Jumping the Shark?
I was originally going to write something about the DADT repeal, but this news story caught my attention and I felt it warranted immediate comment.
You see, I have some stories that started out with, “So I was drinking when…” , and end with various degrees of hilarity. Some make me look like a drunken clown, and others like an epic hero.
But I have absolutely nothing on a Serbian man named Dragan Stevic.
Dragan, inebriated to the point of blacking out managed to stagger his way into a real life remake of Jaws, and give it an ending the likes of which you normally only see in an SNL sketch.
You see the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Shiek had a problem. Specifically a shark problem. In a one week period they managed to have five shark attacks, one of which resulted in a fatality. Experts were called in. Beaches were closed, and then re-opened due to pressure from the local tourist based businesses. Pretty much Amity Island speaking Arabic so far.
Dragan, who as I have already stated was pretty much shit faced, decided that the best use of his time was to leap off of a diving board into the ocean. And managed to land feet first on the head of the shark that was stalking the resort he was staying in. Blitzed out of his mind, he merely commented that the water wasn’t as soft as it should have been. Later when he was in the hospital for alcohol poisoning, it was discovered that he had leg injuries. Presumably this led to an investigation of the diving area, whereupon it was discovered that Mr. Stevic had managed to, drunk and unarmed, murder a shark that had evidently been hiding in ambush for him. Without even realizing it. A shark that apparently had a track record for eating people.
This is probably the most embarrassing way for a shark to die that I have ever heard.
And if I spend every night for the rest of my life getting hammered, I am pretty sure I will never have a story that will top this one.
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December 20th, 2010 at 6:33 am
That is pretty Epic.
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December 20th, 2010 at 7:52 am
Well, that trumps cyluming a hippo while smashed. =)
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December 20th, 2010 at 8:50 am
As an animal lover, awww, poor hungry shark. Can’t really blame the shark, I bet humans DO make good prey.
On the other hand that is probably THE BEST drunk story I have ever heard. Single handedly (or would that be footedly?) taking out a man-eating shark, while drunk is amazing! Hope his leg healed up well.
~Gwen
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Ix reply on December 21st, 2010 9:29 am:
This is a bit of a berserk button for me, I’ll admit.
I’m all for animal rights and welfare…up to a point. That point is right about here: when specific animals attack humans without provocation. Sharks get even less of a pass than most other creatures, because there’s very little that we can do to dissuade them from considering us food – asides from, of course, hunting down and killing any that do kill humans.
When a predator gets to the point where it considers humans viable prey, a line has been crossed. And I’m sorry, but there is no such thing as canine rehab – you can’t take the wolves who’ve tasted human blood and then send them through a program and have them come out good wolves. The only option is to make sure that they can’t ever do it again.
For the record, humans generally don’t make as good food for most predators as their usual prey would. We’re just a lot easier to kill than what they’d usually eat – which means that they have to expend much less effort to get a meal.
Sharks don’t deserve sympathy or pity, anyways. They’re merciless killing machines that are so very efficient that the only serious change evolution has made since dinosaurs were last roaming the earth is in size.
This one especially doesn’t deserve sympathy: the sharks that have been sighted around that resort, killing people, have mostly been the sort that usually frequent the pelagic deeps; they hunt whales and other big sea creatures, not seals – which is the only thing humans could be mistaken for in the ocean. These sharks were/are deliberately hunting humans.
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December 20th, 2010 at 8:55 am
wow. makes any and all of my stories, which I used to think were pretty epic, look pitiful. That, and I just had to write a post because I got a relevant captcha.
Captcha: pleseat liability “please eat liability? so did they want us to eat the shark? or did they want us to eat the man who jumped on the shark?”
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December 20th, 2010 at 9:07 am
Sadly, it’s fake:
http://www.carolinabeachtoday.com/2010/12/carolina-beach-today-busts-urban-legend.html
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AFP reply on December 20th, 2010 9:55 pm:
It’s true as long as we all believe it is. Because it’s awesome.
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Just A Dude reply on December 20th, 2010 10:59 pm:
The phrase “Jumped The Shark” comes to mind, here.
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Susan reply on December 21st, 2010 2:05 am:
Have you no shame, Just A Dude?
December 20th, 2010 at 11:55 am
Carolina Beach is just jealous.
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December 20th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Pity his name wasn’t Mario…..
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December 20th, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Hmmm…true or not, that’s an epic story. I chose to believe it’s true. Not bcause I don’t like sharks. I’ve a very healthy repsect for them, and support those who work to protect them. However, I’m also a huge fan of epic no-shit-there-I-was stories. That hits the top of the list. I hope that dude begins with the serbian version of “So, no shit, there I was…”.
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December 21st, 2010 at 5:14 am
arabs dont lie
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December 21st, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Nope. Neither do Washington politicians.
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December 21st, 2010 at 9:11 pm
Ix…predators are, by deffinition, oportunists. Certain types of predators fall into the “apex predator” category. Sharks, wolves, and dogs are apex predators. We humans are just your average every day predators. The difference is simple: an apex predator has no natural predators.
All of that being said, I believe that God (or whichever Creative force you believe in) didn’t create anything worthless. Well, except maybe politicians, but that’s a different story.
Can sharks be dangerous? Hell yes. Have people been killed in the past by them? Yes they have. But, people have also been killed by bears, lions, tigers, lightning, cars, planes, trains, etc. Shark attack is one of a very lengthy list of things in this world that can kill us. We’re actually quite fragile.
So, to say that you have no sympathy for one specific animal because a few of them have actually killed people, and in effect singling out that animal from the entire list of everything else that can kill us, is kinda short-sighted. Hell, we’ve probably done more damage to sharks as a whole, than they’ve done to us, given that we’ve hunted and fished them onto multiple endangered species lists, and have shown no sign of letting up.
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