More Darwin Awards (2003)

 Subject: 2003 Darwin Awards

 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:


    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.


    A 34-year-old white male found dead in the basement of his home died of
    suffocation, according to police. He was approximately 6' 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 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 wooden tube approx. 12" long and 3" in diameter.
    The tubes 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.


    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.


    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 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.


    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.


    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.


    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.


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