It's a big coffee mug - no!..it'a bong....

April 15, 2005 9:15 PM

Teen steals corpse head for use as bong ? : "Police at first could not believe what they had heard" - some reporters just have a gift for understatement.
posted by troutfishing (36 comments total)

poor, sad, mentally ill kid.
posted by moonbird at 9:19 PM on April 15, 2005

This is sick and sad, no question. But be honest: Is there no one here who is curious what's inside a crypt after 50 or so years (not that you would ever act on it). Work crews just stumbled on some old colonial-era graves in South Philly in the course of doing street repairs; the original wood coffins were still pretty much there, along with some clothing & accoutrements -- one guy even had bushy red hair and a beard. I just think that's interesting as hell.

I also appreciate the stoner mentality at work in the linked article. Again, taken to inappropriate extremes...
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 9:30 PM on April 15, 2005

Erg. Don't even want to use the phrase "head shop" anymore.
posted by ChrisTN at 9:32 PM on April 15, 2005

So far the only drug aspect I'm seeing to this is some vague allegation by cops. Call me a skeptic if you will, but frankly I'm not buying it.
posted by clevershark at 9:33 PM on April 15, 2005

Erg. Don't even want to use the phrase "head shop" anymore.

heh, you just made my night, ChrisTN
posted by pieisexactlythree at 9:42 PM on April 15, 2005

Is there no one here who is curious what's inside a crypt after 50 or so years

Not after that trip to Palermo a few years back...
posted by tss at 9:45 PM on April 15, 2005

but was he a dominionist?
posted by quonsar at 9:52 PM on April 15, 2005

In 1988, a Syracuse University student was discovered boiling the skull of John J. Crouse, a prominent 19th century mayor of Syracuse, in a dorm kitchen.
posted by gubo at 10:14 PM on April 15, 2005

That kid's Yale material!
posted by Guy Smiley at 10:47 PM on April 15, 2005

When I first scanned the name for this thread, I thought it said,
"Teen steals corpse head for use in blog."
I wish to sue TroutFishing for whiplash. j/k
posted by ZachsMind at 11:00 PM on April 15, 2005

tss- That was uh. Very interesting. I had no idea that existed.
posted by fillsthepews at 11:34 PM on April 15, 2005

I am rather perplexed at the mechanics of turning a human skull into a bong. not that I want to try, but seriously -- how do you do that?
posted by matteo at 5:15 AM on April 16, 2005

(or should I post this to AskMefi?)
posted by matteo at 5:16 AM on April 16, 2005

We'll also provide you with a prescription bong. You want the wizard or the skull? /Dr. Hibbert
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:26 AM on April 16, 2005

tss, thanks. Consider that itch scratched.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 6:00 AM on April 16, 2005

matteo - I imagine you'd need to put in some glass eyes, plug up the nasal cavity, etc.

I wonder if I could include this in my will - to donate my skull for a bong? Why not? I won't need it any more.

Even better, I could specify a lottery for my skull - so that the proceeds would go to a good 501c(3) charity. That couldn't happen via eBay though - eBay has a rule against the selling of body parts.
posted by troutfishing at 6:19 AM on April 16, 2005

Oh yeah, I forgot the punchline - I bet George W. Bush has Geronimo's skull stashed away somewhere, to tide him over when the WH job stresses lead W to eye the bottle.

John Kerry's pissed too - he didn't actually inhale, and now he's embarassed by the whole affair and wants to return to the skull to it's rightful resting place : but the Bushes are holding out - they like their skull. It's become a sort of magical taliesman to them.
posted by troutfishing at 6:24 AM on April 16, 2005

that's why Bush keeps rubbing other people's heads then?
posted by matteo at 6:49 AM on April 16, 2005

It's amazing how far some people will go for that killer hit.
posted by dum2007 at 7:20 AM on April 16, 2005

Poor, dumb kid. Doesn't he know that you can get anything on the Internet?
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:31 AM on April 16, 2005

ooo you sassy frassy lassie
find me the skull of Haile Sellase

Turning Haile Selassie's skull into a bong, now that would be something.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 7:59 AM on April 16, 2005

That Bone Room site is creepy. All the skulls are from China, they're all missing front teeth, and most of them seem to either have or have had fractures. Makes you wonder if these didn't belong to political protesters who got "done over".
posted by clevershark at 8:02 AM on April 16, 2005

