Encyclopedia of Humor

LAUNCHED ON THE FOURTH OF JULY

Three young men in Oklahoma were enjoying the coming Fourth of July holiday and wanted to test fire some fireworks. The only real problem was, their launch pad and seating arrangements were atop a several hundred thousand gallon fuel distillation storage tank. Oddly enough, fumes were ignited, producing a fireball seen for miles. They were launched several hundred feet into the air and found dead some 250 yards from their respective seats.

GRAVITY KILLS

A 22-year-old Reston man was found dead yesterday after he tried to use accessory straps (the stretchy little ropes with hooks on each end) to bungee jump off a 70-foot railroad trestle, police said. Fairfax County police said Eric A. Barcia, a fast-food worker, taped a bunch of these straps together, wrapped an end around one foot, anchored the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, jumped … and hit the pavement. Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators think Barcia was alone because his car was found nearby. “The length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the ground.” Police say the apparent cause of death was “major trauma”. An autopsy is scheduled for later in the week.

A man buys a brand new Grand Cherokee for $30,000+, and has $400.00+ in monthly payments. He’s pretty proud of this rig and gets ahold of his friend to do some male bonding with the new ride. They go duck hunting and of course all the lakes are frozen. These two Atomic Brains go to the lake with their guns, the dog, the beer and of course the new vehicle.

They drive out onto the ice. Now, they want to make some kind of a natural landing area to attract ducks – something the decoys will float on.

Remember it’s all ice, and in order to make a hole large enough to interest a flock of ducks – a hole big enough to entice ducks to land, they needed to use a little more than an ice hole drill…

Sooo, out of the back of the brand-new Jeep Grand Cherokee comes a stick of dynamite with a short 40-second fuse. Now to their credit, these two rocket scientists DID take into consideration that if they placed the stick of dynamite on the ice at a location far from where they (and the new Grand Cherokee) would be waiting and ran back quickly, they would risk slipping on the ice as they ran from the imminent explosion and could possibly go up in smoke with the resulting blast. After a little deliberation, they come up with lighting and THROWING the dynamite, which is what they end up doing.

Remember a couple of paragraphs back when I mentioned the vehicle, the beer, the guns AND THE DOG???? Yes, the dog. The driver’s pet Black Lab (used for retrieving – especially things thrown by the owner). You guessed it, the dog takes off at a high rate of doggy speed on the ice, reaching the stick of dynamite with the burning 40-second fuse about the time it hits the ice – all to the woe of the two idiots which are now yelling, stomping, waving arms and wondering what the hell to do now…

The dog is happy and now heads back toward the “hunters” with the stick of dynamite. I think we all can picture the ever-increasing concern on the part of the brain trust, as the loyal Labrador Retriever approaches. The Bozos now are REALLY waving their arms – yelling even louder and generally feeling kinda panicked… Now finally one of the guys decides to think – something that neither had done before this moment, grabs a shotgun and shoots the dog. This sounds better than it really is, because the shotgun was loaded with #8 duck shot and hardly effective enough to stop a Black Lab. The dog DID stop for a moment, slightly confused, but then continued on. Another shot, and this time the dog – still standing, became REALLY confused & of course scared…

Thinking that these two Nobel Prize Winners have gone TOTALLY INSANE, the pooch takes off to find cover with a now extremely short fuse still burning on the stick of dynamite. The cover the dogs finds? Underneath the brand new Grand Cherokee worth 30-some thousand dollars the $400.00+ monthly payment vehicle that is sitting nearby on the lake ice.

BOOM! Dog dies, vehicle sinks to bottom of lake, and these two “Co-Leaders of the Known Universe” are left standing there with this “I can’t EVEN believe this happened to me” look on their faces. Later, the owner of the vehicle calls his insurance company and is promptly informed that sinking a vehicle in a lake by illegal use of explosives is NOT covered on his policy…He had yet to make his first car payment.

It is once again time to vote for-the Darwin Award nominees for 1997. As you may already know, the Darwin Awards are for those nominees who will not be contributing to the gene pool (thankfully).

The 1997 nominees are:

NOMINEE No.1: [San Jose Mercury News] An unidentified man, using a shotgun like a club to break a former girlfriend’s windshield, accidentally shot himself to death when the gun discharged, blowing a hole in his gut.

NOMINEE No.2 [Kalamazoo Gazette] James Burns, 34, of Alamo,Mich., was killed in March as he was trying to repair what. police described as a “farm-type truck.” Burns got a friend to drive the truck on a highway while Bums hung underneath so that he could asthe source of a troubling noise. Burns’ clothes caught on something, however, and the other man found Burns “wrapped in the drive shaft.”

NOMINEE No.3 [Hickory Daily Record] Ken Charles Barger, 47, accidentally shot himself to death in December in Newton, N.C., when, awakening to the sound of a ringing telephone beside his bed, he reached for the phone but grabbed instead a Smith & Wesson. 38 Special, which discharged when he drew it to his ear.

