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From: Michael Nelson <[e-mail]>
Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 14:48:37 -0800 (PST)
To: [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail],
        [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail]
Organization: The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy HQ
Subject: 1998 Darwin Award Nominees!


 THE DARWIN AWARDS are given every year to bestow upon (the remains of)
those individuals, who through single-minded self-sacrifice, have done the
most to remove undesirable elements from the human gene pool.

1997
 DARWIN NOMINEES:

 (# 1) Los Angeles, CA. Ani Saduki, 33, and his brother decided to remove a
bees nest from a shed on their property with the aid of a pineapple. A
pineapple is an illegal firecracker which is the explosive equivalent of
one-half stick of dynamite. They ignited the fuse and retreated to watch
from inside their home, behind a window some 10 feet away from the
hive/shed. The concussion of the explosion shattered the window inwards,
seriously lacerating Ani. Deciding Mr. Saduki need stitches, the brothers
headed out to go to a nearby hospital. While walking towards their car, Ani
was stung three times by the surviving bees. Unbeknownst to either brother,
Ani was allergic to bee venom, and died of suffocation enroute to the
hospital.

 (# 3) Derrick L. Richards, 28, was charged in April in Minneapolis with
third-degree murder in the death of his beloved cousin, Kenneth E.
Richards. According to police, Derrick suggested a game of Russian roulette
and put a semiautomatic pistol (instead of the more traditional revolver)
to Ken's head and fired.

 (# 4) Phillipsburg, NJ. An unidentified 29 year old male choked to death
on a sequined pastie he had orally removed from an exotic dancer at a local
establishment. "I didn't think he was going to eat it," the dancer
identified only as "Ginger" said, adding "He was really drunk."

 (# 5) In February, according to police in Windsor, Ont., Daniel Kolta, 27,
and Randy Taylor, 33, died in a head-on collision, thus earning a tie in
the game of chicken they were playing with their snowmobiles.

 (# 6) MOSCOW, Russia-A drunk security man asked a colleague at the Moscow
bank they were guarding to stab his bulletproof vest to see if it would
protect him against a knife attack. It didn't, and the 25-year- old guard
died of a heart wound. (It's good to see the Russians getting into the
spirit of the Darwin Awards.)

 (# 7) In France, Jacques LeFevrier left nothing to chance when he decided
to commit suicide. He stood at the top of a tall cliff and tied a noose
around his neck. He tied the other end of the rope to a large rock. He
drank some poison and set fire to his clothes. He even tried to shoot
himself at the last moment. He jumped and fired the pistol. The bullet
missed him completely and cut through the rope above him. Free of the
threat of hanging, he plunged into the sea. The sudden dunking extinguished
the flames and made him vomit the poison. He was dragged out of the water
by a kind fisherman and was taken to a hospital, where he died of hypoth
ermia.

 (# 8) RENTON, Washington, USA. On February 3, 1990, a Renton, Washington
man tried to commit a robbery. This was probably his first attempt, as
suggested by the fact that he had no previous record of violent crime, and
by his terminally stupid choices as listed below: 1. The target was H&J
Leather & Firearms, a gun shop. 2. The shop was full of customers, in a
state where a substantial portion of the adult population is licensed to
carry concealed handguns in public places. 3. To enter the shop, he had to
step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door. 4. An
officer in uniform was standing next to the counter, having coffee before
reporting to duty. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a
holdup and fired a few wild shots. The officer and a clerk promptly
returned fire, removing him from the gene pool. Several other customers
also drew their guns, but didn't fire. No one else was hurt.

 1997 DARWIN AWARD HONORABLE MENTIONS (I.E. Non-fatalities):

 Gulf Breeze, Florida, three unidentified teenage males were using a home
video camera to film an action/adventure "movie" one of the boys had
written. In a scene that called for each character to be ignited by fire,
the "special effects coordinator," age 15, prepared the "stunt" youth by
dousing lighter fluid onto his clothes. The intentional fire, which proved
unexpectedly difficult to extinguish, left the young man with third degree
burns on his left arm, torso, and both legs. It was all captured on film.

 In Bradford, PA, J. Cruwe, 28, caught a small snake in a container which
he handed to his wife. She opened the container and, startled to see the
snake, dropped it. The excited and, as it turns out, poisonous, snake
immediately bit Mr. Cruwe on the shin. Mr Cruwe survived the bite and
recovered after a short visit to the local emergency room.

 In rural Carbon County, PA, a group of men were drinking beer and
discharging firearms from the rear deck of a home owned by Irving Michaels,
age 27. The men were firing at a raccoon that was wandering by, but the
beer apparently impaired their aim and, despite of the estimated 35 shots
the group fired, the animal escaped into a 3 foot diameter drainage pipe
some 100 feet away from Mr.Michaels' deck. Determined to terminate the
animal, Mr. Michaels retrieved a can of gasoline and poured some down the
pipe, intending to smoke the animal out. After several unsuccessful
attempts to ignite the fuel, Michaels emptied the entire 5 gallon fuel can
down the pipe and tried to ignite it again, to no avail. Not one to admit
defeat by wildlife, the determined Mr. Michaels proceeded to slide
feet-first approximately 15 feet down the sloping pipe to toss the match.
The subsequent rapidly expanding fireball propelled Mr. Michaels back the
way he had come, though at a much higher rate of speed. He exited the
angled pipe "like a Polaris missile leaves a submarine," according to
witness Joseph McFadden, 31. Mr. Michaels was launched directly over his
own home, right over the heads of his astonished friends, onto his front
lawn. In all, he traveled over 200 feet through the air. "There was a
Doppler Effect to his scream as he flew over us," McFadden reported,
"followed by a loud thud." Amazingly, he suffered only minor injuries. "It
was actually pretty cool," Michaels said, "Like when they shoot someone out
of a cannon at the circus. I'd do it again if I was sure I wouldn't get
hurt."

 TACOMA, WA - Kerry Bingham had been drinking with several friends when one
of them said they knew a person who had bungee-jumped from the middle of
the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The conversation grew more heated and at least
10 men trooped along the walkway of the bridge at 4:30 a.m. Upon arrival at
the midpoint of the bridge they discovered that no one had brought bungee
rope. Bingham, who had continued drinking, volunteered and pointed out that
a coil of lineman's cable lay nearby. One end of the cable was secured
around Bingham's leg and the other end was tied to the bridge. His fall
lasted 40 feet before the cable tightened and pulled his foot off at the
ankle. He miraculously survived his fall into the frigid waters of the
Tacoma Narrows and Puget Sound and was rescued by two nearby fishermen.
"All I can say," said Bingham, "Is that God was watching out for me on that
night. There's just no other explanation for it." Bingham's severed foot
was never located.

 Earlier this year, the dazed crew of a Japanese trawler were plucked out
of the Sea of Japan clinging to the wreckage of their sunken ship. Their
rescue, however, was followed by immediate imprisonment once authorities
questioned the sailors on their ship's loss. To a man they claimed that a
cow, falling out of a clear blue sky, had struck the trawler amidships,
shattering its hull and sinking the vessel within minutes. They remained in
prison for several weeks, until the Russian Air Force reluctantly informed
Japanese authorities that the crew of one of its cargo planes had
apparently stolen a cow wandering at the edge of a Siberian airfield,
forced the cow into the plane's hold and hastily taken off for home.
Unprepared for live cargo, the Russian crew was ill-equipped to manage a
now rampaging cow within its hold. To save the aircraft and themselves,
they shoved the animal out of the cargo hold as they crossed the Sea of
Japan at an altitude of 30,000 feet.