Named after Charles Darwin, the inventor of evolution, the Darwin Awards are like no other award scheme --- ever. Known as ‘The Tossers’ Oscars,’ the Darwin Awards are the Golden Globes of stupidity, ineptitude and sheer bad luck. Presented annually to those who made their contribution to world evolution by removing themselves from the gene pool in the most spectacularly stupid fashion, the Darwin Awards are the world's first acknowledgement of the unsuspecting pioneers of euthanasia who have led the race to top themselves before it is even legal. Although the nominees never get to see their awards -- they are, of course, awarded posthumously -- many cannot resist the lure of fame, fortune and a funeral.
...Death comes creeping, leaping, sneaking, falling on you from a high place but it comes. In the case of Philippino ’plane highjacker, Augusto, it was the last one that got him. Boarding a flight in Davao City heading for Manila, Augusto thought he had a cunning scam lined up. When the aircraft was in the air, he donned a ski mask and swimming goggles, produced a gun and a hand grenade and implemented his plan. He demanded that the aircraft return to Davao City but the pilots convinced him that there was insufficient fuel. Undaunted he robbed the passengers of around $25,000 worth of money and trinkets. He then demanded that the pilots take the ‘plane down to an altitude of 6,500 feet. When the correct altitude was reached, Augusto strapped on a home-made parachute and demanded that the flight attendants open the door and depressurise the cabin. So far so good but -- oh dear -- here comes the first hitch: the wind was so strong that he could not launch himself from the open door. It took the push of an accommodating flight attendant to get him on his way. As he left, he removed the pin from the grenade and tossed it into the cabin. Ooopps! Hitch number two. With the business end of the grenade still in his hands, he could not open his parachute. As he plummeted towards the earth he had the good sense to toss the grenade but his parachute was a lost cause; he was moving too fast for it to have any effect. Augusto was one of the winners of the 2000 Awards.
...Death by air came, also, to three cheeky Brazilians. The 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.
...‘Drugs kill,’ and that’s the truuuuth!. They certainly killed off a couple of other winners of the Darwin Awards in the year 2000. It was a hot night in South Carolina and Patricia and her boyfriend had been partying on marijuana and booze. Deciding they needed a little fresh air they climbed onto the roof of the inn in which they had a room. Taking pillows and blankets with them, they hopped over a guard rail and bedded down under the stars. Apparently Patricia was sound asleep when, just before dawn, she slid off the roof and fell to her death on the street below. When the police arrived, they found the boyfriend still sleeping on the roof. He lost his early morning erection when they told him the news.
...It was January in Ohio and the mercury was way down when the Los Angeles Police Department got in touch with the state police to seek their assistance in locating a missing truck driver and his load of broccoli. When the stalled truck was found four days later with an empty gas tank, there was no sign of the driver. When the truck had been thawed out and refuelled, it was found to have no mechanical problems. But the whereabouts of the driver remained a problem. The police were particularly keen to return his personal effects to him but probably not the seven bricks of marijuana that were among them. It was only when they started to move the load of broccoli they found him. As the pallets of broccoli were removed, they revealed two feet. When the rest of the pallets were removed into the freezing Ohio winter, the driver’s body was revealed. He was standing upside down like a human popsicle in middle of the truck attached to the floor by his frozen hair. Although it took a number of space heaters before he could be detached from the floor, the still frozen corpse had to be turned on its side to get it into the rescue vehicle due to a icy arm that wouldn’t fit in the door. Further examination of the pallets of broccoli revealed a stash of cocaine. It seems that the driver was trying to retrieve the coke from among the pallets when he knocked himself unconscious and rapidly succumbed to hypothermia in the sub-zero temperatures.
...Although drugs might kill, as we all know (or ought to) it is guns and knives that do the real business. A gun certainly did it for our favourite Award winner of the year. It was in Houston, Texas that nineteen year-old, Rasheed, made his successful bid for a Darwin. Deciding he would impress his friends, he played Russian roulette -- with a semi-automatic pistol. He was not aware that a semi-automatic inserts a shell into the firing chamber when it is cocked.
