2007 Darwin Awards

These are the real ones as published by DarwinAwards.com, not the ones from the stupid emails that everybody likes to send out all the time. You know, the ones that for some reason have the same fake stories in them every year?

RUNNER UP # FIVE:
THE LAPTOP STILL WORKS (Confirmed True by Darwin)
 
“Driving is not a time to be practicing your multitasking skills,” remarked CHP spokesman Tom Marshall, commenting on a 29-year-old computer tutor’s decision to drive along Highway 99 in California while working on his laptop. He drifted over the center line, and was killed by oncoming traffic. CHP officers found Oscar’s computer still running, plugged into the Honda Accord’s cigarette lighter.
 
REFERENCES: http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2007-12.html
 
——————————————–+—+-+—+-+-+-+-+
RUNNER UP # FOUR:
SUPERIOR MOMENTUM (Confirmed True by Darwin)
 
June 2007, Illinois | Two Valparaiso men tested their reflexes by playing “chicken” with a train. Which man could stay on the rail the longest in the path of an oncoming train? At the stroke of midnight, the contest was decided. The winner, aptly named Patrick Stiff, lost his life. The train continued on, as the conductor was unaware that it had hit anyone.
 
REFERENCES: http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2007-07.html
 
——————————————–+—+-+—+-+-+-+-+
RUNNER UP # THREE:
 
BARN DEMOLITION (Unconfirmed by Darwin)
 
January 2007, West Virginia) Three friends set out to dismantle a dilapidated barn one bracing winter afternoon. Speaking of bracing… One industrious man fired up his chainsaw and ripped through a crucial support post. Carrying the weight of a full barn roof, those wooden support beams were all that stood between the demolition worker and structural collapse. It was all fun and games until the roof, sans support, succumbed to the pull of gravity and flattened the man with the chainsaw. As a consolation prize, the deceased was indeed successful at demolishing the barn.
 
(Darwin notes, this story is unconfirmed, but no disputes have come to my attention, as usually happens with bogus stories.)
 
REFERENCES: http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2007-02.html
 
Addendum: This was the year of the Squashed Darwin Award Winner.
Two other groups of people attempted to remove the supports from beneath a water tower, and a heavy factory roof. In both cases, the structure collapsed without their aptly-named supports. Duh!
 
REFERENCES: http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2007-09.html
——————————————–+—+-+—+-+-+-+-+
RUNNER UP # TWO:
MOLE HUNT (Confirmed True by Darwin)
 
January 2007, East Germany | One man’s extraordinary effort to eradicate a mole from his property resulted in a victory for the mole. The metal rods he pounded into the ground and connected to a high-voltage power line, electrified the very ground the man stood upon. He was found dead at his holiday property on the Baltic Sea. Police had to trip the main circuit breaker before venturing onto the property.
 
REFERENCES: http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2007-01.html
 
——————————————–+—+-+—+-+-+-+-+
RUNNER UP # ONE:
WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN (Confirmed Double Darwin Award)
 
June 2007, South Carolina | A passing cabbie found a 21 year-old deceased couple laying naked in the road an hour before sunrise. Authorities were baffled. There were no witnesses, no trace of clothing, and no wrecked vehicles present. But investigators eventually found a clue high on the roof of a nearby building: two sets of neatly folded clothes. Safe sex takes on a whole new meaning when you are perched on the edge of a pyramid-shaped metal roof. “It appears as if [they] accidentally fell off the roof,” Sgt. McCants said.
 
REFERENCES: http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2007-05.html
——————————————–+—+-+—+-+-+-+-+
AND THE 2007 DARWIN AWARD WINNER IS…
 
THE ENEMA WITHIN (Confirmed True by Darwin)
 
May 2004, Texas | Michael was an alcoholic. And not an ordinary alcoholic, but an alcoholic who liked to take his liquor… well, rectally. His wife said he was “addicted to enemas” and often used alcohol in this manner. The result was the same: inebriation. And tonight, Michael was in for one hell of a party.

Two 1.5 litre bottles of sherry, more than 100 fluid ounces, right up the old address!
 
When the rest of us have had enough, we either stop drinking or pass out. When Michael had had enough (and subsequently passed out) the alcohol remaining in his rectal cavity continued to be absorbed. The next morning, Michael was dead.
 
The 58-year-old did a pretty good job of embalming himself. Toxicology reports measured his blood alcohol level as 0.47%.
 
In order to qualify for a Darwin Award, a person must remove himself from the gene pool via an “astounding misapplication of judgment.” Three litres of sherry up the butt can only be described as astounding. Unsurprisingly, his neighbors said they were surprised to learn of the incident.
 
REFERENCES: http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2007-13.html

Full article is here.

You Live By The Sword…

Here’s today’s dose of fantastic irony.

An un-named 26-year old man attempting to shoplift $300 worth of hunting knives from a Meijer store in Michigan got into a scuffle with security workers who tried to stop him, during which he fell and was
stabbed in the stomach by yes, you guessed it, the knives he was attempting to make off with.

His injuries are said to be non-life threatening and he is expected to be released from the hospital any time now.

Yup, He’s A Moron, No Question About It

I guess when you’re last name is moron, you’re doomed to do moronic things like, oh, say, getting drunk and driving your truck into someone’s house.

I admit it has gotta suck when your name is Bryan Scott Moron. What a life that creats for you, even if you’re not prone to do stupid things.

