News Of The Weird And Freaky

Read in your best Rod Serling impersonation (or get someone else to read it for you):

Imagine this--you're sitting at your computer reading James Taranto's Best of the Web, blithely perusing the elegant and edgy editorial offerings and choice sampling of significant stories from across America and beyond, when you come across this headline: "Amputated leg found in second-hand smoker." At first you are taken aback, thinking that Joe Camel's wife has gone Hannibal Lecter, consuming the appendage in the appropriately moody tobacco haze of her husband's forty-second cigarette of the day--a grisly thought which is disturbing, but remote, since no such atrocity has ever entered your reality. Then you discover that the second-hand smoker in question is the kind used to cure meat, the tender ham you ate last Easter, or the delectable salmon you sampled last Saturday. Your stomach heaves as this horror hits closer to home. Could it be that you have entered The Twilight Zone?

Okay, that's about as far as I can take this without rather more caffeine than I am willing to consume. Here's the story in a nutshell: This guy goes to an auction where he bids on, and wins, a smoker which was left in a storage locker and sold along with other abandoned items. When the lucky new owner later looks inside, he discovers a human leg, chopped off just above the knee. Turns out somebody had to have his leg amputated and was saving it "for religious reasons." The smoker just happened to be the storage place of choice for his own personal religious relic. Don't ask me what religious reason anyone could have for keeping his amputated leg. I have no idea. I don't even think I want to know. I also haven't a clue why a leg that was important enough to keep wasn't important enough to keep track of (and yes, I do know that I ended that sentence with a preposition.) The real question that I would like to have answered is, "Does the guy who bought the smoker plan on actually using the thing now that he's found the Cracker Jack toy surprise inside?" Would you?