The only thing worse than having your penis lopped off is living to tell the story. Penis amputation (called a "penectomy" when chosen freely) seems to be cutting loose, in a sausage- slaughtering epidemic of surgeries and retributions. Often, even when they try, the poor pudless do not perish. Here's the latest list of the dickless:

September 27, 1999. A Connecticut man attempts suicide by radically pruning his phallus, in his apartment. The crotch-dripping Connecticutter scampered weirdly through his suburb's streets, until police snagged and dragged him to Yale-New Haven Hospital. Here he was faced with his exiled appendage that a paramedic had retrieved off his floor. The whack-man refused "reattachment" until a judge ordered him to submit to the stitching -- his fucking flesh is flopping again, but its position, one fears, is precarious.

September 3. John Henry Brown, a child molester at an Oklahoma prison, is attacked by his cellmate, resulting in the pedophiliac prick's rude removal with a razor blade. He remains in a grossly abbreviated state -- Okie physicians tried, but were "unable to reattach" his penis, claims a penitentiary spokesperson.

August 30. A hotdog-hating young man in rural northern Poland brutally lops off his bratwurst. The Slavic pole was returned to its owner, at Bialystock Hospital. Surgeons sewed the scared and scarred shaft back into place, above the undamaged balls. Reports say the rod "has already resumed its normal sexual functions."

Sticky hemoglobin is horribly spilled in all these amateur acts, but each man survives -- and two of them get their bones back.

However, these current competitors have not yet dislodged folk-joke John Wayne Bobbitt as "#1 Weenie" in the museum of the dick-deprived.

John's battered Ecuadorian wife -- Lorena -- knifed off his stupido chorizo in 1993. She motored his mangled meat through their Virginia town for several upholstery-stinking minutes, before chucking the cock to the curb. When lucky Johnny got his wounded willie returned eight hours later, the resilient beast was still stubbornly "alive." Media mayhem enabled the ex-Marine moron to become a porn star, featured in such carnal classics as John Wayne Bobbitt... Uncut, and Frankenpenis.

Lorena's penis-punishing fury is as primal as the most prehistoric sex-squabble. Indeed, she's only the most renowned in a sharp lineup of 1990s snippers cataloged in Spymagazine:

Cebu, Phillipines -- Avelina Rule hacks off her husband's drunk dick with a machete, because "he demanded sex at noon."

Nakhodka, Russia -- Tamara purges Vasily's pud with a knife, because "he told her she was too old."

Dacca, Bangladesh -- Sharmin Begum and her sisters extricate Abdul Motaleb's organ with a razor blade, because he divorced her. They force him "to hold [the] severed organ aloft," as they laugh.

The sad sacks above never got a second spurt at life -- unlike Bobbitt and 1999's emasculates. Their cocks croaked, but the men's lives piddle on -- although they now squat when they piss.

You would think that male prick-size paranoia would render the gender terrified of "stumping" or that the self-mutilating Pole-flayer and Connecticutter must be historical firsts.

Not at all.

In 1757, a mystic named André Ivanov launched a sect in Russia, known as the "Skoptzy" ("castrates"). "Purification" in his creed requires penis amputation, with either "scissors, a razor, a pocketknife, a pruning knife, a chisel, a piece of sheet metal, a bone from a bull, or a hatchet."

The Skoptzy believe dick-deliverance is necessary to elude Hell; their chop-talks promote the philosopher Jacob Böhme, who wrote, "The only difference between men and angels is the lack of sexual organs." In 1850, there were 10,000 Skoptzy in Russia, living in vegetarian communes called "Naves." Godless Communists outlawed these "smoothies," but 100 were still dicking around Crimea as recently as 1970.

Body modificators today are also pushing their kinky blades into tender penes. Eunuch.org offers "male nullification" advice; infection and "massive blood loss" are highlighted as risks, but it's noted that "even home butcher-knife operations can (and typically do) heal on their own without major medical intervention."

Another cutting-edge site tells hungry ritualists that their cooked puds taste "like pork," and a two-hour video is available.

Thirty-six enticing photos can be viewed as "teasers" -- the sequence crescendos with a coy cock reclining on a ruffled plate, like an appetizer. An adjacent review claims the video is "awash with blood."

Instinctively, I protect my hot artery-infested hose. Cock-chopping's cool if it's another dude's crotch, but mine?

I'm shopping for steel undies today, to guard me in case my wife tries to "bob it."

See also: Canine Cajones

Hank Hyena is a columnist for SfGate and a frequent contributor to Salon.