Entry #52 – The bullet in my bathroom

Just when I thought life was becoming a little bit boring and predictable I experienced a sudden rush of adrenaline 2 nights ago around 8pm when I heard a loud bang in my bathroom. There wasn’t any electricity at the time and I was alone in my flat. I walked past the bathroom (which serves as a spare for guests and is separate from my ensuite) and for a second I thought it was a gun-shot. The next I thought was that my sink had fallen apart or the shower curtain rail came crashing down…but surely it must have been a fire cracker or something. With the light from my Nokia E75 I sneaked into the bathroom and inspected the surroundings and then I tripped on something metallic. I picked it up and at first I thought it might have been part of a heavy duty nail but on closer inspection I realized it was a bullet.

The first thing I would have done at this point is call in the CSI (Las Vegas) team to do their nifty forensic work. I would let Grisham bamboozle me with words like ‘Trajectory’ and ‘Ricochet’ and the watch them as they scamper around looking for the ‘Entry point’. That night I barely slept because I felt this wasn’t random. I’ve lived in this flat for close to 6months and nothing like this has ever happened. I couldn’t help but ask myself, ‘Was someone trying to kill me?’

I had a mental list of people I suspected I had ticked-off and probably wanted my blood as payback:

  1. My recent ex-girlfriend – Looks innocent but is capable of something like this now that I think about it.
  2. My neighbour – I told her off for shouting like she was the only one living in the compound going ‘MAAARIAAA!!!’ repeatedly
  3. The Security Guard’s mate – They wine and dine with my security guard outside the compound and I don’t like the dodgy ‘I kill you!’ looks I get from them sometimes.

I found later the following day that there was a hole in my bathroom ceiling. Part of  the shape was an exact replica of the bullet lying horizontally. I expected the shape to be round. There were no holes in my window or walls so I got Googling…asking the seemingly dumb question, ‘Can a bullet go off by itself?’

I was pleasantly suprised indeed when I came across the following answer from Yahoo! Answers: “No. Something has to make contact with the primer or cause the primer to get really hot. Dropping or hitting a round, or throwing it into a fire can cause it ignite.”  So it was actually possible for the bullet to have just gone off without being in a gun chamber. By the looks of the photo above, the bullet must have been lying flat when it suddenly penetrated the ceiling unto my bathroom floor. So how could this be explained further?

If you observe in the diagram opposite, my bullet is very similar and there is actually a primer at the back of the bullet (labelled ‘5’). What could have triggered it? Heat? If so why didn’t it go off in the peak of the hot afternoon? Why in the evening after dark? Could a mouse or rat have been tampering with the primer before the bullet went off? I didn’t see any rodent body parts or blood around the crime scene. This bullet just descended by its own free will.

Thankfully I wasn’t doing a ‘Number 2’ when this near-homicide took place. Just imagine, being found dead with a bullet in your head, pants halfway down, toilet unflushed and no trace of a killer. That’s what I call a freak accident – Perhaps this can be used for the next Final Destination movie installment ( …I think they should be working on part 5 now.) But this begs the question, what kind of tenants where living in this apartment before I moved in? Drug barons?, Assassins? Ex-military mercenaries? Are there anymore bullets lying up there in my ceiling. Even worse, is there gun cache up there? a dead body? If I start to smell something funny (and I know it’s not me) then I’m going up there to investigate…

 

N.B – That black spot in the celing is the bullet hole…crikey!

Entry #23 – Aaachoo!!!

All this who-ha about swine flu. Has anyone asked how this came about in the first place? Did a farmer accidentally ingest the mucus of a sick pig after it sneezed without a hanky? Did some twisted nymphomaniac with an animal fetish get too intimate with a pig and develop a brand new H1N1 virus? I’ve heard it all and the names just keep getting more and more ridiculous – Chicken Pox, Mad cow disease, Bird Flu/Avian flu and now Swine flu. What next? Iguana flu? Why don’t we take it upon ourselves to keep the vicinity of these animals clean and thus protect them and ourselves? Why don’t pig farmers take a cue from the American SWAT team – the moment you see a pig so much as sniffle you put a bullet through its head and incenerate it with a flame gun. And if you must eat the damned swine then make sure that bacon is fried till its dry and crispy – that medium-rare/bloody/pink-thing is not posh anymore (its a downright stupid ploy that tricks you into thinking eating raw meat is okay – and that also goes for sushi!) Look, I love bacon just as much as the next guy so whilst farmers are culling ‘sick’ pigs I would like to appeal that the carcasses are shipped to Nigeria  – thats way too much barbeque meat to waste 🙂

Lights, Camera, Action!