...In Dover Township, New Jersey “Andrew” and his fiancée were living together with their six children when an argument erupted over chocolate cake icing. On 13 March, Andrew accused his ten-year-old son of taking the missing container, and the two became embroiled in a heated disagreement. Andrew took the boy out to the garage for a private discussion, and there the conversation became even more emotional. Then the man made his fatal mistake. He handed a five-inch kitchen knife to his angry son, and challenged the boy to stab him if he hated him so much. The boy put the knife down, but Andrew picked it up and placed it in his hand again. In the heat of the moment the outraged boy took him up on the offer and plunged the knife into his chest. Although he had offered his chest as a target, the deadly blow happened so fast that Andrew could not stop it. Pronounced dead at the Community Medical Centre, his last words were "Would you believe the kid did that?" The fourth grader, charged with manslaughter and illegal possession of a weapon, faces up to three years imprisonment. But Ocean County prosecutor E. David Millard said it was unlikely that he would serve jail time, as the boy had been provoked.
...Although guns and knives and drugs will do it, for most us it is something more prosaic that is gonna kill most of us -- work. Safety in the workplace is a fairly redundant phrase for our last two year 2000 Award winners. It is Maine in March and the owner of the Carrier Chipping Company was having problems with his largest chipping machine, affectionately known as ‘The Hog.’ Designed to take logs up to 24 inches in diameter and reduce them to 3/4” chips in a matter of seconds, ‘The Hog’ had had a bad day. And, with his employees working late to try to make up time lost during earlier machine malfunctions, it jammed again. Breaking all the safety rules, the owner climbed along the conveyor belt and used a rake to break up the jam in the chute. Unfortunately, he did not bother to turn off the giant machine before doing do. With the chute clear, the conveyor belt started to work and the owner was next up for chipping. After passing through the machine, the poor fellow was in such a pureed state that in order to get a positive ID they needed to test his DNA
...Probably one of the most meaningful safety videos ever was made by the owner of a machinery and equipment training school in Perth, Australia. The 52-year old trainer was filming a folklift safety video during which he violated a number of basic safety rules. Speeding over uneven terrain and not wearing his seat belt, the stunning climax of the video shows the trainer being thrown from the vehicle to his death. As safety demonstrations go, it was very successful
...Death in the workplace was one of the features of the 2001 Awards with one of the winners setting an explosive example of high level stupidity. An assistant plant manager of Blackridge Emulsions went out with a bang when he used an acetylene torch to cut a hole in a 10,000 gallon tank of asphalt emulsion to see how much was in there. His need was clearly desperate because his attention was twice drawn to the large warning on the sides of the tank stating that the contents were combustible but he chose to carry on regardless. The resulting explosion spread him (thinly) over an area 93 feet in diameter.
...Death does not have to be messy. It can be very neat and compact. Thus it was for Tennessee freshman, 19-year-old, Wesley. Hanging around a vacant library one night with seven of his friends, they thought they would liven up the evening by exiting the library via what
they thought was a laundry chute. Although ‘library’ and ‘laundry chute’ may start with the same letter they are very rarely found in the real world in close proximity to each other. That, however, did not occur to the students. First down was Wesley. He had a thrilling three storey slide before being crushed to death by the garbage compactor at the bottom of the chute. The other students decided not to follow him.
...One of the great rules that life has to teach us is learn from your mistakes (or, as in the case of the students above, from those of others.) It forgets, however, to add the phrase ‘Or else” at the end of the lesson. It would have been a good idea if Brandon, 21, had learnt the lesson. He was killed on his way to face charges of reckless driving, speeding and driving without a seat belt when he lost control of his vehicle. Crossing the centre reservation on Interstate 64 in Virginia, Brandon’s Hyundai collided with a truck pulling a flatbed trailer bearing three cars. Brandon was, once again, not wearing his seat belt and was thrown from the car to his death.
...Another poor learner was Justin of North Carolina. He had been in a coma for 18 days after a failure to wear his seat belt resulted in him being ejected from the window of his car when it crashed at 90 mph. He recovered but it was only a year later that he had a more successful attempt at doing away with himself. Travelling in a friend’s car, again minus seat belt, he must have had a distinct feeling of deja vu as he flew through the air for a second time. Thrown through the window when the vehicle careered off the road, this time the coma was permanent.
