The Minneapolis Star-Tribune wins “lede with the most unexpected combination of words” today with a story headlined, “Man impaled in Golden Valley ‘doing fine’; he disobeyed, took posts out himself.” It begins: “The intoxicated man who was impaled on a fence after falling from a hot tub on a deck in Golden Valley is ‘doing fine’ even though he defied emergency responders’ orders and removed pieces of the fence from his leg himself while on a stretcher.” The story proceeds to explain why the incident happened with the least unexpected combination of words. The self-surgery happened outside a “party house,” surrounded by neighbors who are very displeased by all the beer cans that get left in their yard. A police officer noted that the man was lucky that he was impaled in his upper leg and not “right through his abdomen or right through his chest.” A 2009 study revealed that more than 80,000 people ended up in the emergency room from 1990 to 2007 after hot-tub accidents. Most of the accidents were not owing to impaling.
