Not to sound crude but..
If she spent TWO years sat on his toilet...
Well, where did he go for a shit
Sorry, I know there are at least a dozen other, far more important questions to ask, but I feel I must ask this one above all others.
US woman spends two years on boyfriend's toilet
US authorities are trying to work out why a Kansas woman spent two years on her boyfriend's toilet - so long that by the time he called emergency services her skin had grown around the lav's seat. When the unnamed 35-year-old Ness City woman's other half finally picked up the phone on 27 February to report that "there was …
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Thursday 13th March 2008 12:24 GMT Graham Bartlett
Unlikely to face charges
Even in the US, if she doesn't want to get off the bog, it's her choice. Mind you, if my wife did that then I'd be calling a brain-drainer around 24 hours in - I wouldn't be waiting two years. Apart from anything else, I'd be seriously busting for a slash by then, because our house only has one toilet.
Incidentally, isn't there a saying about "shit or get off the crapper"...?
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Thursday 13th March 2008 13:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
@everyone
Why is this a story in El Reg? It's not even Friday, the day traditionally reserved for circulating crude and repulsive stories / jokes / etc.
Does anyone have a shred of compassion for two people who are not only clearly suffering from mental health problems, but also appear to have no friends to support them?
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Thursday 13th March 2008 14:10 GMT Chris Taylor
Perhaps
She was waiting to sse how things would pan out ?
Maybe there were things she need to get out of her cistern ?
Or it was a chain of events, that left her feeling flushed with success, but unable to keep a lid on things she couldn't get to the seat of the problems
Goodness me I am on a (bog) roll now....
I am certain there is another joke about these two becoming engaged, but I can't quite get it right so will leave it vacant for someone else.
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Thursday 13th March 2008 16:12 GMT J
Pics or it didn't... actually, forget about it.
"whether any charges should be filed against the woman's 36-year-old boyfriend"
Hell, yeah. I mean, you might not be able to force anyone *in their right mind* to leave or do whatever. But not doing anything when someone *that* mentally ill, or otherwise not responsible for her acts, is involved sounds definitely criminal to me. It's akin to saying "my 3-year old wanted to jump into traffic in the highway, that's her problem and I can't do anything about it". Although the only way I can see the guy doing that for 2 years is if HE is also terribly mentally ill.
Either way, sad story.
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Thursday 13th March 2008 16:34 GMT RW
@ AC @ Everyone
I know El Reg's readership comprises a sarcastic, unsympathetic bunch of SOBs, but for once it's time for the entire readership (including the editors) to practice an emotion called "compassion."
It's obvious that both this woman and her b.f. are a few bricks shy of a full hod, but such is life. Amongst us, there are innumerable sadsacks, usually floating along below radar level and managing to lead their lives satisfactorily by their own lights. Sometimes, as in this case, they are exposed to the glare of publicity, but when that happens remember the old adage "there but for the grace of God go I."
Yes, laugh, snicker, point fingers at, and verbally abuse the pretentious, the publicity hungry, the über-rich, and those who should (and do) know better, but remember some people do not know better. They are to be pitied, not sneered at.
Heart because even techies sometimes have to show some.
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Thursday 13th March 2008 20:00 GMT Simon Ball
@J
It’s not comparable at all. In the situation you posit, your daughter’s irrational behaviour would put her life in imminent danger. As her legal guardian, you would be both justified and compelled to stop her. By comparison, refusing to leave the toilet for two years doesn’t place the woman in question or anyone else in imminent danger, therefore her rights as an adult are pre-eminent, her behaviour notwithstanding. US law is very clear – you can’t detain an adult, even temporarily, just because they’re behaving irrationally – they have to represent an imminent threat to their own or other people’s lives, or have comitted some form of crime, before that can be justified. It’s a safeguard to prevent people being indefinitely detained on dubious grounds. Therefore, the boyfriend was under no legal obligation whatsoever to report her behaviour.
If she’d adamantly refused to leave, and told the police to go away, legally, they would have had to respect her wishes. The investigation is likely merely to confirm that she was confined by her own free will, rather than by her boyfriend.
