If you are soooo bored :)

[juliemac57 at hotmail.com (Julie Macfarlane)]

THE DARWIN AWARDS 2003

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 - counting down from No 9 to the WINNER!

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 for 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 
handmade 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 police 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 
hospital for surgery and the remaining threesome was 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.



It's that time again! The Darwin Awards this year are classic. These awards 
are given each year to bestow upon (the remains of) that individual, who 
through single-minded self-sacrifice, has done the most to remove 
undesirable elements from the human gene pool.

5th RUNNER-UP Goes to a San Anselmo, California man who died when he hit a 
lift tower at the Mammoth Mountain ski area while riding down the slope on a 
foam pad. The 22-year old David Hubal was pronounced dead at Central Mammoth 
Hospital. The accident occurred about 3 a.m., the Mono County Sheriff's 
department said. Hubal and his friends apparently had hiked up a ski run 
called Stump Alley and undid some yellow foam protectors from lift towers, 
said Lt. Mike Donnelly of the Mammoth Lakes Police Department. The pads are 
used to protect skiers who might hit towers. The group apparently used the 
pads to slide down the ski slope and Hubal crashed into a tower. It has 
since been investigated and determined the tower he hit was the one with its 
pad removed.

4th RUNNER-UP Goes to Robert Puelo, 32, who was apparently being disorderly 
in a St. Louis market. When the clerk threatened to call the police, Puelo 
grabbed a hot dog, shoved it into his mouth and walked out without paying. 
Police found him unconscious in front of the store. Paramedics removed the 
six-inch wiener from his throat where it had choked him to death.

3rd RUNNER-UP Goes to poacher Marino Malerba of Spain, who shot a stag 
standing above him on an overhanging rock and was killed instantly when it 
fell on him.

2nd RUNNER-UP "Man loses face at party" is what the headline read: A man at 
a West Virginia party (probably related to the winner last year, a man in 
Arkansas who used the .22 bullet to replace the fuse in his pickup truck) 
popped a blasting cap into his mouth and bit down, triggering an explosion 
that blew off his lips, teeth, and tongue. Jerry Stromyer, 24, of Kincaid, 
bit the blasting cap as a prank during the party late Tuesday night, said 
Cpl. M.D. Payne. "Another man had it in an aquarium hooked to battery and 
was trying to explode it. It wouldn't go off and Stromyer said: 'I'll show 
you how to set it off.' He put it into his mouth, bit down and it blew all 
his teeth out and his lips and tongue off", Payne added. Stromyer was listed 
in guarded condition Wednesday with extensive facial injuries, according to 
a spokesperson at Charleston Area Medical Division. "I just can't imagine 
anyone doing something like that," Payne said.

1st RUNNER-UP Doctors at Portland University Hospital said an Oregon man 
shot through the skull by a hunting arrow is lucky to be alive and will be 
released soon from the hospital. Tony Roberts, 25, lost his right eye last 
weekend during an initiation into a men's rafting club, Mountain Men 
Anonymous in Grant's Pass, Oregon. A friend tried to shoot a beer can off 
his head, but the arrow entered Robert's right eye. Doctors said that had 
the arrow gone 1 millimeter to the left, a major blood vessel would have 
been cut and Roberts would have died instantly. Neurosurgeon Doctor Johnny 
Delashaw at the University Hospital in Portland said the arrow went through 
8 to 10 inches of brain with the tip protruding at the rear of his skull, 
yet somehow managed to miss all major blood vessels. Delashaw also said that 
had Roberts tried to pull the arrow out on his own he surely would have 
killed himself. Roberts admitted afterwards that he and his friends had been 
drinking that afternoon. Said Roberts, "I feel so dumb about this." No 
charges have been filed, but the Josephine County district attorney's office 
said the initiation stunt is under investigation.

THIS YEAR'S WINNER:

The late John Pernicky and his friend, the late Sal Hawkins, of the great 
state of Washington, decided to attend a local Metallica concert at the 
George Washington amphitheater. Having no tickets (but having had 18 beers 
between them), they thought it would be easy to "hop" over the nine foot 
fence and sneak into the show. They pulled their pickup truck over to the 
fence and the plan was for Mr. Pernicky, who was 100-pounds heavier than Mr. 
Hawkins to hop the fence and then assist his friend over. Unfortunately for 
Mr. Pernicky, there was a 30-foot drop on the other side of the fence. 
Having heaved himself over, he found himself crashing through a tree. His 
fall was abruptly halted (and broken, along with his arm) by a large branch 
that snagged him by his shorts. Dangling from the tree with a broken arm, he 
looked down and saw some bushes below him. Possibly figuring the bushes 
would break his fall, he removed his pocket knife and proceeded to cut away 
his shorts to free himself from the tree. Finally free, Mr. Pernicky crashed 
into holly bushes. The sharp leaves scratched his entire body and worse, 
without the protection of his shorts, a holly branch penetrated his rectum. 
To make matters worse still, on landing, his pocket knife penetrated his 
thigh. Mr. Hawkins, seeing his friend in considerable pain and agony, threw 
him a rope and tried to pull him to safety by tying the rope to the pickup 
truck and slowly driving away. However, in his drunken haste/state, he put 
the truck into reverse and crashed through the fence, landing 30' below atop 
his friend, killing him. Police arrived to find the crashed pickup with its 
driver thrown 100' from the truck and dead from massive internal injuries. 
Upon moving the truck, they found John under it half-naked, scratches on his 
body, a holly stick in his rectum, a knife in his thigh, and his shorts 
dangling from a tree branch 25-feet in the air.

Hearty congratulations gentlemen, you win...




Julie Macfarlane
1981 MKI 2L 16v
Amsterdam NY

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