2007 Honorable Mentions

The stupidity displayed by the participants in the following tales stops short of the ultimate Darwin Awards sacrifice. Nevertheless, we salute the spirit and innovation of their misadventures.

Recycled Bullets 2007 Honorable Mention Confirmed True by Darwin Bugs Bunny was smarter... (12 May 2007, Lake Luzerne, New York) Adult survivors of the teenage years are well aware that teenager exists in a private world where he already knows everything he needs to know. Here is the story of one teenager who was finally prompted to reconsider his mental acumen, and admit that he not only doesn't know everything, he really doesn't know anything. In a 1943 Bugs Bunny cartoon, Falling Hare, the wascally wabbit matches wits with a gremlin at a US airbase. The gremlin is bashing a bombshell with a mallet in an attempt to detonate it, and Bugs Bunny comes up and asks if he can have "a whack at it". Just before the mallet hits the bombshell, Bugs stops and screams, "WHAT AM I DOING?!!" The subject of today's story did not have the epiphany that Bugs had. This 18 year old decided he needed money, probably for beer -- I recall being 18 once. The problem now becomes how to raise money for said beer? He knew that brass shell casings could be sold for $1.70 per pound to the Capitol Scrap Co. in Albany. The trouble was, he didn't have any empty brass shell casings. But he did have full brass shells. He merely needed to empty them, thereby creating scrap metal. Our protaganist began discharging .223-caliber rounds by placing each in a steel vise, putting the tip of a screwdriver on the primer, and striking the screwdriver with a hammer. One hundred rounds later... The police were called to his home when a bullet penetrated his abdomen by a half-inch. He was treated at Glens Falls Hospital and released. Since the abdomen contains the reproductive organs, it is possible that his brilliant fund-raising idea rendered him sterile, but as there is no evidence, we can only award him an Honorable Mention for narrowly surviving his brush with death. The total amount these shell casings were worth? Approximately $6. Submissions: 1, 2, 3. DarwinAwards.com © 1994 - 2008 Submitted by: Jonathan Brown, Patrick Long, Chuck O, Rob McCutcheon, Susan Arenson, and dozens of alert readers. Reference: Albany Times Union, The Associated Press, CNN. Awful? 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Great? Hate it! Love it!

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