Almost Dying. The sport of the ages.

There is nothing quite as exhilarating as a near death experience. Your heartrate skyrockets. Adrenaline pours through your veins. Your Brain is flooded with endorphins. Survivors of car accidents and plane crashes say that they have a new appreciation for life. Some give more money to charity, some spend more time with their family. Some spend years suing the people responsible.

But for other people, one time looking death in the eye is not enough. They become adrenaline junkies. The proud feeling of being able to say, “Dude I almost died.” drives thrill seekers everywhere to search out new ways to risk life and limb.

Today’s subject is Extreme Sports!

No, no, no. I’m not talking about those pansy X-gamers. The fear a biker has of breaking a leg on a jump or the fear a skateboarder has of crushing their tender bits on a rail? That’s nothing. We are talking real freaky stuff here, people. So strap in. Wait, don’t strap in. Standup on that roller coaster. Stick out your arms and try to grab stuff as we pass by. Plunge head first into the abyss with me. We’re talking about sports that will probably kill you. Or PKY Sports.

PKY Sports have been around since the beginning of time. How do you think cavemen came up with the wheel? By watching other cavemen strap themselves to boulders and roll them down the hill. The inventor of the sliced bread machine, Otto F. Rohwedder only put bread in the machine because his wife made him try it on something else before sticking his head in there. The lightbulb was only created because Edison was trying to find new ways to shock himself.

Let’s take a look at two modern extreme sports and compare them to their historical predecessors. We’ll start with Bungie Jumping.

Now this is only a borderline PKY Sport. It only counts if you Bungie from a parachute or if you like to get so close to the ground that you kiss it before coming back up. Properly supervised Bungie jumping is too safe for PKY enthusiasts. But the origins of Bungie Jumping are steeped in PKY history.

Bungie’s predecessor, Noose Jumping, was a popular PKY Sport in the wild west era. It is said that men would kill just for the opportunity to try it. Thousands died attempting the sport and numerous films have been made about it.

However, the sport was banned from international competition in 1936 because the high mortality rate had drained the field of people willing to compete. These days public competition is only practiced in developing countries and dictatorships for the most part, but there are still occasional reports of private competition in the US.

One extremely popular PKY Sport being practiced today is Gang Fighting.

What makes this PKY Sport so successful is that athletes can enter competition at any and all ages. Not a lot of skill is required. There are no real rules except don’t kill your own team members. All weapons are allowed. However, it’s not a great spectator sport. And it’s illegal in most countries. Jail time is really boring for a PKY enthusiast, so competitors have to be very careful.

The historic predecessor to the modern gang fight was Rome’s Gladiatoral combat.

Big swarthy men taking each other on, fighting bears, wild boars, and leopards. The Colluseum was the Madison Square Garden of PKY Sporting events. Thousands of books have been written on the subject and scholars have made studying it their life’s work. But one thing that history has gotten wrong is the tales of the Christians being fed to the lions. These were PKY superstar Christians. Their people had been stoned, drawn and quartered, you name it. This was their opportunity for the big time. They looked at those lions and laughed in their faces.

Those were glory days for the PKY athlete. And I’ll admit, we don’t have anything in modern times to equal it. In fact, there has been a lot of frustration in the PKY industry of late. People are tired of the same old injuries. Medical improvements have made many of the sports too safe. So I have spent years (okay at least several minutes.) compiling a list of new Sports for the PKY Enthusiast in you.

Here are 25 things you can do to become the next big PKY superstar:

1. Highrise construction scaffolding mountain biking.

2. Become a major character on the hit show 24. It could happen any episode.

3. Join the Jackie Chan movie stunt crew.

4. Wrestle rabid dogs

5. Tackle moving trains.

6. Tackle Roseanne Barr

7. Tackle Fidel Castro

8. Tackle any homeless dude carrying a knife.

9. Dare your enemies to shoot you in the face.

10. Become a doctor on the hit TV show ER.

11. Swallow a live cobra. Then swallow a live mongoose.

12. Try to sit through a marathon of the made for TV Anne of Green Gables movies.

13. Drink nothing but your own urine for three days.

14. Hit the brothels in Taiwan, Singapore, or Thailand. Who knows what fatal STD you could contract?

15. Cut down a live tree at any environmental protest.

16. Attempt to date one of my daughters.

17. Feed a fish to a wild grizzly bear with your teeth.

18. Sleep on a bed of nails . . . . under an elephant.

19. Try to force-feed Calista Flockhart a donut.

20. Buy an apartment in New Orleans and flash your cash a lot.

21. Go spear fishing for Pirahna in waist-deep water nude.

22. Get sent to prison and tell everyone you used to be a cop.

23. Join the polar bear club. Wth real Polar bears.

24. Go through a hospital dumpster and jab yourself with random hypodermic needles.

25. Ask Tom Cruise tough questions.