t that mean it should link to somewhere telling me why it’s required or at least what the word required means? Totally confused.
January 18th, 2007 at 7:33 am
One of the things that seems to get left out of most articles is that a nurse called in to the station while they were doing the contest to tell them to stop and warn them that someone could die. The DJ dismissed her warning because “its just a fun contest”. Its bad enough they didn’t seek medical advice before creating the contest, but to dismiss the medical advice that you get anyways, that’s very irresponsible.
January 18th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Dragon:
I’ve never understood that. You guys should really start speaking English…
Brian:
See? I’m always testing. Okay everyone except Brian pull out your text to page 74 and diagram problems 1,3,5,7-12, and 19 by the end of the day. Brian gets ice cream.
Joe:
One story I read said the DJ’s even joked about wondering if it could kill. When I rule the world, morning DJ’s will be among the first in the camps.
January 18th, 2007 at 9:18 am
But I’m Welsh…
January 18th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
Dragon, a few posts up, you misspelled misspell. Crazy Welsh.
January 19th, 2007 at 2:46 am
That wasn’t an error - I was nearly up to my quote of s’s for the day and had to cut back where I could.
Damn I’ve used up 10 explaining it! Argh! Now 11…
January 19th, 2007 at 8:07 am
I do not think it means what you think it means.
