> The Darwin Awards Are Out......
>
> It's that time again . . . . .
>
> They are finally out. You know about it. The Darwin
> Awards: The 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 this year's nominees are:
>
> Semifinalist #1
>
> 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. The resulting explosion and
> fire burned his house
> down, killing both him and his sister.
>
> Semifinalist #2
>
> 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.
>
> Semifinalist #3
>
> A 22-year-old 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 an 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."
>
> Semifinalist #4
>
> 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.
>
> Semifinalist #5
>
> 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 the building as far as 3 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 IS.....
>
> The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of
> smoldering metal embedded
> into the side of a cliff rising above the road at
> the apex of a curve. The
> wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash,
> but it was a car. The type
> car was unidentifiable at the scene. The lab finally
> figured out what it was
> and what had happened. It seems that a guy had
> somehow gotten hold of a JATO
> bottle (Jet Assisted Take Off ) which is actually a
> solid fuel rocket used
> to give heavy military transport planes an extra
> "push" for taking off from
> short airfields. He had driven his
> Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long,
> straight stretch of road.
> Then he attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped
> in, got up some speed and
> fired off the JATO! The facts, as best as could be
> determined, are that the
> operator of the 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at
> a distance of
> approximately 3.0 miles from the crash site. This
> was established by the
> prominent scorched and melted asphalt at that
> location. The JATO, if
> operating properly, would have reached maximum
> thrust within 5 seconds,
> causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of
> 350 mph and continuing
> at full power for an additional 20-25 seconds. The
> driver, and soon to be
> pilot, most likely would have experienced G-forces
> usually reserved for dog
> fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, causing
> him to become
> insignificant for the remainder of the event.
> However, the automobile
> remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles
> (15-20 seconds)before
> the driver applied the brakes and completely melted
> them - blowing the tires
> and leaving thick rubber marks on the road
> surface,then becoming airborne
> for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the face
> of the cliff at a height
> of 125 feet leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep
> in the rock. Most of the
> driver's remains were not recoverable; however,
> small fragments of bone,
> teeth and hair were extracted from the crater and
> fingernail and bone shards
> were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a
> portion of the steering
> wheel.
>
> Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron
> nearly reached Mach I,
> attaining a ground speed of approximately 420 mph.
>
>
>
>
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