Life's Funny Little Realities |Only In America |Food For Thought |Darwin Awards |Darwin Award Wanna'be |Redneck Pictures
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Life's Funny Little Realities

Life is an endless struggle full of frustrations and challenges, but eventually you find a hairstylist you like.

You're getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster.

Perhaps you know why women over fifty don't have babies. They would put them down somewhere and forget where they left them.

It's frustrating when you know all the answers and nobody bothers to ask you the questions.

Life doesn't just begin at forty; it also begins to show then.

Just when I was getting used to yesterday, along came today.

Sometimes I think I understand everything, then I regain consciousness.

You don't stop laughing because you grow old; you grow old because you stop laughing.

I don't mind the rat race, but I could do with a little more cheese.

It is bad to suppress laughter; it goes back down and spreads to your hips.

Age is important only if you're cheese or wine.

The only time a woman wishes she were a year older is when she is expecting a baby.

Freedom of the press means no-iron clothes.

Inside some of us is a thin person struggling to get out, but she can usually be sedated with a few pieces of chocolate cake.

Can it be a mistake that "STRESSED" is "DESSERTS" spelled backwards? [Return]

Only In America

A man from Charlotte, NC, having purchased a case of very expensive cigars, insured them against, among other things, FIRE. Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile, the man filed a claim against the insurance company, stating that the cigars were, "...lost in a series of small fires".

The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason that the man had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion. The man sued -- and won!

In delivering the ruling the judge, agreeing that the claim was frivolous, stated nevertheless that the man held a policy from the company in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure against fire, without defining what it considered to be "unacceptable fire", and was obliged to pay the claim. Rather than endure a lengthy and costly appeal process the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid the man $15,00 for the rare cigars he lost in "the fires".

After he cashed the check, however, the company had him arrested on 24 counts of arson. With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used against him, the man was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine! [Return]

Food for Thought

Should vegetarians eat animal crackers?

Why do they lock gas stations restrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?

If the cops arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to remain silent?

Why is the word abbreviation so long?

When companies ship Styrofoam, what do they pack it in?

If you're cross-eyed and have dyslexia, can you read all right?

What's another word for thesaurus?

Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle?

Can fat people go skinny-dipping?

Why do steam irons have a permanent press setting?

Why do you need a driver's license to buy liquor when you can't legally drink and drive?

If a book about failures doesn't sell, is it a success?

If the funeral procession is at night, do folks drive with their lights off?

If a turtle doesn't have a shell, is he homeless or naked?

Do cemetery workers prefer the graveyard shift?

What do you do when you see an endangered animal that eats only endangered plants and insects?

When it rains, why don't sheep shrink?

Why do people who know the least -- know it the loudest?

If someone has a mid-life crisis while playing hide & seek, does he automatically lose because he can't find himself?

If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation?

If, instead of talking to your plants, you yelled at them, would they still grow, only to be troubled and insecure?

Is there another word for synonym?

When sign makers go on strike, is anything written on their picket signs?

When you open a new bag of cotton balls, is the top one meant to be thrown away?

When your pet bird sees you reading the newspaper, does he wonder why you're just sitting there, staring at carpeting?

Where do forest rangers go to "get away from it all"?

Why isn't there a mouse-flavored cat food?

Why do they report power outages on TV?

Why are builders afraid to have a 13th floor but book publishers aren't afraid to have a Chapter 11?

Isn't it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do "practice"?

Before they invented drawing boards, what did they go back to?

How is it possible to have a civil war?

If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?

If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest have to drown too?

If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2?

If work is so terrific, how come they have to pay you to do it?

If you're born again, do you have two bellybuttons?

If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?

If the black box flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash, why isn't the whole airplane made out of the same stuff?

Why is there an expiration date on sour cream?

If most car accidents occur within five miles of home, why doesn't everyone just move 10 miles away?

If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?

Is Santa so jolly because he knows where all the bad girls live?

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section? She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

If all those psychics know the winning lottery numbers, why are they all still working? [Return]

DARWIN AWARDS

For the uninitiated, the Darwin Awards are given each year to the person who does the gene pool a big favor by getting themselves killed in a creative way. These are the latest nominees:

* BUXTON, N.C. 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. Witnesses 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. "You just wouldn't believe the outpouring of concern, people digging with their hands, using pails from kids," Dare County Sheriff Bert Austin said.

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

* 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.

* Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed in February in Selbyville, DE, 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.

* In February, according to police in Windsor, Ont., Daniel Kolta, 27, and Randy Taylor, 33, died in a head-on collision, thus earning a tie in the game of chicken they were playing with their snowmobiles.

* 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.

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

Fox Lake, IL - A man drowned after he and a friend inadvertently blew a hole in the bottom of their rowboat with a large firecracker. Daniel Wyman, 29, and his friend had tossed an M-250 firecracker into a lake to kill fish Sunday, said Jim Wipper, chief deputy corner. A gust of wind pushed their 14-foot aluminum boat over the firecracker, equivalent to a quarter stick of dynamite, and the boat sank. The friend swam to safety.

Police in George, WA issued a report on the events leading up to the deaths of Robert Uhlenake (24) and his friend, Ormond D. Young (27) at a Metallica concert. Uhlenake and Young were found dead at the Gorge Amphitheater after the show. Uhlenake was in a pickup that was on top of Young at the bottom of a 20-ft drop. Young was found with severe lacerations, numerous fractures, contusions, and a branch in his anal cavity. He also had been stabbed and his pants were in a tree above him, some 15 feet off the ground, adding to the mystery of the heretofore unexplained scene.

