Announcing the 1998 Darwin Awards...

I look forward to the DARWIN AWARDS every year!!! They have finally been released! For those not familiar with the Darwins, it's an annual honour given to the person who did the universal human gene pool the biggest service by getting killed in the most extraordinarily stupid way. As always competition this year has been keen. Some candidates appear to have trained their whole lives for this event.

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DARWIN AWARD NOMINEES

1. In September in Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in two feet of water after squeezing head first through an 18-inch wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.

2. In October, a 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who "totally zoned when he ran," according to his wife, accidentally jogged off a 200-foot high cliff on his daily run.

3. Buxton, NC: A man died on a beach when an 8-foot-deep hole he had dug into the sand caved in as he sat inside it. Beach goers said Daniel Jones, 21, dug the hole for fun, or protection from the wind, and had been sitting in a beach chair at the bottom Thursday afternoon when it collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet of sand. People on the beach, on the outer banks, used their hands and shovels, trying to claw their way to Jones, a resident of Woodbridge, VA, but could not reach him. It took rescue workers using heavy equipment almost an hour to free him while about 200 people looked on. Jones was pronounced dead at a hospital.

4. In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, CA, as he fell face-first through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was burglarizing. Death was caused when the long flashlight he had placed in his mouth (to keep his hands free) rammed into the base of his skull as he hit the floor.

5. According to police in Dahlonega, GA, ROTC cadet Nick Berrena, 20, was stabbed to death in January by fellow cadet Jeffrey Hoffman, 23 who was trying to prove that a knife could not penetrate the flak vest Berrena was wearing.

6. Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed in February in Selbyville, Del., as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver loaded with four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger.

7. In February, according to police, Randy Taylor, 33, and friend died in a head-on collision, thus earning a tie in the game of chicken they were playing with their snowmobiles.

8. [Ineligible, better luck next year!] TAOS, NM - A woman went to a poison control center after eating three birth-control vaginal inserts. Her English was so bad she had to draw a picture describing how she believed she had poisoned herself. A translator arrived shortly thereafter and confirmed doctors' suspicions. Marie Valishnokov thought the inserts were some kind of candy gum, being unable to read the foil wrappers. After the third one, she realized something was wrong when her throat and mouth began to fill with a sour-tasting foam. She ran for the Poison Control Center, only a few blocks away where doctors were able to flush the foam from her mouth, throat, and stomach with no ill effects.

(1) In Guthrie, Okla., in October, Jason Heck tried to kill a millipede with a shot from his .22-caliber rifle, but the bullet ricocheted off a rock near the hole and hit pal Antonio Martinez in the head, fracturing his skull.

(2) In Elyria, Ohio, in October, Martyn Eskins, attempting to clean out cobwebs in his basement, declined to use a broom in favor of a propane torch and caused a fire that burned the first and second floors of his house.

(3) Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover Township, NJ, in September, and his wife Bonnie was also injured, by a quarter-stick of dynamite that blew up in their car. While driving around at 2AM, the bored couple lit the dynamite and tried to toss it out the window to see what would happen, but they apparently failed to notice that the window was closed.

(4) Taking "Amateur Night" Too Far: In Betulia, Colombia, an annual festival in November includes five days of amateur bullfighting. This year, no bull was killed, but dozens of matadors we injured, including one gored in the head and one Bobbittized. Said one participant, "It's just one bull against [a town of] a thousand Morons."