Excerpt: 'Mentally Incontinent' by Joe Peacock

Catch up with the misadventures of Joe, self-proclaimed "magnet for weirdness."

ByABC News via logo
April 12, 2009, 5:43 PM

April 5, 2010 — -- Joe Peacock is one of those rare people to whom interesting things just sorta happen. For the amusement of his friends, he'd often recount in long e-mails his latest misadventure, whether it was witnessing an armed robbery or being vomited on during his first sexual experience. In 2002, he started collecting those stories on a Web site he founded, mentallyincontinent.com.

Soon he had a large following of visitors, including a rabid core group who suggested edits and helped him hone his writing craft. In 2005, he self-published the best stories from his site as a collection and in the years since he's been holding impromptu readings across the country, selling thousands of copies (mostly out of the back of his truck).

In "Mentally Incontinent," Joe delivers a batch of hilarious and brand-new stories, featuring his misadventures with a stalker, his blind date with a fifteen-year-old, and his frustrated attempts to convince his mom that he's not gay. A natural storyteller and a self-proclaimed magnet for weirdness, Joe Peacock has emerged from the bowels of the Internet with some interesting tales to tell.

Check out an excerpt of the book below, then head to the "GMA" Library for other great reads.

Have you ever talked to someone who has hit a deer with his car? Even though the situations may differ between individuals—"It was dark and he ran out in front of me" or "I went around the corner and he was just standing there"—no matter what the tale, they will all end with the same sentiment: "I had no idea it could do that much damage."

Deer are dense animals. They're upward of three hundred pounds of muscle and tissue and bone, and they eat healthy and exercise all day. And when you hit one in your car at thirty-five miles an hour, it'll put one heck of a dent in the thing. God forbid you hit one going any faster. I've heard of bumpers ripped off, windshields smashed, and hoods caved in. I have an uncle who swears that he hit a deer once and flipped his car completely over (of course, he's the type who might actually hit an already-dead carcass like a ramp just to see if he could get some air). I've even heard stories of deer flying through the windshields of cars and kicking people to death as they writhed through their own death. It's a thoroughly unpleasant thing, hitting a deer.

And if a deer can do that much damage to a car, can you imagine what it would do to a bicycle? I can tell you the answer to that one: not much at all. But the rider? He gets absolutely nuked.

I used to be quite an avid mountain biker. I enjoyed racing when I was much younger, and then I got married and complacent and fat. But then sometime around 2004, my wife suggested we get fit by participating in the Balance Bar Adventure Sprint. This is an event where you run over six miles, swim a mile and a half, kayak around a lake, ride your mountain bike across fifteen miles of terrain, and test your mettle in feats of strength and dexterity. It's what would happen if Fear Factor adopted a triathlon format.