According to Commissioner-In-Charge Inoye Appleton, Uhlenake and Young had tried to get tickets for the sold-out concert. When they were unable to get any tickets, the two decided to stay in the lot and drink. Once the show began, and after the two had consumed 18 beers between them, they hit upon the idea of scaling the 7 foot wooden security fence around the perimeter of the site and sneaking in. They apparently moved the truck up to the edge of the fence and decided that Young would go over first and assist Uhlenake later. They had not counted on the fact that while it was a 7-foot fence on the parking lot side, there was a 23-foot drop on the other side. Young, who weighed 255 lbs and was quite inebriated, had jumped up and over the fence and promptly fell about half the 23-foot distance before a large tree branch broke his fall and his left forearm. Unfortunately, he also managed to get his shorts caught on the branch. Since he was now in a lot of pain and with no way to extricate himself and his shorts from the tree, he decided, seeing bushes down below, to cut his shorts off and fall to the ground. Upon cutting the last bit of fabric from himself, he suddenly plummeted to earth, losing grip on the knife. The "soft" bushes were actually holly bushes and landing in them caused a massive number of cuts. He also had the misfortune of landing squarely on a holly bush branch; effectively impaling himself. The knife, which he had accidentally released 15 ft up, now landed and stabbed him in his left thigh. Apparently, he was in a lot of pain. Enter his friend Robert.

Uhlenake had apparently observed the last bit of this and, despite his inebriated state, realized that Young was in trouble. He hit upon the idea of lowering a rope to his friend and pulling him up and over the fence. This was complicated by the fact that Uhlenake was outweighed by his friend by a good 100 lbs. Again, despite his state he realized he could use their truck to pull Young out. Unfortunately, because of his state, Uhlenake put the truck in reverse, rather than drive, broke through the fence, and landed on Young, killing him. Uhlenake was thrown out of the truck and subsequently died of internal injuries. "So that's how a dead 255-lb man with no pants on, with a truck on top of him and a stick up his a-- came to be" said Commissioner Appleton.

A San Anselmo man died when he hit a lift tower at the Mammoth Mountain ski area while riding down the slope on a foam pad, authorities said. Matthew David Hubal, 22, was pronounced dead at Centinela Mammoth Hospital. The accident occurred about 3 a.m. according to the Mono County Sheriff's Department. Hubal and his friends apparently had hiked up a ski run called Stump Alley and undid some yellow foam protectors from the lift towers, said Lieutenant Mike Donnelly of the Mammoth Lakes Police Department. The pads are used to protect skiers who might hit the towers. The group apparently used the pads to slide down the ski slope and Hubal crashed into a tower. It has since been investigated that the tower he hit was the one with its pad removed. [Return]

DARWIN AWARD WANNA-BE'S

These folks were trying for the Darwin Award but didn't quite make it. Hopefully for us all, one day they will succeed!

* 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.

** 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.

** Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover Township, N. J., in September. He and his wife Bonnie were injured by a quarter-stick of dynamite that blew up in their car. While driving around at 2 am, 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.

** A police report in the Martinez CA Record on April 9 described a one-car accident in town. According to police, a man was playing, "What's That Color?" with his small son while driving and held his breath to produce a red or blue color. However, he held his breath too long and passed out, and the car ran off the road. Neither person required medical attention.

** In Ohio, an unidentified man in his late twenties walked into a police station with a 9-inch wire protruding from his forehead and calmly asked officers to give him an X-ray to help him find his brain, which he claimed had been stolen. Police were shocked to learn that the man had drilled a 6-inch deep hole in his skull with a Black & Decker power drill and had stuck the wire in to try and find the missing brain.

** A Kincaid, West Virginia man popped a blasting cap into his mouth and bit down on it. The explosion blew off his lips, teeth and tongue, state police said Wednesday. Jerry Stromyer, 24, of Kincaid, bit the blasting cap as a prank during a party late Tuesday night, according to Cpl. M.D. Payne. Another man had placed it in an aquarium, hooked it to a battery, and was trying to explode it. When it didn't go off, Kincaid reached into the aquarium and said, "I'll show you how to set it off." He put it in his mouth and bit down. According to Cpl. Payne, the resulting explosion removed Stromyer's tongue, lips and all of his teeth. Stromyer was listed in guarded condition Wednesday with extensive facial injuries, according to a spokesman at Charleston Area Medical Division. "I just can't imagine anyone doing something like that," Payne said.

** Doctors at Portland's University Hospital said Wednesday that an Oregon man shot through the skull by a hunting arrow is lucky to be alive and will be released soon from the hospital. Tony Roberts, 25, lost his right eye last weekend during an initiation into a men's rafting club, Mountain Men Anonymous, in Grants Pass, Ore. A friend tried to shoot a beer can off his head, but the arrow entered Roberts' right eye. Doctors said had the arrow gone 1 millimeter to the left, a major blood vessel would have cut and Roberts would have died instantly. Neurosurgeon Dr. Johnny Delashaw at the University Hospital in Portland said the arrow went through 8 to 10 inches of brain, with the tip protruding at the rear of his skill, yet somehow managed to miss all major blood vessels. Delashaw also said had Robert tried to pull the arrow out on his own he surely would have killed himself. Roberts admitted afterwards that he and his friends had been drinking that afternoon. Said Roberts, "I feel so dumb about this." No charges have been filed but the Josephine County district attorney's office said the initiation stunt is under investigation.

** An Indiana County, Pennsylvania man shot himself in the mouth after he mistook a .22 caliber pistol for a medicine inhaler. The man, 49, kept both the inhaler and the gun in the same drawer and accidentally shot himself. He was airlifted to Presbyterian University Hospital in Pittsburgh where he was listed in fair condition. [Return]