[visa2003]

They are finally out again. You all know about the Darwin Awards. It's
an annual honour 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 he was attempting to tip a free can of drink out of it.



And the nominees 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 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 wooden 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
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 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.

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.