Feature

The Darwin Awards

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The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human gene pool by honouring those who remove themselves from it. Of necessity, this honor is generally bestowed posthumously ... but not always.Mothers often warn that firecrackers can blow your hand off, but as a 26-year-old Australian learned, they can also remove your gonads from the gene pool. An ambulance rushed to a park in a town called Illawarra, having receiving reports that a man was haemorrhaging from his behind. The mercifully unidentified man had placed a lit firecracker between the cheeks of his buttocks in a Jackass-style stunt that may or may not have been hilarious had it gone to plan.Unfortunately this individual stumbled backwards on to the inserted firework. Which then went off.Emergency surgeon Dr. McCurdie said the resulting wound looked like “a war injury”. More detail? The explosion was forced upward and “blasted a great hole in the pelvis, ruptured the urethra, and injured muscles in the floor of the pelvis”. As well as stinging a bit at the time, the episode rendered the man incontinent as well as sexually dysfunctional. This makes him eligible for his first Darwin Award while still living. “We do caution people against these acts,” said Acting Senior Sergeant John Klepczarek of the local police.