...More unusual in the car death arena was the demise of a California man who tried to stop his car running away down an incline on the edge of a reservoir near Fresno. Just like in the movies, he tried to stop the runaway vehicle physically, Unfortunately an irresistible force met a very moveable object. The car pushed the man ahead of it into the reservoir, pinning him beneath the water where he drowned.
...Fresnovians are not the only ones who can find their cars and themselves in deep water. When 32-year-old, Karla, fell asleep at the wheel of her BMW 328 and ended up in a canal, she didn’t panic. She simply dialled 911 on her cell ‘phone. Having explained her predicament to the operator, she was told to wind down her windows or open her door. She refused, saying: “If I do that the water is going to come in!” With that she hung up. It is a shame poor Karla was too arrogant to follow the advice she had been given. It would have saved her life. The first thing to do if you happen to find you and your car in water is to wind down the windows. Once the car is even slightly submerged, it becomes impossible to open the doors and the windows are the only escape route. It is important to act fast because the first thing the water hits is the car’s electrical system, which powers the windows. Get there before the water does, is the first rule. Had she followed the advice, Karla, who was a strong swimmer, could have easily paddled to safety.
...Some have life-threatening situations thrust upon them and some . . . . well . . . you know. The Guinness Book of Records lists Baldwin Street in Dunedin, New Zealand as the steepest urban incline in the world. It was down this awesome slope that student Ana and a friend decided they would make their own bid for a place in the record book. And how would they do it? You guessed it -- in a two-wheeled rubbish bin. Climbing aboard their smelly vehicle, they launched themselves down the incline. Moving like a bat out of hell and making as much noise as Meatloaf (eating,) their bid for fame ended when the bin slammed into a trailer. Ana was killed instantly and her friend suffered severe head injuries. As it says in on the Darwin Awards web site: “Their feat did not make it into the Guinness Book of Records as the top speed of a rubbish bin is unknown.’
...And, finally, one from Egypt that had us all declaring: “What the flock!” Police were baffled when the body of a 20-year-old Bedouin shepherd, Mochtar, was found shot in the middle of the desert. The culprit was found to be one of his sheep and, of course, his own stupidly. He had fallen asleep with his gun’s safety catch off and one of his flock had trodden on the trigger. “The sheep’ we are told, ‘has been sentenced to ewethenasia.’

BURNING BUSH --
..............A'MISUNDERESTIMATED' MAN

No tribute to human intelligence would be complete without something about George Dubya Bush, President of the United States of America. Diplomat, humanitarian, peacemaker, social reformer and all round nice guy are among the many things we will not be saying about Mr Bush. He is a Texan, after all.
...Although some may regard George Dubya Bush as an imbecile and general dingbat we believe that the reverse is true. His intelligence is at such a high level that it is beyond our understanding. That so much of what he says seems to illiterate, inarticulate, uneducated, ill-informed, unknowledgeable, garbled or just plain stupid, is merely a ruse to lull us into a false sense of insecurity. So subtle is his game that few can see through it. And almost no one can see through it sufficiently to appreciate the wit, wisdom and wacky humour that underwrites his declarations. George Dubya Bush is no less than a cunning Moriarty who is lulling us into a false sense of paranoia by playing the fool.
...What we will be doing is giving credit where it is due. We shall certainly be giving him all the credit that is due to him for his massive contribution to the English language. Few have made a contribution in the field of creative language use as George Dubya. Few have taken the language further (into oblivion.) We will also be paying tribute to his fine and penetrating mind, his incisive wit and intellectual focus and his manful manipulation of the confusion factor. With a couple of pictures of Mr Bush at his best, we will wind-up this unrestrained tribute with a pictorial essay showing the contribution he has made in the field of primate research.
...It is quite hard to separate Mr Bush’s wonderful use of language from his incredible ability not only to confuse but to appear confused himself. What is clear is the great contribution he has made to language in not only giving it some of its most alluring new words but also by using it in a creative and poetic fashion. Amazingly, until Mr Bush, such words as ‘misunderestimated,’ ‘uninalienable,’ ‘embetterment,’ ‘nuanced,’ ‘subliminable,’ ‘hopefuller’ and ‘hispanically’ did not exist.