2005 Darwin Awards out

http://www.menshealth.co.uk/talk/thread.phtml/post744847/

No. 10 had me in stitches.

When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked on a Seattle street, he got much more than he bargained for. Police arrived at the scene to find a very sick man curled up next to a motor home near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline and plugged his siphon hose into the motor home’s sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges, saying that it was the best laugh he’d had in years

I haven’t seen anything that funny in a long time.

Those aren’t actually Darwin Awards. The Darwin Awards “commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it.” Most of those stories don’t involve anyone dying, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen them all long before this year. They’re probably all made up too, but even some of the ones on the Darwin Awards site are, and I don’t care quite enough to look them all up on snopes.

Wholly, maybe you missed the first bit:

Darwin Award Winners:

  1. When his 38-caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim
    during a holdup in Long Beach, California, would be robber James Elliot did
    something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried
    the trigger again. This time it worked… And now, the honorable mentions:

It seems there was only 1 actual award this year.

I think Wholly’s right. Most of these are not even Darwin candidates, since very few of them involve death or castration. Sounds like an imposter list. Also, I highly doubt even one of them is true.

The Darwin Awards always have had “Honorable mentions” which are not death related. I don’t see any evidence that this isn’t the actual awards, except that there is so few awards, so I kind of felt it was like a “trailer” to the actual awards.

That exact same story has been around for years - I even remember seeing it on a cartoon once. I can’t recall the name of the show but it always started with “This is a true story, it happened to a friend of a friend of mine…” .

Here’s the obligatory Snopes Reference