Dude! You're like totally bumming me out

The Darwin Awards missed out on a golden opportunity yesterday, just off the coast of Galveston, Texas, thanks to those pesky, meddling police.

Surfer Arrested Off Shore of Galveston as Rita Approaches

A surfer off the shore of Galveston, Texas, was arrested Friday for not adhering to evacuation orders and surfing the large waves created by an approaching Hurricane Rita, according to a Local 6 News report. The man, who was not identified, was taken into custody by police after coming out of the surf.

If we hadn't just witnessed the near total destruction of New Orleans and most of the Gulf Coast, I suppose you could possibly give this guy at least partial benefit of the doubt because there have been many hurricane warnings issued over the years which turned out to be relatively "non-event" type hits. Some people just stopped taking them as seriously as they should. But after Katrina? I find it impossible that somebody could live so far under a rock that they didn't hear about that. And if you live in Galveston, you'd think you would be particularly sensitive to such warnings simply because of their history. (Galveston was completely erased in 1900 resulting in the deaths of thousands of people.)

And yet, 12 hours before the storm is due to hit, this guy is down there surfing. I know that we actually can't operate emergency services this way, but do you really want to risk the lives of the police and other emergency workers down at the beach for a guy like that? If he wants to surf the hurricane tidal surge with a Category 5 hurricane bearing down on him, this might just be somebody that we don't really need putting more chlorine in the gene pool. It might have been better, in the long view, to let him get on with his surfing and have the police spend their time getting people (like Ron's sister) out of the traffic jam.