Darwin Awards Winners?

A friend emailed me the message below, captioned "2008 Darwin Awards." It's hilarious, so I'm sharing it with you. I double-checked it with the actual Darwin Awards website ("A chronicle of enterprising demises honoring those who improve the species...by accidentally removing themselves from it!"). The 2008 nominees listed didn't include any of these anecdotes. Perhaps they're from previous years...but the website has so many I didn't take the time to check them all.

So enjoy the stories, whether true or apocryphal, and visit the Darwin Awards website for more tales of unbelievable (and deadly) human idiocy.

"It's not the heat, it's the stupidity."
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Subject: 2008 Darwin Awards

It's that time again...The Darwin Awards are finally out, the annual honor given to the persons who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid ways.

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.

This year's winner was a real rocket scientist....HONEST!

Read on...And remember that each and every one of these is a TRUE STORY. The awards were bestowed this year by December 6th, 2008 because the panel of judges believed that no one else could do more stupid stuff than these morons did by that time in 2008.

* * * * * * * * * * *

And the nominees were:

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 rushed to vomit into the fireplace in his house. This resulting explosion and fire burned his house down, killing both him and his unfortunate 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 (HARD to control light airplanes when everyone moves to one side).

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 rail road 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 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.

*** Now, to the winner of this year's Darwin Award ***

(awarded, as always, posthumously):

The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded in 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 of car was unidentifiable at the scene. Police investigators finally pieced together the mystery. An amateur rocket scientist ... had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted Take Off, actually a solid fuel rocket) that is 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. He attached the JATO unit to the 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 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, would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, causing him to become irrelevant 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 and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face 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 attained a ground speed of approximately 420-mph, though much of his voyage was not actually on the ground.

You couldn't make this stuff up, could you?

AND PEOPLE JUST LIKE THIS ARE ALL AROUND US TODAY - AND THEY BREED & VOTE, TOO.

Five Writing Strengths

A long time ago Shauna Roberts tagged me for a writing meme: to list five of my writing strengths. It would be easier to list five writing weaknesses, but I finally came up with these:

1. Excellent command of punctuation, spelling, and sentence structure, as well as large vocabulary.
2. Widely read in fiction, especially genre fiction, resulting in broad knowledge of literary conventions and reader expectations on which to draw for own writing.
3. Instinctive grasp of good writing style.
4. Good at analyzing facts and setting them out in readable fashion (a skill more useful in writing nonfiction than fiction.)
5. Ear for lyrical language.

Whew. I'm cringing. Too much training in self-deprecation, not enough in self-praise. Better post this before I change my mind and erase everything!

Brilliant Beagle

Any dog this clever deserves to run free: See Andrew Sullivan's Why I Love Beagles.

Weird Events

In the last few weeks some weird things have been happening in the New Orleans area, or not far from it:

KKK Reappears
A hitherto unknown enclave of the Ku Klux Klan was discovered about 60 miles northeast of New Orleans, a group of eight or so cretins who had gathered to induct a new member. The leader of the group ended up shooting and killing the new member because she got cold feet and wanted to back out of the deal and go home. The other members of the group helped him try to cover up the evidence and dispose of the body. The whole thing was done so clumsily police had little problem in finding the evidence. All was revealed within a short time. Police were tipped off to the shady doings when a clerk at a nearby convenience store told them two people he/she recognized had asked how to get blood out of clothing. Despite having signed an oath of secrecy to protect their fellow Klan members to the death, etc., the Klanners couldn't talk fast enough once police found them.

Neo-Nazi
Police in a New Orleans suburb arrested a man they saw walking down a street in full Nazi uniform, carrying a loaded 8mm Mauser. He told them he was planning to kill a neighbor with whom he'd argued about a dog. Subsequent news article say his family members say he has mental problems. No sh*t, Sherlock.

Mad Bomber
A car exploded in uptown New Orleans and police were able to determine the bomber lived nearby. They found his home was a stockpile of explosives. What do you want to bet his family members also will soon be reporting that he has psychiatric problems?