NOMINEE No.4 [UIPI, Toronto] Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in a downtown Toronto Skyscraper crashed through a pane with his shoulder and plunged 24 floors to his death. A police spokesman said Garry Hoy, 39, fell into the courtyard of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower early Friday evening as he was explaining the strength of the building’s windows to visiting law students. Hoy previously had conducted demonstrations of window strength according to police reports. Peter Lawyers, managing partner of the firm Holden Day Wilson, told the Toronto Sun newspaper that Hoy was “one of the best and brightest” members of the 200-man association.

NOMINEE No.5 [Bloomburg News Service] A terrible diet and room with no ventilation are being blamed for the death of a man who was killed by his own gas. There was no mark on his body but autopsy showed large amounts of methane gas in his system. His diet had consisted primarily of beans and cabbage(and a couple of other things). It was just the right combination of foods. It appears that the man died in his sleep from breathing the poisonous cloud that was hanging over his bed. Had he been outside or had his windows been opened, it wouldn’t have been fatal. But the man was shut, up in his, near airtight bedroom. According to the article, “He was a big man with a huge capacity for creating “this deadly gas.” Three of the rescuers got sick and one was hospitalized.

NOMINEE No..6 [The News of the Weird.] Michael Anderson Godwin made News of the Weird posthumously. He had spent several years awaiting South Carolina’s electric chair on a murder conviction before having his sentence reduced to life in prison. Whilst sitting on a metal toilet in his cell and attempting to fix his small TV set, he bit into a wire and was electrocuted.

NOMINEE NO.7["The. Indianapolis Star"] A cigarette lighter may have triggered fatal explosion – Dunkirk, Indiana. A Jay County man using a cigarette lighter to check the barrel of a muzzle loader was killed Monday night when the weapon discharged in his face, sheriffs investigators said. Gregory David Pryor, 19, died in his parents’ rural Dunkirk home about 11:30 p.m. Investigators said Pryor was cleaning a 54-caliber muzzle loader that had not been firing properly. He was using the lighter to look into the barrel when the gunpowder ignited.

NOMINEE No.8 lAP, St. Louis] Robert Puelo, 32, was apparently being disorderly in a St. Louis market. When the clerk threatened to call police, Puelo grabbed a hot dog, shoved it in his mouth, and walked out without paying for it. Police found him unconscious in front of the store; paramedics removed the six-inch wiener from his throat, where it had choked him to death.

NOMINEE No.9 [Unknown] To poacher Marino Malerba, who shot a stag standing above him on an overhanging rock-and was killed instantly when it fell on him.

NOMINEE No.10 [Associated Press, Kincaid] Blasting Cap Explodes in Man’s Mouth at Party. A man at a party popped a blasting cap into his mouth and bit down, triggering an explosion that blew off his lips, teeth, and tougue state police said Wednesday. Jerry Stromyer, 24, of Kincaid, bit the blasting cap as a prank during a party late Tuesday night, said Cpl. M.D.Payne. Another man had it in an aquarium hooked to a battery, and was trying to explode it,” Payne said. “It wouldn’t go off and this guy said, ‘I’II show you how to set it off.”

Yet Another Darwin award candidate – or pair of candidates — this just might be the winner!

IDIOTS & RETAIL

I was signing the receipt for my credit card purchase when the clerk noticed that I had never signed my name on the back of the credit card. She informed me that she could not complete the transaction unless the card was signed. When I asked why, she explained that it was necessary to compare the signature on the credit card with the signature I just signed on the receipt. So I signed the credit card in front of her. She carefully compared that signature to the one I signed on the receipt. As luck would have it, they matched.

IDIOTS & GEOGRAPHY

After interviewing a particularly short-spoken job candidate, I described the person to my boss as rather monosyllabic. My boss said, “Really? Where is Monosyllabia?”. Thinking that he was just kidding, I played along and said that it was just south of Elbonia. He replied, “Oh, you mean over by Croatia?”

ADVICE FOR IDIOTS

An actual tip from page 16 of the Hewlett Packard Environmental, Health & Safety Handbook for Employees: “Blink your eyelids periodically to lubricate your eyes.”

IDIOTS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

I live in a semi-rural area. We recently had a new neighbor call the local township administrative office to request the removal of the Deer Crossing sign on our road. The reason: Many deer were being hit by cars and he no longer wanted them to cross there.

IDIOTS & COMPUTERS

My neighbor works in the operations department in the central office of a large bank. Employees in the field call him when they have problems with their computers. One night he got a call from a woman in one of the branch banks who had this question: “I’ve got smoke coming from the back of my terminal. Do you guys have a fire downtown?”

IDIOTS ARE EASY TO PLEASE

I was sitting in my science class, when the teacher commented that the next day would be the shortest day of the year. My lab partner became visibly excited, cheering and clapping. I explained to her that the amount of daylight changes, not the actual amount of time. Needless to say, she was very disappointed.

IDIOTS IN FOOD SERVICE

My daughter went to a local Taco Bell and ordered a taco. She asked the individual behind the counter for “minimal lettuce.” He said he was sorry, but they only had iceberg.

AN IDIOT’S IDIOT

Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message “He’s lying” was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn’t telling the truth. Believing the “lie detector” was working, the suspect confessed.