California Water Torture?

At the risk of making a badly timed joke, what the hell is in the water out in California? For the second time in the span of five months, a radio show contestant suffered from water intoxication, this time resulting in death.

Jennifer Strange, 28, apparently thought it would be cool to have a Wii – a popular Nintendo game console – so she entered the “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest put on by KDND (107.9) in Sacramento. The person who drank the most water without urinating would win the Wii, and Strange gave it a hell of a run. However, afterwards, she complained that she was feeling ill, then later died of water intoxication.

The entire 10-person staff of the morning show was fired immediately, and now the family is filing a wrongful death suit, criminal charges are being considered and FCC license revocation is a possibility. Strange had signed a waiver, but no court would absolve them of their responsibility for contestant safety. Of course, a stunt gone wrong is one thing and the question of why the lady didn’t just go to the freaking bathroom (did she even win?!) is a valid one, but when the idea of precedent enters the picture, the water gets a little murkier (pun intended).

Amazingly, the same thing happened to one Dave Gross back in August! In a Y-102 contest, he also suffered from water intoxication and nearly lost his life. On top of that, the KDND hosts reportedly joked around about not researching the safety angle and wondered laughingly on air whether it was dangerous or not.

But to me, perhaps the most disturbing thing is the realization that the body does not have a mechanism that would protect someone from death in such a scenario. Wouldn’t you think that your body would force you to pee yourself before it started shutting down and basically flooding itself?! Wouldn’t you assume that your lung would nudge your kidney and be like, “Dude, it’s getting a little crowded in here and I don’t breathe too well underwater, so you can handle that?”

Here lies Jennifer, not spirit but body
She drank too much H20 with no Port-A-Potty
Was she a great gamer? We’ll never know …
She gave her life for her love of Super Mario