SevenDays: Si vistéis los últimos videos colgados y pensabáis que no se podía superar...

... os equivocábais. Llegan los DARWIN AWARDS, bastante conocidos en otros lugares del mundo y tan desconocidos hasta hoy por estos lares. Sorry, pero habrá que practicar el inglés.

Estos premios DARWIN se crearon para reconocer a aquellos humanos que con sus actos favorecen la selección natural, es decir, se autoeliminan o se producen tales daños que no pueden reproducirse. Hay van unos ejemplos, aunque mi preferido es el caso de un empresario que presumiendo de ventanas ante unos jóvenes que pretendían trabajar en la empresa se puso a aporrear los cristales presumiendo de su calidad con tan mala suerte que el cristal cedió y el hombre cayó al vacío. Cierto.

Macho Men?

Some men will got to extraordinary lengths to prove how macho they are. Frenchman Pierre Pumpille recently shunted a stationary car two feet by headbutting it. "Women thought I was a god," he explained from his hospital bed.

Deity or not, however, Pumpille is a veritable girl's blouse compared to Polish farmer Krystof Azninski, who staked a strong claim to being Europe's most macho man by cutting off his own head in 1995. Azninski, 30, had been drinking with friends when it was suggested they strip naked and play some "men's games". Initially they hit each other over the head with frozen turnips, but then one man upped the ante by seizing a chainsaw and cutting off the end of his foot. Not to be outdone, Azninski grabbed the saw and, shouting "Watch this then," he swung at his own head and chopped it off.

"It's funny," said one companion, "when he was young he put on his sister's underwear. But he died like a man."

Playing with Cats

(2 January 1996, India) A tiger killed one man and mauled another at the Calcutta zoo yesterday when they tried to put a marigold garland around its neck in a New Year's greeting.

Prakesh Tiwari, the dead man, and Suresh Rai had been drinking before they bought the floral garlands and crossed the moat around the tiger's enclosure, authorities said. "I was shocked to see the two young men weaving about in front of a tiger with garlands in their hands, " said Rakesh Banerjee, who witnessed the attack that triggered panic and a near stampede in the zoo.

The men, both in their 20's, were trying to put the garland on a 13-year old male Royal Bengal tiger named "Shiva" after the Hindu god of destruction. When Rai threw the garland around Shiva's neck, the tiger attacked him. His friend Tiwari intervened, kicking the tiger in the face. The tiger released Rai, and attacked and killed Tiwari.

"I saw it all; the tiger turned and jumped on the other young man and put its head on the man's neck, and within moments, the man was apparently dead, his head dangling," Banerjee said.

The two were reportedly devotees of the goddess Durga and had gone to "worship" the tiger. Immediately after the incident, an angry crowd went on a stone-pelting spree in which two children and a woman were injured.

Happy Camper

(Camping Season 2003, Melbourne, Australia) Aussie emergency firefighters were called to extinguish a car fire on the Monash Freeway, a beltway that encircles Melbourne. When the firefighters arrived, they found an agitated young man watching as flames consumed his Ford.

After extinguishing the blaze, the firefighters inspected the small car to find out what had caused the conflagration. First they found that the whole car was completely stuffed with camping gear. There was barely room for the driver. Every space was crammed. Then they opened the hood.

The driver had packed for an extended camping trip, but had run out of room in the small passenger compartment. So he decided to use all that wasted space under the hood, such as the space between the motor and the hot exhaust pipes.

Among the left-over items was a bottle of gas used to fuel the barbecue grill.

Amazingly, the superheated bottle of gas did not explode, and the young man suffered only Ford flambé instead of being blown to bits and collecting the Darwin Award he so richly deserved.

Para los que como yo no entienden ni papa, encontré un video en el que con dibujitos muy monos se explican las hazañas de alguno de los premiados.