4.230.18.58

Hard to believe, but another year has passed. Once again, it's time
for the Darwin Award Nominees. The Darwins are awarded every year to
the person who died in the most stupid manner, thereby removing
himself or herself from the gene pool.

The nine 2003-2004 nominees:

Nominee No. 1: [San Jose Mercury News]: An unidentified man, using a
shotgun like a club to break a former girlfriend's windshield,
accidentally shot himself to death when the gun discharged, blowing a
hole in his gut.

Nominee No. 2: [Kalamazoo Gazette]: James Burns, 34, (a mechanic) of
Alamo, MI, was killed in March as he was trying to repair what police
describe as a "farm-type truck." Burns got a friend to drive the
truck on a highway while Burns hung underneath so that he could
ascertain the source of a troubling noise. Burns' clothes caught on
something, however, and the other man found Burns "wrapped in the drive
shaft!"

Nominee No. 3: [Hickory Daily Record]: Ken Charles Barger, 47,
accidentally shot himself to death in December in Newton, NC.
Awakening to the sound of a ringing telephone beside his bed, he
reached for the phone but grabbed instead a Smith & Wesson 38
Special, which discharged when he drew it to his ear.

Nominee No. 4: [UPI, Toronto]: Police said a lawyer demonstrating the
safety of the plate glass windows in a downtown Toronto skyscraper
crashed through a pane with his shoulder and plunged 24 floors to his
death. A police spokesman said Garry Hoy, 39, fell into the courtyard
of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower early Friday evening as he was
explaining the strength of the building's windows to visiting law
students.Hoy previously had conducted similar demonstrations of
window strength, according to police Peter Lawson, managing partner
of the firmHolden Day Wilson, told the Toronto Sun newspaper that Hoy
was "one of the best and brightest" attorneys in the 200-lawyer
partnership.

Nominee No. 5: [Bloomberg News Service]: A terrible diet and a room
with no ventilation are being blamed for the death of a man who was
killed by his own gas emissions. There was no mark on his body, and
an autopsy showed large amounts of methane gas in his system. His
diet had consisted primarily of beans and cabbage (and a couple of other
things).
It was just the right combination of foods. It appears that the man
died in his sleep from breathing the poisonous cloud that was hanging
over his bed. Had he been outside or had his windows been opened, it
wouldn't have been fatal. But the man was shut up in his
nearly-airtight bedroom. According to the article, "He was a big man
>with a huge capacity for creating "this deadly gas." Three of the
rescuers got sick, and one was hospitalized.

Nominee No. 6: [The News of the Weird]: Michael Anderson Godwin made
News of the Weird posthumously. He had spent several years awaiting
South Carolina's electric chair on a murder conviction before having
his sentence reduced to life in prison. While sitting on a metal
toilet in his cell attempting to fix his small TV set, he bit into a
wire and was electrocuted.

Nominee No. 7: [The Indianapolis Star]: A cigarette lighter may have
triggered a fatal explosion in Dunkirk, IN. A Jay County man, using a
cigarette lighter to check the barrel of a muzzle loader, was killed
Monday night when the weapon discharged in his face, sheriff's
investigators said. Gregory David Pryor, 19, died in his parents'
rural Dunkirk home at about 11:30 PM. Investigators said Pryor was
cleaning a .54-caliber muzzle-loader that had not been firing
properly. He was using the lighter to look into the barrel when the
gunpowder ignited.

Nominee No. 8: [Reuters, Mississauga, Ontario]: A man cleaning a bird
feeder on the balcony of his condominium apartment in this Toronto
suburb slipped and fell 23 stories to his death. Stefan Macko, 55,
was standing on a wheeled chair when the accident occurred, said
Inspector D'Arcy Honer of the Peel Regional Police. "It appears that
the chair moved, and he went over the balcony," Honer said.

Finally, THE WINNER! [Arkansas Democrat Gazette]: Two local men were
injured when their pickup truck left the road and struck a tree near
Cotton Patch on State Highway 38 early one Monday. Thurston Poole,
33, of Des Arc, and Billy Ray Wallis, 38, of Little Rock, were
returning to Des Arc after a frog-gigging trip. On an overcast Sunday
night, Poole's pickup truck headlights malfunctioned. The two men
concluded that the headlight fuse on the older-model truck had burned
out. A replacement fuse was not available, but Wallis noticed that
the .22 caliber bullet from his pistol fit perfectly into the fuse
box next to the steering-wheel column. Upon inserting the bullet the
headlights again began to operate properly, and the two men proceeded
eastbound toward the White River Bridge. After traveling
approximately 20 miles, and just before crossing the river, the
bullet apparently overheated, discharged, and struck Poole in the
testicles. The vehicle swerved sharply right, exiting the pavement.

(Note: Though Poole and Wallis did not die as a result of their
misadventure as normally required by Darwin Award Official Rules, it
can be argued that Poole did nonetheless effectively remove himself
from the gene pool.)