actual AP news item

June 22, 2005 | JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Police say a man who woke up with a serious headache walked 12 blocks to a hospital with a swollen lip and powder burns. Doctors discovered the problem. 47-year-old Wendell Coleman had a bullet lodged in his tongue.

Coleman told police that a woman stuck a gun barrel in his mouth during a dispute around 2:30 Tuesday morning and that he heard the gun go off.

Police say Coleman then went home to sleep.

What authorities did with the bullet wasn't clear last night.

Can't you just hear the supercilious tone dripping from this? I love news items written by frustrated fiction writers.

While Wendell Coleman comes out here sounding kind of retarded, I'll bet there's some kind of strong physiological reason he went home and went to sleep. Our bodies aren't really programmed to go to the emergency room, the emergency room being a fairly recent development in human evolution. Maybe when you get shot in the tongue, you have an irresistable urge to go to sleep for a very, very long time, so your body can heal itself around the bullet. At that point, you could walk around St. Marx Place and receive compliments on your body modifications.

Also, the woman who bought this gun deserves a refund.