Truth, they say, is stranger than fiction. What you say? I say truth and fiction often look a lot like each other. In fact, I think they could easily pass for twins. When I hear and read some of the current top stories worldwide, I have a hard time deciding whether I'm witnessing fact, viewing fantasy or consuming the combo.

For example, I saw a story on TV this week about a Canadian man who got arrested after he flew over the city of Calgary in a garden chair tied to balloons. Him lucky him only get arrested! According to the story, the 26-year-old man, Daniel Boria, actually wanted to land in a parachute into the Calgary Stampede - a popular local rodeo event - to promote his cleaning company. He apparently couldn't find an airplane or helicopter pilot to fly him and the airspace over the rodeo was declared a no-fly zone.

Public mischief

So wha him do? The man tied over a hundred large helium-filled balloons to a garden chair and took off on a flight of fancy that landed him in jail on a charge of creating public mischief. And he could face further charges.

Well, peeps, the devil surely finds work for idle hands and idle heads, and other idle body parts, because there's also the story I read from the Mail Online about a man in Maine who was trying to celebrate the Fourth of July US holiday last weekend in a big way by launching a firework off the top of his head. People can stupid so?

Maybe he was trying to outdo the man from Australia who I heard tried something similarly bizarre in 2012. That man tried to set off fireworks in his own buttocks. And, it backfired. That brave Aussie ended up with severe injuries to his posterior and genitals, but luckily for him, his life was spared. The hot-head man in Maine was not so fortunate though. He died instantly. Yeah, I guess that's what you call a senseless tragedy.

Lead poisoning

The one that takes the cake for me though is the story from the shockingtimes.uk.co website yesterday about an LA gang member who died of lead poisoning after he attempted to gold-plate his testicles to celebrate his 17th birthday. Now you tell me, isn't that a classic case of having more balls than brains?

The story claims that the young man, Nazario Conchuza, is part of the infamous MS-13 crime family and was given the nickname Pelotas de Oro which means 'golden testicles'. He's also reportedly a fan of the hit movie Austin Powers: Goldmember,where the villain has a golden penis.

So, young Mr Gonzalez stole a professional gold plating machine from a local garage, painted his genitals with lead-based paint and attempted to gold plate his balls. But complications arose as the lead-based paint led to him dying of lead poisoning.

I know of stories, true stories, of people in Jamaica who deliberately extract the good-good teeth that God gave them from their mouths and replace them with gold dentures. I thought those were crazy people who reside at the intersection of vanity and stupidity. Dem people deh a foreign tek di prize though.

Oh, and then of course, there's that young Jamaican DJ who I'm told is famous, but not so much for his musical output. His bigger claim to fame is the fact that his eyes look completely black, and the story is that he has actually tattooed his sclera (the white of his eyes) with black ink. And, as to whether that is truth or fiction, the jury is still out.

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