_____Darwin's Awards

This year's Darwin awards...priceless, as always! Yes, these are all true. They are finally out again. You all know about the Darwin Awards. It's an annual honor given to the person who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way. Last year's winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out of it.

And the nominees this year are:

9. A young Canadian man, searching for a way of
getting drunk
cheaply, because he had no money with which to buy
alcohol, mixed
gasoline with milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction
made him ill, and he
vomited into the fireplace in his house. This
resulting explosion and
fire burned his house down, killing both him and his
sister.

8. A 34-year-old white male found dead in the
basement of his home
died of suffocation, according to police. He was
approximately 6' 2"
tall and weighed 225 pounds. He was wearing a pleated
skirt, white bra,
black and white saddle shoes, and a woman's wig. It
appeared that he
was trying to create a schoolgirl's uniform look. He
was also wearing
a military gas mask that had the filter canister
removed and a rubber
hose attached in its place. The other end of the hose
was connected
to one end of a hollow tube approx. 12" long and 3"
in diameter. The
tube's other end was inserted into his rectum for
reasons unknown,
and was the cause of his suffocation.  Police found
the task of
explaining the circumstances of his death to his
family very awkward.

7. Three Brazilian men were flying in a light
aircraft at low
altitude when another plane approached. It appears
that they decided to
moon the occupants of the other plane, but lost
control of their own
aircraft and crashed. They were all found dead in the
wreckage with their
pants around their ankles.

6. A police officer in Ohio responded to a 911 call.
She had no
details before arriving, except that someone had
reported that his
father was not breathing. Upon arrival, the officer
found the man face down

on the couch naked. When she rolled him over to check
or a pulse and
to start CPR, she noticed burn marks around his
genitals. After the
ambulance arrived and removed the man - who was
declared dead on arrival at

the hospital-the police made a closer inspection of
the couch, and
noticed that the man had made a hole between the
cushions. Upon flipping
the couch over, they discovered what had caused his
death. Apparently,
the man had a habit of putting his penis between the
cushions, down into
the hole and between two electrical sanders (with the
sandpaper
removed, for obvious reasons). According to the
story, after his orgasm the

discharge shorted out one of the sanders,
electrocuting him.

5. A 27-year-old French woman lost control of her car
on a highway
near Marseilles and crashed into a tree, seriously
injuring her
passenger and killing herself. As a commonplace road
accident, this would
not
have qualified for a Darwin nomination, were it not
for the fact that
the driver's attention had been distracted by her
Tamagotchi key ring,
which had started urgently beeping for food as she
drove along. In an
attempt to press the correct buttons to save the
Tamagotchi's life, the
woman lost her own.

4. A 22-year-old, Glade Drive, Reston, VA, man was
found dead after
he tried to use octopus straps to bungee jump off a
70-foot railroad
trestle. Fairfax County police said Eric Barcia, a
fast-food worker,
taped a bunch of these straps together, wrapped one
end around one
foot, anchored the other end to the trestle at Lake
Accotink Park,
jumped and hit the pavement. Warren Carmichael, a
olice spokesman,
said investigators think Barcia was alone because his
car was found
nearby. "The length of the cord that he had assembled
was greater
than the distance between the trestle and the ground"
Carmichael said.
Police say the apparent cause of death was "Major
trauma."

3. A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. It
seems that he and
a friend were playing a game of catch, using the
rattlesnake as a ball.
The friend, no doubt a future Darwin Awards
candidate, was
hospitalized.

2. Employees in a medium-sized warehouse in west
Texas noticed the
smell of a gas leak. Sensibly, management evacuated
the building
extinguishing all potential sources of ignition;
lights, power, etc.
After the building had been evacuated, two
technicians from the gas
company were dispatched. Upon entering the building,
they found they
had difficulty navigating in the dark. To their
frustration, none of
the lights worked. ) Witnesses later described the
sight of one of
the technicians reaching into his pocket and
retrieving an object that
resembled a cigarette lighter. Upon operation of the
lighter like
object, the gas in the warehouse exploded, sending
pieces of it up to
three miles away. Nothing was found of the
technicians, but the
lighter was virtually untouched by the explosion. The
technician
suspected of causing the blast had never been thought
of as 'bright' by his

peers.

AND THE WINNER.....

1. Based on a bet by the other members of his
threesome, Everitt
Sanchez tried to wash his own "balls" in a ball
washer at the local
golf course. Proving once again that beer and
testosterone are a bad
mix, Sanchez managed to straddle the ball washer and
dangle his
scrotum in the machine. Much to his dismay, one of
his buddies upped
the ante by spinning the crank on the machine with
Sanchez's scrotum in
place, thus wedging them solidly in the mechanism.
Sanchez, who
immediately passed his threshold of pain, collapsed
and tumbled from his
perch.
Unfortunately for Sanchez, the height of the ball
washer was more than
a foot higher off the ground than his testicles are
in a normal stance,
and the scrotum was the weakest link.  Sanchez's
scrotum was ripped
open during the fall, and one testicle was plucked
from him forever and
remained in the ball washer, while the other testicle
was compressed and
flattened as it was pulled between the housing of the
washer, and the
rotating machinery inside. To add insult to injury,
Sanchez broke a new
$300.00 driver that he had just purchased from the
pro shop, and was
using to balance himself. Sanchez was rushed
to the hospital for
surgery,
and the remaining threesome were asked to
leave the course.

NB: This last one wouldn't normally count,
because the idiot didn't
die. But because he cannot reproduce as a
result of his qualifying
act of stupidity, we have allowed it.