Super curly haircut: Have you heard this years Darwin awards?

It's that time again... The Darwin Awards are finally out, the annual honor

given to the person(s) 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....really!

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 ladies and gentleman, the winner of this year's Darwin

Award:

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.