Press Release: Paris, 25 August 1997

Joint Presentation Ceremony in View for ‘97

There are occasions in life in which a truly extraordinary event or discovery takes place that cuts across all the old ways of thinking and the various categories that we have become accustomed to working with for years. This of course is a paradigm change, and it may interest you to note that the International Zero Emissions Joke Contest ‘CCXXI has recently gone through such a major tectonic shift -- much as the world saw with Darwin, Marx and Freud a few years back.

From many years now the IZEJC has been widely reported, with the annual awards ceremony getting media coverage that is rivaled only by Super Bowls, Olympics and Best of Lucy reruns. The IZEJC 'CCXXI award ceremony is certain to continue this century-long tradition.

However, as a proof of the exceptional vitality of the powers behind this competition, and of course the discerning powers of your Warden, we have decided this year to consider a Wild Card entry submitted by an anonymous reader who picked this up in a recent UPS news release by a certain Ms. Tracy Thompson. To quote Ms. T:

"The Darwin Award is supposedly given each year to the person who does the human gene pool a favor by eliminating himself in the dumbest possible way. The latest award supposedly went to the person responsible for the pile of smoldering metal that some Arizona highway Patrol officers found firmly embedded in the side of a cliff in the desert, at a point where the road curved. The smoldering metal turned out to be the remains of a car".

"The Arizona crime lab, so the story goes, figured out how it all happened. Somebody had gotten hold of a JATO, or jet assisted take-off unit, also known as a solid fuel jet. This person had driven his Chevrolet Impala (incidentally, GM, please contact us for our bank account co-ordinates so that you can properly compensate this reference) out into the dessert, strapped the JATO unit to the back of his car, and fired that baby up. When he hit the curve, the crime lab estimated, he was going between 250 and 300 miles an hour (between 402.85 and 482.70 kilometers per hour). The Chevy’s brakes (that account number again is...) were completely burned away, according to the crime lab, indicating that the driver may have had second thoughts about his experiment ".

We feel that this true fact, which Ms. T reports could be a Netmyth, though we ourselves have been unable to verify this, represents one of those rare occasions for recognition that cuts across the old categories in powerful new ways. Hence we respectfully submit it for consideration for IZEJC CCXXI, despite the fact that the person who submitted it first failed to identify herself (although within the last days, we have heard the same story from alert zero emissions person, Samuel Herschbein, who also points out to those who do not happen to know that: "Solid-fuel rockets don't have an 'off'... once started, they burn at full thrust 'till the fuel is all gone ".) The final decision on this matter will be influenced by your responses.

P.S. The following comment was received (28 August) received from an appreciative visitor: "I looked at your Darwin joke. You have a strange sense of humor."

__Back to IZEJC 'CCXXI HomePage