The Odd Truth, Jan. 19, 2005

The Odd Truth is a collection of strange but factual news stories from around the world compiled by CBSNews.com's Joey Arak.

A Real Metalhead

LITTLETON, Colo. - A construction worker who shot himself in the head with a nail gun -- an accident he didn't discover until he went to the dentist with a nagging toothache -- said he'll change his line of work.

"I'll make pizzas," Patrick Lawler, 23, said Tuesday.

Lawler, who may be released from the hospital as early as Wednesday, was working on a house near Breckenridge when he accidentally fired the nail into his head. He said it felt like he had been hit with a steel baseball bat.

Lawler didn't realize the gun had fired a 4-inch nail through his mouth and inches into his brain until six days later, when he went to a dental office complaining of a toothache that just wouldn't go away.

An X-ray revealed the nail, and surgeons removed it last week.

Lawler said he doesn't know how he'll pay medical bills estimated to reach $100,000. He's uninsured.

"I was self-employed on the job," he said. "I would have had to carry my own health insurance. But I didn't think I'd shoot myself with a nail, you know?"

Bats Love Bolsheviks

PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Soviet-era compact TV sets, known for bad reception and low picture quality, are finally popular -- as homes for bats.

A group of disabled workers in the southeastern Czech Republic produces bat boxes from the TV sets' sturdy plywood casing, which is hard to break and easily resists bad weather.

"The TVs had two outstanding features: an extremely bad picture and extremely solid plywood casing," said Mojmir Vlasin, an environmentalist whose company disassembles old TV sets.

Vlasin said about 50 boxes made of the TV sets that dominated Czechoslovakia's market in the 1980s have been placed in the woods near the city of Brno, 125 miles southeast of Prague.

Each box accommodates up to several dozen bats, depending on their size, Vlasin said.

IRS Downs The Hatch

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - He may have outwitted, outplayed and outlasted the competition on the CBS show "Survivor," but the IRS is a different story.

Richard Hatch, who became a millionaire when he won the first-ever "Survivor" reality show, has agreed to plead guilty to two counts of tax evasion for failing to report income, including the million he won on the show.

Federal prosecutors accuse Hatch of filing false tax returns for 2000 and 2001. Apart from omitting his income from the CBS show, he was also charged with not reporting $321,000 dollars he made at a Boston radio station. As part of the plea bargain, prosecutors will recommend less than the maximum sentence of five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine for each charge.

From The Hoop To The Poop

ORLANDO, Fla. - Something stinks on the home court of the Orlando Magic -- and it wasn't the play. The second half of the Magic-Pistons game last night was delayed by a doggie accident. A seeing-eye dog relieved itself on the court during halftime. The dog was with a charity organization that was receiving a ten-thousand-dollar donation from the Orlando Magic Youth Foundation. When the Pistons came out for warmups, Rasheed Wallace walked up to the lane where the doggie doo had dropped. He stopped and stared in disbelief. A custodian did double duty as a pooper-scooper and cleaned up the doggie mess. Perhaps it was an omen. The Magic snapped the Detroit Pistons' six-game winning streak, 103-to-101.

"Jury From Hell"

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - It's the "jury pool from hell." So says Memphis, Tennessee, defense attorney Leslie Ballin. Right after jury selection began last week in a case, one man got up and announced that he was on morphine and higher than a kite. The prosecutor asked if anyone had been convicted of a crime. One prospective juror replied he'd been arrested and taken to a mental hospital after he almost shot his nephew. Another would-be juror said he'd had alcohol problems and was arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover officer. When the trial finally got under way, a woman was acquitted of hitting her brother's girlfriend in the face with a brick.