REMEMBER THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER

You don't want to see what's holding this firecracker up

There is something oddly compelling about this story about a man who injured himself after shoving firecrackers into his poop chute and setting his ass ablaze.

Sure, this sounds like the typical Jackass-imitating stunt gone wrong, hearkening back to the days when the kids mimicked Beavis & Butthead's love for pyrotechnics and earned Darwin awards.

Except that the injured man is a British soldier from Iraq who returned from Iraq with all his limbs (and rectum) intact.

To make matters worse for the soldier, his buddies recorded the whole incident on a camera phone.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the accident took place on Guy Fawkes Day, which I wouldn't know a thing about if not for the incredible film, V for Vendetta. The UK apparently celebrates this day with fireworks in commemoration of Guy Fawkes' failed gunpowder plot to blow up Parliament in the seventeenth century. (I've never quite understood this holiday; it sounds like the equivalent of Americans commemorating a White House intruder.)

But V, the character in the movie/novel, celebrated the day by taking things further, just as the bum-rocket soldier did.

The only difference is that V did not suffer from what the AP described as "a scorched colon," which is something I hope to never own.

--Junichi