Names And Babies, But Not Baby names

I’m so juvenile. Despite the sad statement that this story makes, I just find it jumps out at me that a pediatrician’s name is Sarah Grope.

But it frightens me that there are enough teen moms out there that they don’t mind asking for a month-long maternity leave. But I’m also disturbed that schools say to them that they should be back at school the day after discharge from the hospital. That’s a little, ok a lot, extreme.

Weekend At Dipshit’s

Every time I see the title of this story, I start laughing. You’ll see why.

If your room-mate croaks, and you really want his social security cheque, but the dude at Pay-O-Matic says he needs to see said room-mate, whatever you do, don’t wheel him down the street in an office chair before you go in. You’ll probably not get the security cheque, but what you will get is a crowd of upset folk, a police arrest and a fraud charge.

Dudes, you’re 65. You should know that dead people don’t sit up like live ones. You’re lucky the autopsy came back with natural causes as the cause of death, otherwise, you look like murderers! How stupid are you? I guess you’re this stupid.

The roommate, James P. O’Hare, and his friend, David J. Dalaia, both 65 and unemployed, placed Mr. Cintron’s body in the chair and wheeled it around the corner, south along Ninth Avenue on Tuesday afternoon, the police said. The men parked the chair with the corpse in front of Pay-O-Matic at 763 Ninth Avenue, a check-cashing business that Mr. Cintron had patronized.

They went inside to present the check, but a clerk said Mr. Cintron would have to cash it himself, and asked where he was, the police said.

“He is outside,” Mr. O’Hare said, indicating the body in the chair, according to Mr. Browne.

The two men started to bring the chair inside, but it was too late.

Their sidewalk procession had already attracted the stares of passers-by who were startled by the sight of the body flopping from side to side as the two men tried to prop it up, the police said. The late Mr. Cintron was dressed in a faded black T-shirt and blue-and-white sneakers. His pants were pulled up part of the way, and his midsection was covered by a jacket, the police said. While the two men were inside the check-cashing office, a small crowd had gathered around the chair. A detective, Travis Rapp, eating a late lunch at a nearby Empanada Mama saw the crowd and notified the Midtown North station house.

Police officers and an ambulance arrived as the two men were trying to maneuver the corpse and chair into the check-cashing office.

Oh well, you provided some funny reading.

No Defence Should Have Been Enough

We talk pretty regularly around here about how personal responsibility is a dying concept, but I think I’ve finally found a story that to me not only kills it, but also knocks over its tombstone and pisses on its grave for good measure.

In May 2004, 19-year old Sandra Bergen bought some crystal meth from a man named Clinton Davey. Not surprisingly, she used it. She subsequently suffered an overdose, nearly died of a heart attack and spent 11 days in a coma.

A little more than 2 years ago, she along with her parents decided to sue Davey for negligence. Well, the decision was handed down recently, and even though it was a default judgment because Davey refused to give up the name of the original source of the drugs he sold,
they won,
and can now collect damages.

I can’t imagine what this is going to mean for an already screwed up and backlogged legal system. Actually I can, but I’d rather not. By finding in their favour no matter how flimsy the technicality, the judge in this case has opened the door for any idiot who willingly ingests lord knows what to sue the strange dirty man on the street corner when something goes wrong.

I know that the law is the law and that judges sometimes have to do things they don’t like. I also know better than to expect common sense from a drug user, but I’ll say this anyway. Use your fucking head! If you go out into the street, give money to the creepy guy in exchange for something he probably brewed up in his bathtub using industrial chemicals and then willingly ingest it, you’re taking a risk. He isn’t taking that risk, you are. Suing a drug dealer because you had a bad night is like suing a brewery because you drank 18 beers and passed out on a sidewalk. Actually it’s even worse than that because at least beer is a regulated product, meaning that there are safety standards. When you’re buying meth on the black market you have no such protections, nor do you deserve any. So if anybody should be held responsible for your drug problems it isn’t the dealer, nor is it the police who failed to arrest him or you before the transaction could be made or you could take the stuff. The person you need to worry about is looking at you every day when you look in the mirror.

Oh My God, I Have Nothing To Wear! .com

I know that a lot of people are really into buying clothes, and I’m cool with that. There’s nothing wrong with having a lot of something you like. But that said, if ever the problem of what to wear becomes such an issue that you need an internet closet assistant, it might be time to throw some shit away.

Closet Assistant requires the user to manually input their inventory of clothing. Users can simply upload a picture, or go the whole nine yards by adding names, descriptions (complete with category and subcategory), price paid, and purchase date. Once added to their virtual closet, these items can be combined with others to make an outfit. You can then share these outfits with others Closet Assistant users (on a MySpace-like profile page), or schedule what you want to wear, and when you want to wear it until the end of time using the calendaring tool.

Hopefully among the description fields there’s one for number of precious life moments lost entering socks into a computer.

The Name Game

Since I somehow managed to miss the hilarity of
Kenneth Sodomsky
even after reading it twice before Carin saw it and posted it, I feel the need to try to redeem myself. So…

1. With a name like this you’d think she’d know better, but apparently not.

Ordered to serve an extra 90 days in jail on top of the remainder of a 5 year suspended sentence for grand larceny and burglary after signing a court document with a note telling the judge to kiss her ass is
Judith Law.

2. I know the spelling isn’t exact, but you give me another way to pronounce it.

Arrested on charges of battery for allegedly groping 2 women repeatedly is
Larry L. Letcher.

There, that seems like a decent start.