Wednesday, May 25

Lion Mutilates Forty-Two at Spaghetti Harvest

Sometimes a story comes along that makes us wonder if planet earth was put here by mistake. This is one of those stories from the BBC.

The entire Cambodian Midget Fighting League took on an African Lion after an angry fan challenged the President of the CMFL, Sihamoni, who readily accepted. The Cambodian Government received a 50% commission on each ticket sold, and demanded that no cameras be allowed in the arena.
The fight was called in only 12 minutes, after which 28 fighters were declared dead, while the other 14 suffered severe injuries including broken bones and lost limbs, rendering them unable to fight back.

Sihamoni was quoted before the fight stating that he felt since his fighters out-numbered the lion 42 to 1, that they “… could out-wit and out-muscle [it].”

Unfortunately, he was wrong.
This surreal glimpse of the human condition is so wrong on so many levels that we won't even bother to go off on a rant about it. Anyway, we just realized that it is an amazingly well constructed hoax that fooled us for longer than we will ever admit. The author explains it was all done to convince a friend that the lion was invincible.
I created this 'disclaimer' page explaining the article's invalidity. This was not only to hopefully protect myself from the BBC or Cambodian Midget Fighting League (if one exists), but to also protect the reputability of the BBC and Cambodia itself, since the article isn't exactly politically correct and may offend some readers. I apologize to anyone or any groups that may have been offended by the article, and hope that they will understand it was all in good fun.
Sounds fairly reasonable. We will comfort ourselves with this story of the "The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest" that took in millions.
On April 1, 1957 the British news show, Panorama, broadcast a segment about a bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland. The success of the crop was attributed to an unusually mild winter. The audience heard Richard Dimbleby, the show's highly respected anchor, discussing the details of the spaghetti crop as they watched a rural Swiss family pulling pasta off spaghetti trees and placing it into baskets.
The excuse given for that mass lapse in reason is that the British public of the 1950s was unfamiliar with spaghetti. Here is the video of the broadcast from the real BBC, courtesy of the Museum of Hoaxes which is certainly worth a visit.

Seriously though, the lion fight really seemed like something people might arrange for each other and that many accepted the spaghetti harvest is even easier to appreciate. After all, think of all the people who have actually taken Marx and Lenin seriously.

OK, OK ... except for that cheap shot at revolutionary democracy, readers should note that this post is entirely fee of any political subtext and that it has absolutely no 'wax and gold' impressions or nuggets to be found anywhere by intention or implication.

# posted by ethiopundit : 5/25/2005


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