Handcuffed D.A.
Two judges at a local court had simultaneous hearings that involved the same assistant district attorney. One was in the middle of a several-days-long murder trial; the other had a pretrial hearing in a murder case that had been repeatedly postponed. Each insisted the A.D.A. had to be present in her or his court immediately. One judge came to the other's chambers and they argued. Finally, the judge with the pretrial hearing ordered the A.D.A. placed in handcuffs to keep him from going to the other courtroom. It was eventually settled when a higher-up in the D.A.'s office came down and pledged to handle the hearing while the targeted prosecutor was uncuffed and allowed to go back to the ongoing murder trial.

Scary things--sometimes kinda funny, except for what they portend.

Meming a Return: 6 Random Things

Nola over at NOLA Notes tagged me for a meme, and I thank her for the kick in the *ss to get me started back blogging again. Following the advice of my semiguru, Leo of Write to Done and Zen Habits, I won't explain or apologize for my absence, but jump back into the game. Here's the SIX RANDOM THINGS ABOUT ME meme:

The Rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

So, six random things you don’t already know about me:

1. I once worked as a decorating consultant in a branch store of a well-known national paint company. This was the early 70s and we decorating consultants were the first women who had ever worked in their stores. The idea was we would advise female customers on their choices in paint, wallpaper, and carpet-- i.e., sell the products. We were trained to know the products, but received no training in actual decorating or design. They hired pretty much any woman who was willing to work in a paint store around a bunch of male chauvinists who were alternately panting with lust over having an actual female in the store, or sneering at her for having the nerve to work in a male milieu. (Ah, how things have changed in the past 30 years.) I'm not noted for skill in interior design. Lucky for them I could coordinate colors, at least. I soon tired of mixing paint and lugging around wallpaper and carpet swatch books, and moved on to an office job, much more my preference.
   
2. I learned to play the piano and the clarinet in grade school. I haven't touched either in years, but I'd kinda like to get back to the piano. The clarinet, nah. I don't mind listening to good clarinet (yeaaa, Pete Fountain), but I'm not gonna tongue any more reeds myself...heh heh.
   
3. My great-grandfather on my mother's side was married four times and sired 24 children, of whom at least 20 lived to adulthood. (The wives kept dying off, either from childbirth fever or other disease. Those were hard times.) My great-grandfather was conscripted into the Confederate army during the Civil War and dodged bullets from Yankee snipers while on picket duty during the siege of Vicksburg. Best we can estimate, he was in his seventies when he was siring those last five children in the 1890s...heh heh.
   
4. For several years now I've had a secret desire to attend a monster truck rally.
   
5. In sophomore year of high school I scored the highest grade in the school on a nationwide Latin examination. Got a medal for it. It must have astonished my Latin teacher, since I hadn't shown any special aptitude for Latin in class. I still like Latin, and am glad I know a little about it. I think it would be cool to learn conversational Latin--it would be funny to start chatting in Latin at a party, say. Well, I'd find it funny, but I guess everyone else would consider me a total dork. Or sadly insane.
   
6. In high school and college I sewed a lot of my own clothing. I even made my own wedding dress, appliques and all. I haven't touched a sewing machine in years, but maybe I'll get back to it someday. (Yeah, like I'll get back to playing the piano.) I have the patience now to do a much better job on that stitching.
   
7. Here's a bonus 7th thing: I don't like to cook, but I love cookbooks. I have a lot of them. Every now and then I open one and peruse the recipes, saying to myself, "Hmm, that doesn't look too difficult...I could probably make that." I especially like the ones that include commentary such as the background of the recipe, or anecdotes about the author's life.
   

I expect most of my usual blog buddies have already been tagged for this meme, but I'll name them anyway. If any of you have already done it, just send me a link to your post on it. And, of course, any of you who haven't done it and don't want to, c'est la vie.

1. Shauna of For Love of Words
   
2. Charles of Razored Zen
   
3. Candice of C.S. Harris/Candy's Blog
   
4. Roz of The Ninth Muse
   
5. Farrah of Farrah Rochon
   
6. Rae Ann of Rae Ann Parker
   

Hey--it feels good to be back.