#3 Jack-In-The-Bus
(3 October 2012, Serra, Brazil) The merits of this potential Darwin Award winner are solid, yet something stands in the way...
Consider a bus traveling along the streets of a busy modern city such as Serra, Brazil. The bus driver, guided by instinct developed over years of experience, is expertly navigating the narrow streets of the metro area. Suddenly a passenger throws in a new variable: He stands on the seat and hangs his torso out the window, wiggling around and whooping it up. The Darwin Awards editors are honor-bound to divulge that this sounds super-duper fun. Arms extended, hair a'flying, an undeniably W00T activity.
Yet to do so effectively increases the width of a bus by two feet. Head, please meet your nemesis in the form of a utility pole. The streets are narrow. Now you know!
Solid Darwin Award.
"Bus-ted." But wait! The printing press comes to a screeching halt. Open dialog between Darwin Awards editors and worldwide fans has reached a consensus that we cannot print the story of this passenger pigeon. Why? Because the deceased individual is a female aged 14. Our magical thinking holds that at 18 the deceased is dumb, and not a day before that birthday. The answer to your question, Intrepid News Reporter C. Elias, is that your submission is a Darwin Award in all aspects--except the age of the perp. In our archives females are underrepresented 10:1, yet we must kill this submission. Humans who are 14 years young are denied the solace of a Darwin Award.
Ludymila M: "There was one important detail on the papers that i believe should be taken under consideration here: the day before the incident, this girl had been suspended of school for 3 days, so she was not supposed to be on that school bus on the first place. Her parents insisted she should go nevertheless."
#2 Vodka Blues
(10 April 2012) Washing trucks for a living is not a prestigious job but it does have perks, particularly for those who wash trucks for Beer Stores, a Canadian liquor store chain. The discovery of an onboard bottle of liquor can be considered a tipple-tip, can it not? And swigging free booze surely does make a menial job easier to swallow.
Which brings us to the deceased Darwin Award winner. Behind the driver's seat of a Beer Store truck, he discovered a vodka bottle full of blue liquid! Whether the deceased would have swallowed the liquid if it had been a suspicious shade of yellow, I do not know, but a suspicious shade of blue was deemed palatable. He immediately swigged from the bottle, which you have already realized contained windshield wiper fluid.
His taste buds and olfactory bulbs must have been on vacation. During the next two days, the man became sicker and sicker as he transferred the contents of the bottle to his circulatory system. He died in the hospital from methanol poisoning.
Subsequent to his death, a lawsuit against the parent company of Beer Stores deserves a Stella Award for stupid lawsuits. The company has been legally chastised and now forbids truck drivers from placing windshield wiper fluid in alcohol bottles.
Trippy trivia: In Russia and its former states, vodka is colored blue by smugglers.
An alcoholic cocktail called "The Windex."
Reader Patrick relates, "Trucker friend of mine smuggled booze into Canada
in the built-in windshield wiper fluid container in his 18-wheel, for his
old lady's brother. Booze tax was outrageous in Quebec."
The discovery of a "bottle of liquid" left behind by a trucker
ought to set off certain alarm bells...
And the winner is:
Smokin' Hot Sauce!
(27 February 2012, North Carolina) "It was just a freak incident," said an investigator, that caused the death of 43-year-old Gary Allen Banning. Gary was at a friend's apartment when he spotted a salsa jar containing a mystery fluid. Thinking that it was an alcoholic beverage, he helped himself to a sizeable swig of gasoline! Naturally enough, he immediately spit out the offending liquid onto his clothes. Then, to recover from the shock, Gary lit a cigarette.
Whoosh! Gas+Flame=Combustion.
Firefighters responded to calls reporting a fire in the apartment, and found a badly burned man sitting on a charred carpet. The following morning, Gasoline Gary died at the UNC Burn Center in Chapel Hill.
Two mistakes caused his death. The first mistake was minor: gulping a golden liquid from a salsa jar. Although Darwin Awards editors feel that a jar of yellow liquid is best left sealed, drinking its contents usually does not lead to combustion. But the second mistake--lighting up a cigarette to recover from the shock of taking a mouthful of gasoline--was a decision that an average five year old would consider questionable. As the late Bill Hicks said, "Darn, we lost another idiot."
Gary's friend was a mechanic and kept the jar of gasoline near the kitchen sink to remove grease from his hands.
Reader comments: "That's some HOT salsa!"
"Gasoline and chlorine are both effective at cleansing the gene pool." -Quinton W.
"you can't fix stupid, but stupid eventually fixes itself." -Issac T.
"Dumb people should smoke more!" -Frank G.
"Great Balls Of Fire!" -Darren L.
"'Shine' is generally clear, so even by Carolina standards this is dumb." -Patrick T.
"The shrinking gene pool." -Nery M.