Stupid Things Said

"Please provide the date of your death."
-from an IRS letter


"I was under medication when I made the decision to burn the tapes."
-Richard (Dicky) Nixon


We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?"
-Lee Iacocca


A verbal contract is not worth the paper it's written on."
-Samuel Goldwyn


We understand the importance of having bondage between parents and their children. Dan Quayle


"The people in the Navy look on motherhood as being compatible with being a woman."
-Rear Admiral James R. Hogg


"If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life." -Brooke Shields


"A day without sunshine is like, you know, night."


As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error. - Weisert


"We apologize for the error in last week's paper
in which we stated that Mr. Arnold Dogbody was a defective in the police force. We meant, of course, that Mr. Dogbody is a detective in the police farce."
-Correction notice in the Ely Standard, a British newspaper


"Caution: Cape does not enable user to fly."
-Batman costume warning label


"The private enterprise system indicates that some people have higher incomes than others."
-Gerry Brown


"I have opinions of my own --strong opinions-- but I don't always agree with them."
-George Bush


"I was provided with addtional input that was radically different from the truth. I assisted in furthering that version."
-Colonel Oliver North, from his Iran-Contra testimony


"We are sorry to announce that Mr. Albert Brown has been quite unwell, owing to his recent death, and is taking a short holiday to recover."
-Parish Magazine


"We are not without accomplishment. We have managed to distribute poverty equally."
-Nguyen Co Thatch, Vietnamese foreign minister


"The word 'genius' isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein."
-Joe Theisman, quarterback and sports analyst


"Fiction writing is great, you can make up almost anything."
-Ivana Trump, on finishing her first novel


"I've read about foreign policy and studied, I now know the number of continents."
-George Wallace, 1968 presidential campaign


"We don't necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people."
-Colonel Gerald Wellman, ROTC instructor


If you take out the killings, Washington actually has a very low crime rate.
-- Marion Barry, mayor of Washington, D.C.

ALL PRAISE THE IDIOTS!!!

Announcing the enterprising demises of the 2007 Darwin Award Winners

" Named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, the Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool by accidentally removing themselves from it. "
This was the year of the Squashed Darwin Award Winner. THREE independent groups of people attempted to remove the supports from beneath a barn, a water tower, and a heavy factory roof. In all cases, the structures collapsed without their aptly-named supports. Duh! This year brought us 16 jaw-droppping nominees, not counting new nominees for previous years and Near Misses (AKA Honorable Mentions) which I will cover in the next ish.
Enjoy the stories of the winners... and be glad you're not one!

RUNNER UP # FIVE:THE LAPTOP STILL WORKS (Confirmed True by Darwin)
"Driving is not a time to be practicing your multitasking skills," remarked CHP spokesman Tom Marshall, commenting on a 29-year-old computer tutor's decision to drive along Highway 99 in California while working on his laptop. He drifted over the center line, and was killed by oncoming traffic. CHP officers found Oscar's computer still running, plugged into the Honda Accord's cigarette lighter.
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RUNNER UP # FOUR:SUPERIOR MOMENTUM (Confirmed True by Darwin)
June 2007, Illinois Two Valparaiso men tested their reflexes by playing "chicken" with a train. Which man could stay on the rail the longest in the path of an oncoming train? At the stroke of midnight, the contest was decided. The winner, aptly named Patrick Stiff, lost his life. The train continued on, as the conductor was unaware that it had hit anyone.
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RUNNER UP # THREE:BARN DEMOLITION (Unconfirmed by Darwin)
January 2007, West Virginia) Three friends set out to dismantle a dilapidated barn one bracing winter afternoon. Speaking of bracing... One industrious man fired up his chainsaw and ripped through a crucial support post. Carrying the weight of a full barn roof, those wooden support beams were all that stood between the demolition worker and structural collapse. It was all fun and games until the roof, sans support, succumbed to the pull of gravity and flattened the man with the chainsaw. As a consolation prize, the deceased was indeed successful at demolishing the barn.
(Darwin notes, this story is unconfirmed, but no disputes have come to my attention, as usually happens with bogus stories.)

Addendum: This was the year of the Squashed Darwin Award Winner. Two other groups of people attempted to remove the supports from beneath a water tower, and a heavy factory roof. In both cases, the structure collapsed without their aptly-named supports. Duh!

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RUNNER UP # TWO:MOLE HUNT (Confirmed True by Darwin)
January 2007, East Germany One man's extraordinary effort to eradicate a mole from his property resulted in a victory for the mole. The metal rods he pounded into the ground and connected to a high-voltage power line, electrified the very ground the man stood upon. He was found dead at his holiday property on the Baltic Sea. Police had to trip the main circuit breaker before venturing onto the property.

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RUNNER UP # ONE:WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN (Confirmed Double Darwin Award)
June 2007, South Carolina A passing cabbie found a 21 year-old deceased couple laying naked in the road an hour before sunrise. Authorities were baffled. There were no witnesses, no trace of clothing, and no wrecked vehicles present. But investigators eventually found a clue high on the roof of a nearby building: two sets of neatly folded clothes. Safe sex takes on a whole new meaning when you are perched on the edge of a pyramid-shaped metal roof. "It appears as if [they] accidentally fell off the roof," Sgt. McCants said.

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AND THE 2007 DARWIN AWARD WINNER IS...THE ENEMA WITHIN (Confirmed True by Darwin)
May 2004, Texas Michael was an alcoholic. And not an ordinary alcoholic, but an alcoholic who liked to take his liquor... well, rectally. His wife said he was "addicted to enemas" and often used alcohol in this manner. The result was the same: inebriation. And tonight, Michael was in for one hell of a party.
Two 1.5 litre bottles of sherry, more than 100 fluid ounces, right up the old address!
When the rest of us have had enough, we either stop drinking or pass out. When Michael had had enough (and subsequently passed out) the alcohol remaining in his rectal cavity continued to be absorbed. The next morning, Michael was dead.
The 58-year-old did a pretty good job of embalming himself. Toxicology reports measured his blood alcohol level as 0.47%.
In order to qualify for a Darwin Award, a person must remove himself from the gene pool via an "astounding misapplication of judgment." Three litres of sherry up the butt can only be described as astounding. Unsurprisingly, his neighbors said they were surprised to learn of the incident.

Check out the site at: http://www.darwinawards.com/