When I read the headline I thought, "Man, and corpse just got engaged. Poor jennyB."
posted by Mick at 8:15 AM on April 16, 2005

Seriously though, this whole thing just sounds like a pretty pathetic attempt by cops to link grave-robbing to drug use. There is no evidence at all of the drug connection.
posted by clevershark at 8:24 AM on April 16, 2005

happy early 4/20 y'all!
posted by mcsweetie at 8:25 AM on April 16, 2005

Faint of Butt, I think $350 - $650 for a legally purchased human skull is going to eliminate a lot of the stoner element, although I hope most of 'em wouldn't stoop to what Buckelew's accused of. Man, that's one jury panel I'm glad I won't have to be on.
posted by alumshubby at 10:06 AM on April 16, 2005

You put your weed in there!
posted by sad_otter at 11:12 AM on April 16, 2005

Seriously though, this whole thing just sounds like a pretty pathetic attempt by cops to link grave-robbing to drug use. There is no evidence at all of the drug connection.
posted by clevershark at 8:24 AM PST on April 16

So far the only drug aspect I'm seeing to this is some vague allegation by cops. Call me a skeptic if you will, but frankly I'm not buying it.
posted by clevershark at 9:33 PM PST on April 15

It sounds to me like your reading too much into it. The only mention of marijuana was this at the end:

"Authorities are not sure of the motive for the crime. Court documents said the suspect allegedly talked of using the man's head as a "bong," a pipe for smoking marijuana."

It just so happens that this fpp made that the focus. Most of the article sounded like it was the actual stealing of the head that the police have a problem with (and btw I know it's a maximum sentence but 25 years in prison sounds ridiculous in this case). I'm not sure why your taking that last sentence and accusing the cops of trying "link grave-robbing to drug use."
posted by Stauf at 12:17 PM on April 16, 2005

I am rather perplexed at the mechanics of turning a human skull into a bong.

Every group of stoners has some guy who's essentially MacGuyver, but only for crafting bongs. Give him some paperclips, foil, wax and a TicTacs container and he'll build a device that will get you super-high. Just don't count on him to transfer that ingenuity to saving your life or anything because his craft is strictly finding ways to pull pot smoke through liquid and into his lungs.
posted by Mayor Curley at 1:46 PM on April 16, 2005

I wonder why I don't share the reverence for dead bodies that most people have. Yawn.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 2:11 PM on April 16, 2005

Creepy.

In high school, a friend and I sculpted a large Castle Greyskull-looking fortress thing in Art class for the express purpose of exploiting its bong potential. All our other "sculpture" attempts had been crushed—literally—by the art teacher who was no dummy when it came to students trying to pass off hollow, tube-shaped objects with a carb at the end as "art."

The elaborate Castle Greyskull thing was obtuse enough to make it past the censors, so the day finally came when it was cooked or glazed (or whatever you call it—we were terrible sculptors) and we could take it home. After school, we rushed into town, arrived at my friend's house, left the sculpture in the car, giddily ran in to the house for a lighter and our stash, ran back out to the car—and I sat in the back seat—right on top of Castle Greyskull, crushing it into a million pieces. The injury I sustained was a violating one, not unlike what Frank Costanza experienced when he sat on Fusili Jerry, as I'd sat down hard on one of Castle Greyskull's pointed towers. We sat there in silence for probably a full minute before my friend called me every name in he book.

Never really lived that one down.
posted by dhoyt at 2:35 PM on April 16, 2005

"This guys head would make a great bong!" - Denis Leary.

*checks ethereal bligh's house for human skin lampshades*
posted by jonmc at 2:54 PM on April 16, 2005

Faint of Butt, I think $350 - $650 for a legally purchased human skull is going to eliminate a lot of the stoner element

But not the morbid/goth element. I'd love to own a human skull, but my girlfriend would never allow it in the house.

(Back in high school, the school director's office contained not only a human skull, but a fetus in a jar. Now that was creepy.)
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:58 PM on April 16, 2005

Del Close would have been so cool with somebody turning his skull into a bong.
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:10 PM on April 16, 2005

matteo - I suspect Bush thinks he's annointing people with the Holy Ghost.
posted by troutfishing at 5:39 PM on April 16, 2005

Faint: surely you mean to say you'd love to own another human skull...
posted by acb at 5:39 AM on April 18, 2005