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 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.

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.

  * * * * * * * * * * *

 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 vomited into the fireplace in

his house. This 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 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, the WINNER of this year's Darwin Award (awarded, unfortunately, 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 crash. 

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 STILL ALL AROUND US AND THEY BREED & VOTE...

SCARY, ISN'T IT?