When it came to Action heroes, one name lay imbedded in my memory as a teen – ARNOLD SWARCHZENEGGER. In the Eighties when ignorance was bliss, I believed that he and all the subsequent action heroes were not ‘acting’ so to speak. With biceps the size of lunchboxes it wasn’t hard to believe then that he could floor five guys with his brute strength alone. His groundbreaking debut, COMMANDO, was simplistic in its plot and concise with dialogue – As a matter of fact, I remember a good half hour of non-stop pulsating gunfire mayhem amidst the rescue of his non-Russian-sounding daughter. After endless rewinding, re-playing, pausing and fast forwarding I was hungry for more…I needed a lot more.

SYLVESTER STALLONE was the immediate antidote I discovered after immersing myself in FIRST BLOOD. The trademark 1 minute-long dress-up sequence in which John Rambo geared up was just an adrenaline booster. I never thought it possible for one man to pack just the right amount of ammo to annihilate an entire platoon. A few bullet wounds and 2 sequels later the thirst returned and I needed it to be quenched pronto.

BRUCE WILLIS didnt have the muscles of Arnie or Stallone but he sure knew how to handle a group of terrorists in DIE HARD. Everything about the plot seemed believe and not too far-fetched. Yes its possible for a cop to go on vacation to see his wife (or ex-wife), Yes its possible for him to arrive at his wife’s fully serviced skyscraper on the exact day the terrorists plan to strike, Yes it is possible for him to hear gunshots just when he’s in the middle of changing clothes,  and yes it is possible for a trigger-happy cop to run around barefoot finding a way to get FBI back up. Bruce Willis seemed like the average cool-headed guy who showed real fear amidst danger unlike the mucho predecessors with faceless expressions. Bruce had the wit to back him up too! 3 catastrophic explosions and 1 sequel later I was ready for a stronger dose.

JACKIE CHAN taught me that one didnt need semi-automatics or AK-47s to ‘blow you away’. Just a lil’ martial art mixed with death-defying stunts and a few funny blunders gave me all the excitement I needed. Hand-to-hand combat never looked so good until I watched POLICE STORY and RUMBLE IN THE BRONX. Everything about he’s fight sequence was real – no stuntman required. If he was trapped btw 2 walls 8ft high then he was going get out with a ‘Prince-of-Persia style’ wall-to-wall leap, just in time to narrowly miss the high-speed van crashing beneath him. Once I found this new taste for martial arts, I slowly weaned myself off the guns and C-4s. It was a new era for dropkicks, roundhouse kicks and clothes-lines.

STEVEN SEAGAL eventually brought an end to all that when he took the fun out of martial arts and made it a split-second ordeal of ultra fast ‘ten-ten’ before breaking his adversary’s arm…backwards. When he decided to get a lil creative he moved on to breaking legs, necks, hands, and then he went into detail when he plucked a few eyes, broke fingers, and ankles. I was more queezy than entertained and I began to ask myself if I was slowly becoming side-tracked. Yes, Seagal was giving me an overdose of whoop-ass but my hands weren’t clapping…they were covering my eyes. Time was against me and I was getting older and older. In a time when WWF was discovered to be a farce I needed a lift, a hit of something strong, but not overkill…cue the dragon!

Or should I say ENTER THE DRAGON. When I first saw BRUCE LEE in action I was mesmerized to say the least. I think it wasnt so much the Kung-fu but the ‘wooh-haw!’ and ‘wataah!’ cries he bellowed through his lightning punches & kicks – He had me glued to the seat and to the screen (and that was responsible for bloodshut eyes & dented sofas). His untimely death is an infinite blow to the action movie industry and till this day he remains an icon.

In my opinion, these are some of the founders who’ve paved the way for the new generation of action movies…and ultimately transformed me into an Action Junkie.

My Top 10 Action Movies

1.  Die Hard
2.  The Matrix
3.  Game of Death
4.  True Lies
5.  T2
6.  House of Flying Daggers
7.  Casino Royale
8.  Kill Bill
9.  Rush hour
10.John Rambo
My Top 5 Action Heroes

1. Arnold Schwarzenegger
2. Jackie Chan
3. Bruce Lee
4. Sylvester Stallone
5. Bruce Willis

My Dream Face-Offs

1.  Arnie vs Stallone – Punch up
2.  Bruce Lee vs Jackie Chan – Martial Arts
3.  Keanu Reeves (Matrix) vs Christian Bale (Equilibrium) – Gunfight…in ‘slo-mo’
4.  Uma Thurman vs Michelle Yeoh – Ninja Swordfight
5. Angelina Jolie vs Sigourney Weaver – Chickfight
6. Bruce Willis vs Chris Tucker – Witfight
7. ALIEN vs Predator (IV) – SCI-FIght (lol)
Accolades

*Quick to the rescue – 007
*Relentless to the finish – Rambo
*No-funny business – Arnie
*A woman scorned – Uma Thurman (Kill Bill)