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Thursday 13th March 2008 20:00 GMT DreadStorm
From a native
Not to open myself up for ridicule here, but I've been all over these United States. (One of the reasons I'm considering leaving.) And next to Kentucky, Kansas is the most inbred, backwood, hic, country bumpkin place you'd ever seen. It comes as no surprise to find this sort of mental instability. Personally, I find this story completely believable. I wouldn't put it past 'em. There have been people that were so fat they suck in the bath tub, and had to wait weeks for rescue. Trust me, this place is so full of idiots it isn't funny.
O_o
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Thursday 13th March 2008 20:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
Usual problems
From an intelligent viewpoint, she didn't spend 2 years sitting on a toilet but gradually increased the time period towards the end. I'm fairly sure people can't bond with plastic toilet seats, bedsores equivilent and the failure to repair those sores gives a kind of gloopy pus that dries forming a bond. Sheets have the same properties where patients grow into them.
Depression and the continuing decline of her mental health combined with no impetous to alter her behaviour, no job, friends or family can easily let people slip into a waking coma state. At some point she had the option of facing up to the situation which would probably scare her to death, or spending another day in a lesser painful mental state and so each day passed.
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Thursday 13th March 2008 20:00 GMT Alan Potter
Not to read while having your tea
Just a thought - her thighs and backside had sort-of melded with the toilet seat, which would pretty much make it a perfect seal. Also, at least for a while, her bowels would have been acting relatively normally so the toilet bowl must have started filling up to the point where it's actually in contact with her buttocks. And it's quite likely that at some point the smell and everything would make her vomit.
And you know how a syphon works...
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Thursday 13th March 2008 22:46 GMT James Marsack
Charges?
Why would anyone want to press charges on the boyfriend... he's the one trying to figure out how much rent she owes him for a 1x1 meter plot. Besides, you'd think her friends would have figured out the echo over the phone was not "poor reception" that she has claimed it was.
I think the one question no one has asked yet is? How the hell did she ever plunge the toilet when it gets pluged?!?!
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Thursday 13th March 2008 22:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
@ everyone who cant see the joke....
this sort of story is written the way it is for one reason.... not for any compassion, not for any sympathy.... but for everyone to take the piss out of... to make jokes. to make everyones day that little lighter so that we do not end up in a sorry state where we lock ourselves in the bog...
of course there are the people who dont understand humour ot the concept of what a joke is for...
if you didn't find any of the comments funny, or you found it offensive, considder it a tax against the jokes you do find funny.... becaue i bet it is at the expense of someone or somthing else...
phew, i feel all flushed now....
and just where is the IT angle....
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Thursday 13th March 2008 22:47 GMT DAN*tastik
Yeah, but what about animal welfare?
I believe our little friends of the link below will be bored with eating the same stuff day in and day out.
Such a thing would certainly not be allowed in New Zealand
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/18/wormorator_blues/
Bill Gates: mass producer of alternative food for the fellas of the link above
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Friday 14th March 2008 00:11 GMT Sceptical Bastard
@ Frank Bough
I'm with Frank - my mind doesn't want to accept this story and wants it to go away.
Just how much poo-related surealism can El Reg readers take in a day?
(BTW, to those who "feel compassion" my good wishes - just don't come on high-minded and self-righteous when the rest of us enjoy a belly laugh at hapless freaks)
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Friday 14th March 2008 02:49 GMT Herby
How did she eat?
With the event taking over two years to come to an end (insert joke here), one wonders how the poor woman sustained herself. Someone had to supply her with food and water (the waste was taken care of). If one assumes that a sink was within arms reach (it was a bathroom) then the water could be supplied, but crikey, where did she get the cheeseburgers?
While anything could be true, this stretches the limit. File this one in the urban legends category until further notice.
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Friday 14th March 2008 03:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
Fly-over country gene pool could use some mingling.
