Memo to John Wayne Bobbitt:

[Om]

Check your shorts.

*

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Tuesday, October 02, 2001

By Milan Simonich, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

A Colorado man says he found a penis in a fruit drink that was bottled in New Kensington.

Police are investigating to see if his discovery is connected to a crime or mutilation.

"How the tissue got in the bottle is a mystery, but the man who found it appears very credible," said Elaine Rowe, spokeswoman for the police in Commerce City, Colo., a Denver suburb. "We don't know whether we're dealing with something from a cadaver, a really sick joke or what."

Juan Sanchez-Marchez, 41, said he discovered the penis Thursday after he had downed about two-thirds of a 20-ounce bottle of Ora Potency Fruit Punch that he bought at a grocery store. He called Commerce City police and turned the organ over to them.

Rowe said Sanchez-Marchez, a machine operator for a supply store, already has been investigated by police. She said they are satisfied that he did not plant the organ as part of a scheme to make money through a lawsuit.

Rick Amend, the coroner in Adams County, Colo., has authorized tests on the 3-inch object. He expects them to be completed this week.

"It resembles just what they think it is, but we're having it checked by a pathologist to be sure," Amend said.

The tests should help determine whether the organ came from a living man or a cadaver.

Meantime, Ora Potency Fruit Punch has been recalled from stores by the manufacturer. Production of the beverage also has been halted at Three Rivers Bottling LLC in New Kensington.

The beverage is owned by Vancol Industries Inc. of Denver, which contracts with the Pennsylvania company to bottle it.

Robert Yates, president of Vancol, said it was unlikely that the object was put into the drink by someone at the bottling plant. "It would be very difficult for that to happen, and we think it's unlikely," Yates said. "We're looking more toward a tampering scenario" once the bottle was on a store shelf.

Yates said Three Rivers Bottling uses a high-speed, automated process that would make it next to impossible for anyone to insert something into a bottle on the production line. The drink comes in clear bottles that are filled, instantly capped and then inspected at the plant.

The label on the tainted bottle shows that it was produced about a year ago.

Sanchez-Marchez told police the bottle of fruit drink was one of six that he bought Wednesday night at a King Soopers store in the Denver suburb of Arvada. He said the bottle that turned out to be tainted was inordinately difficult to open. It had a twist-off cap.

Sanchez-Marchez has begun a series of medical tests to determine if he could have contracted a disease from the drink. So far, Rowe said, he feels fine, but the thought of Ora Potency Fruit Punch makes him queasy.

"It's a good drink, but I'm not going to drink it anymore," he told the Rocky Mountain News in Denver.

*

Random Thoughts:

This drink ... sucks.

3 inches? No big deal.

Co-k. It's the real thing.

*

Sorry.

[ by Om on October 03, 2001.]

[Brave]

The image that keeps popping into my head is that sideways shot of all those people tipping their heads back and bringing that bottle of Coke up to their lips. Now ... take that visual a step further.

Ouch!