Local Man Struck By Lightning Repeatedly

Iowa City, IA - Local slacker Matthew Goffird was struck a ridiculously large number of times by lightning outside his home today, violating the time-honored axiom "Lightning never strikes the same place twice."

Eyewitnesses report that Goffird was struck by the first bolt of lightning around 1:30 PM, while he was attempting to adjust his television antenna on his roof. "We warned him not to climb up there during a severe thunderstorm," commented one of Goffird's neighbors, "but he didn't listen. He just wrapped himself in tinfoil and held a lightning rod in his hands for protection...he's kind of an idiot, you see." The neighbors went over to check on Mr. Goffird after the first bolt struck him, and found that he was dead. A few minutes later, after the neighbors went to call the coroner, another bolt suddenly struck Mr. Goffird, restarting his heart and bringing him back to life. Before the neighbors could ask him what the afterlife was like, a third lightning bolt struck, rendering him dead once again.

"The lightning just kept hitting him, killing him, bringing him back to life again, killing him again," commented another neighbor. "The second bolt was amazing, because lightning rarely strikes twice. The third was even more so. But somewhere around the fifty-seventh, it just started to get boring. So most of us just wandered off. Last I checked, the count was somewhere around eleven-thousand. It's actually kind of nice, really - he's keeping the lightning away from the rest of us, he's giving off a nice glow that's really lighting up the neighborhood, and plus all the mosquitos are being attracted to him and zapped. Hopefully he won't figure out that he should remove the tinfoil anytime soon."

Related to this event, a rash of suicides has been reported among statisticians across the country after learning what the odds are of this actually happening.

Mr. Goffird was unavailable for comment, as he kept shorting out our recording equipment.







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