Frank is right: this story must be purged from existence. That said, it shouldn't stop people from snickering at other, slightly less disturbingly hapless, Kansans. For instance, a single KSN News web page on this particular story (http://www.ksn.com/news/local/16611691.html, with a grim picture of the home) bore links to:
MAN ACCUSED OF HAVING SEX WITH A DOG PLEADS GUILTY (http://www.ksn.com/news/local/16645611.html) The picture of the gent in question is worth admiring -- who says Brits have bad teeth? Sadly, no snap of the neighbor's Rottweiler, or even its name: must have been underage.
and:
FATHER OF KIDS ABUSED IN CLOTHES DRYER TALKS TO KSN (http://www.ksn.com/news/local/16630721.html)
[ OK, OK, that story was pretty disturbing, too. Jeebus wept. ]
In fact, Mr. Haines might not need any other source for Friday IT stories.
Anonymous, 'cuz laughing at just folks makes them yell Soooo-eee!
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Friday 14th March 2008 08:53 GMT JC
@ Simon Ball
Simon wrote:
"US law is very clear � you can�t detain an adult, even temporarily, just because they�re behaving irrationally � they have to represent an imminent threat to their own or other people�s lives, or have comitted some form of crime, before that can be justified."
Refusing to get off the toilet for two years to (feed oneself, bathe, prevent ones body from becoming permanently attached and rotting away sores, etc.) is an imminent threat to their own well being, and as we saw, as soon as the boyfriend came to his senses the authorities kept at it even though she had stated "she was OK and did not want to leave".
If we wanted to look at the extended time period the alternate route would've been to have her declared incompetent due to not meeting life's basic requirements and then the matter is not of her choosing anymore.
It's a shame when two people are so screwed up as this couple was, that she would prefer to be alone on a toilet and he would let this continue. I do think some charges should be brought against him for endangering her welfare by letting this go on for such an extended period. If you feel it wasn't endangering then tell us why she ended up at the hospital instead of, oh maybe a plumbing supply house to find a more comfortable toilet seat.
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Friday 14th March 2008 10:15 GMT Simon Ball
@JC
If the authorities had any legal power, they wouldn't have had to keep trying to convince her - they'd could have just hauled her away. And the fact that a person ends up in hospital doesn't necessarily mean that their life is in danger. Who knows how much longer she could have continued to sit there without problems? I'm not saying that there aren't certain risks - DVT, necrosis, bacterial infection, etc. However, whether you agree with it or not (and there are plenty of people who have concerns about it) the law is clear; "welfare" isn't enough - there must be a direct, and imminant threat to the lives of the person in question and/or others. As long as her boyfriend continued to provide her with food, her life wasn't in imminant danger.
The fact is that provided that you have people who support you, and you don't commit any form of crime or civil disturbance, you can reach quite extreme heights of ecentricity before the state has any legal basis for intervention. A free county is free for oddballs and wierdos as well.
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Saturday 15th March 2008 05:33 GMT Robert Brockway
@Simon Ball
Simon, it is normal for the police to try to coax a mentally ill person to come along of their own free if it is feasible in the situation. This is the case even if they have the right to use force. It is just better for everyone involved. I know this as I am a former police officer and talked many mentally ill people in to the back of a police vehicle so they could be transported to hospital for treatment.
Someone in her state was clearly a danger to herself due to an inability to provide for her own basic needs and the state had a right and a responsibility to act.
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Tuesday 18th March 2008 22:11 GMT Gordon
Robert's right.
Scrapping with the mentally ill is dangerous to all parties, and should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. Mostly they can be convinced to go with your, unless they're of the "raving attack dog" persuasion (there are a few, but not many). Druggies are usually more dangerous than the mentally ill.
I dunno about the US but in the UK a police constable can arrest someone under sec136 of the Mental Health act if that person is a danger to themselves or others. But ONLY to move that person to "A place of safety" which is specifically NOT a police station - saving that this is an interim measure whilst somewhere suitable is found. Like Rob i'm an ex-copper and i've done it myself more than once. Very often if you show you're human and talk to them and gain their trust and respect they will co-operate.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
