The Darwin Awards are presented every year as a darkly comedic tribute to those individuals who bow out of the gene pool a little bit early, thereby lowering the bar for the rest of us. This year's winners and nominees for "stupidest ways to die" might seem a little morbid, but at least the 2008 contenders all had one thing in common: Most seem to have replicated their ideas from what they were watching on their boob tube. See? Television can cause you bodily harm.

Kill the Rabbit

A man. A snowmobile. A rabbit. Add to those three, seemingly unrelated things a bunch of alcohol and you get a Darwin Award. A young man who tried to hunt a bunny in his giant motorized plow was foiled when the hare dipped into a culvert and drove the snowmobile engine-first between the rocks. The resulting explosion knocked the hunter 20 feet into the air, which definitely will kill a person, contrary to whatever Warner Brothers cartoon logic you've been following.

Old Yeller

Let's just say about this one that the best way to get your hunting dog to drop the deer bone it's gnawing on isn't to swing your rifle at it like a club. Because we all know how that ends up. Luckily, the dog wasn't the one that ended up getting shot in the stomach.

Taking Fargo to Heart

If you have to prune your trees, make sure that you place your wood chipper somewhere other than directly beneath the wobbly ladder you're standing on. Unless of course you're trying to emulate the gruesome end of Steve Buscemi's character in the famous Coen brothers' film.

Dorothy's Dreamland

This guy watched the poppy seed episode of Seinfeld (or Wizard of Oz) one too many times. A dope fiend named Darren thought he would cut out the middleman (his dealer) by going straight to the source. Unfortunately, Darren was a little confused about about botany, so when he went to the gardening store and bought 100% poppy seeds, he was unaware that the kind they sell don't contain the magic opium levels. But hey, after Darren boiled down the seeds and injected it into his veins (twice!) he did have a kind of overdose: At the hospital, technicians found a bunch of very small seed-like objects floating around his lungs.

Up, Up, Down

The winner of the 2008 Darwin awards, a dead priest took his cues from Danny Deckchair and the upcoming Pixar film Up when he decided to fly 20,000 miles over the Atlantic Ocean to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. How did Brazilian Father Adelir Antonio de Carli plan to breeze like the birds? In an armchair attached to 1,000 helium balloons, natch. Eight hours into his flight, Carli called authorities and mentioned trouble, his body was found three months later.