April Showers Of Snakes
Hi friends, welcome [back] to the Darwin Awards newsletter! If you are joining us from 1999 or 2009 that is because I rescued your email address from the old newsletter list and gave you a free subscription to this Substack listserv. Pour yourself a drink and relax with weird news.
Maryland Serpent Invasions
Part I Honorable Mention.
November 2021, USA | A homeowner in Montgomery County was fed up with a snake infestation but instead of calling a professional ( ominous bell ) they opted to smoke the basement with burning coals on the basement floor! And burned that house to the ground, earning an Honorable Mention by surviving the genius maneuver.
Maryland Serpent Invasions
Part II Darwin Award
January 2022, USA | Authorities making a 'welfare check' found David Riston, 49, dead alone in the house--alone except for numerous species of snakes, some illegal, some venomous! Suspicions were eventually confirmed by autopsy: the 49-year-old human did indeed succumb to ‘accidental' snake envenomation... [read more]
Questioning
My Initial Judgement.
Boggled by the news! A Russian soldier evidently heisted a MacBook by stuffing it into the armor pocket of his flak vest—replacing a protective ballistic plate and costing him his life. Doh! Not confirmed by Reuters—and then someone pointed out it was ‘probably his MacBook’—perhaps this invading soldier had to carry his belongings with him for fear of theft? This is not a cared-about army, tossed into Ukraine without leadership or even the support of one another.
Kick the dog and the dog bites the neighbor,
Yes It was dirt-dumb of an invading army to bunker down in the radioactive Red Forest of Chernobyl, confirmed by Reuters. Soldiers were camped in a radioactive dust cloud, but why? Top brass should decide where to setup. Lacking direction, the invaders are forced to live ad-hoc in enemy territory. Troops are evidently not valued by the commanders of the invasion. Life is cheap to those who wage this war.
A dehumanizing war waged by a dehumanized horde.
All are losers in this conflict.
But on a brighter note!
Pastor Shawn Meets His Maker
Darwin Award Winner!
18 March 2022, Florida | Boating on Lake Seminole was a delight to Shawn and his friend, up until his boat began to founder. And he had no life vest! But no worry. Other boaters on the lake called the Pinellas County Sheriff Rescue team, and on Friday afternoon shortly after 2pm they were safe on land again. Catastrophe averted OMG Kiss the Earth!
But Pastor Shawn, 39, evidently wanted more of the same…
Mobile Friendly Slush!
wendy’s darwinawards.com update
Today the fight against endemic and epidemic stupidity has a mobile-friendly spotlight: Check out the new improved Slush Pile. Wendy is back in Emacs, etag’ing, css’ing and javascript’ing her way out of a wet paper bag. You are welcome to Submit a nominee of your choosing—that page will take you back to the 1999 website layout, but it still works! More updates in progress—we are soon changing to a Pelican content system.
Wise ‘sapiens’ consult the realtime Slush-Pile juggernaut of submissions for 2022 Darwin Awards: up to the minute news on who’s dead as a dodo—and who oughta be dead but escaped by the hair of their chinny chin chin.