[
Edmonton Sun]
April 18, 2006
Train bash survivor thanking metal gods
By CP
RED DEER -- The metal gods were smiling on Jesse Maggrah.
The 20-year-old man was walking beside railway tracks on
Sunday, the Norwegian heavy metal band Gorgoroth cranked on his
portable CD player, when he was hit by a freight train.
Maggrah said he did hear the blast of the train horn just before he was hit.
"I tried to jump out of the way, but I guess not in time," he said yesterday from his bed at Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre.
"It was just instant. I was just walking and then I was on the
ground. I wasn't sure what happened. Then I saw the train stopping up
ahead. I thought, 'Holy crap, dude, you just got hit by a train.' "
Police say the engineer and conductor on the northbound
Canadian Pacific Railway train saw the man on the tracks several
kilometres south of Red Deer. The crew blew the whistle and attempted
to stop, but they were only able to slow the train to about 50 kmh
before hitting him.
Maggrah was thrown four to five metres from the tracks. Stunned, he moved his arms and legs to check for damage.
"I knew I was alive, so that was good."
He has several broken ribs, one which is poking into a lung,
his doctors have told him. Maggrah is also very sore and stiff, and is
having trouble walking.
Maggrah said he didn't hear the train over his music and he didn't feel anything through the ground.
"Maybe the metal gods above were smiling on me and they didn't
want one of their true warriors to die on them. Otherwise, I'd be up
there in the kingdom of steel."
Police say no charges are pending against the man.
Don't feel so bad that your iPod contains illegally-obtained music,
because US President George Bush has also been stealing music. Check
out this
video,
where he talks about his Beatles songs on his iPod, and of course,
Beatles music is not yet available online. That means he must have
ripped them from a CD. Last February, the
RIAA said that ripping CDs is illegal. Welcome to the band of thieves, Mr. President.
We were just puzzled, though, why the president had music by The Archies on his iPod. Wonder which song? "Sugar Sugar?"
GW Bush's iPod contains "illegal" (according to RIAA) music [boingboing]
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable-media/prez-a-music-thief-according-to-riaa-167611.php[blatently stolen from
GIZMODO for coolness]
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/beatles-catalog-to-be-offered-on-itunes-166976.phpFormer Beatles road manager and Apple Corps boss Neil Aspinall
confirmed plans to remaster the Beatles catalog and offer it for
download on the iTunes Music Store. Aspinall first talked publicly
about those plans during the Apple Corps trial against Apple Computer
in a UK court last week, and his statement was again confirmed by an
Apple Corps spokeswoman.
The Beatles' record company wouldn't say when we'd be seeing the
Beatles songs on iTunes, but did mention that the long-delayed move of
the Fab Four's music to Apple's music service will be just one of a
number of initiatives the company has planned.
UPDATE: The Beatles confirm online music plans [Macworld UK]