>> Actual article from the LA Times:
>>
>>  "In retrospect, lighting the match was my big mistake.  But I was
only
>> trying to retrieve the gerbil," Eric Tomaszewski told bemused
doctors in
>> the  Severe Burns Unit of Salt Lake City Hospital.  Tomaszewski and
his
>> homosexual  partner Andrew "Kiki" Farnum, had been admitted for
>> emergency treatment   after a felching session had gone seriously
>> wrong.  "I pushed a cardboard  tube up his rectum and slipped
Raggot,
>> our gerbil, in," he explained.  "As usual, Kiki shouted out
"Armageddon",
>> my cue that he'd had enough.  I tried   to retrieve Raggot but he
wouldn't
>> come out again, so I peered into the tube   and struck a match,
thinking
>> the light might attract him."  At a hushed press conference, a
hospital
>> spokesman described what happened next.  "The match ignited a pocket
>> of intestinal gas and a flame shot out the tube, igniting Mr.
>> Tomaszewski's hair and   severely burning his face.  It also set
fire to
>>the
>> gerbil's fur and  whiskers which in turn ignited a larger pocket of
gas
>> further up the intestine, propelling the rodent out like a
cannonball."
>> Tomaszewski   suffered second degree burns and a broken nose from
>> the impact of the   gerbil, while Farnum suffered first and second
degree
>> burns to his anus and  lower intestinal tract.
>>
>>
>>---------------------------------------------------------------------
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>>
>>  O.K., here's the top ten things that scared me the most in reading
this  story:
>>
>>  10.  "I pushed a cardboard tube up his rectum..."  Ouch!!!
>>   9.  "So I peered into the tube..."  Aaaaaahhhhhhh!  I'm sorry, but
that's like looking through a telescope into hell.  I'd rather use
binoculars to stare at the sum.
>>   8.  That poor gerbil (who obviously suffers from low self-esteem)
being shot out of the guy's anus like Rocky the Flying Squirrel on Rocky
 and Bullwinkle. >>  7.  Suffering a broken nose from a gerbil being
launched out of someone's   anus.  I'm just guessing, but I seriously
doubt said gerbil was springtime   fresh after his little journey into
Kiki's 'tunnel of love'. >>  6.  People walking around with these
volcanic-like pockets of gas in their  rectums. >>  5.  People who do
this kind of thing and then admit what they were doing  when taken to
the emergency room.  Sorry, but I think I would have made up a   story
about a gang of roving, pyromaniac, anal sex fiends breaking into my
house and sodomizing me with a charcoal lighter  before I admitted the
truth.  Call me old fashioned, but I just can't imagine looking at a
doctor and saying, "Well Doc, it's like this.  See, we have this
gerbil named Raggot and we took this cardboard tube..." >>   4.  "First
and second degree burns to the anus".  Wouldn't this make the burning
itch and discomfort of hemorrhoids a welcome relief?  How does one  ever
take a healthy shit after something like that?  And the smell of
burning anus must be in the top five most horrible scents on the face
of  God's green earth. >>   3.  People named "Kiki" which is obviously a
Polynesian word for 'idiotic white men who insert rodents up their
butts." >>   2.  What kind of a hospital would hold a press conference
on this? >>   1.  This happened in Salt Lake City.  What kind of people
are those Mormons?  (I'm starting to get a whole new image of the
Osmond family...)