Urban legends coming true

 

The wackiest tales of humanity are actually happening somewhere

A PRIEST, A BLONDE and an Irishman walk into a bar. The barman says: “Is this some kind of joke?”

No, actually the barman didn’t say that. I said it. I was having a drink with a group which included the aforementioned trio, and I had just noticed how real life was replicating the opening of a thousand jokes.
*
My comment reminded the Irishman of something he had read in a newspaper. You know those far-fetched tales in which a villain commits a crime, then eats the weapon? Last week it really happened. A man threatened staff in a shop in the US with what looked like a gun beneath his T-shirt. It turned out to be a banana, which he ate before the cops arrived. (Although I once met a villain in a Beijing nightclub who was so tough he could have eaten a real gun.) 

*
The Irishman’s tale in turn reminded me of a story I saw on Reuters. A Taiwanese man sat on a toilet and felt something bite his “undercarriage”. He leapt off the toilet to discover that there was a snake in the bowl. “Urban legend comes true” was the headline.

*
One of the others in the group reported he had that day read a news story headlined: “Crocodile walks into a bar” about an incident at Howard Springs, near Darwin, Australia.

*
What does all this mean? Humanity has reached such an extreme level of weirdness that even the wackiest jokes and stories we swap at bars are actually happening somewhere on the planet.

It is only a matter of time, I told my friends, that a cow will fall from the sky as celebrated in a famous urban legend sometimes set in the Pacific and sometimes the Atlantic.

*
That night I noticed that even the silly fake stories in Internet chain mails are coming true. For more than six years I have received panicked emails saying that Yahoo was shortly to shut its website hosting service. Yahoo recently announced that it was doing just that. Perhaps they got the idea from a chain mail?

*
In one of the oldest urban legends, Americans find huge, dangerous snakes or alligators living in the sewers after having been flushed down the toilet by pet-owners. A May 22 report in Science Daily says snakes abandoned by pet owners have grown into 100-kilo monsters which are terrorizing homeowners in Florida.

*
Where will it all end? The following day, a friend at an open air cafe showed me a cutting from the UK press. A cow was found in a swimming pool in the UK. No one saw how it got there. Homeowner Mark Ryder, a travel agent, heard a splash and ran outside. He told reporters: “There she was: a cow staring at me from the shallow end.”

*
You know what all this means, don’t you? If all these wacky stories are actually coming true, this indicates that someone from Nigeria is going to send me US$40 million. Woo hoo! Then I can buy an island and make those desert island jokes come true.

It was a nice dream, but I was brought back to harsh reality when it started to pour with rain. What a deluge. It took us an hour and a half to finish our soup.

 

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Comments

[Julie]

Here is a less frightening urban legend come true. The bank makes a mistake and deposits millions in your account!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/25/2579774.htm

Just remember not to post to facebook from your island hideaway.

[sej]

Nury, what you say is not necessarily that far fethced...

In quantum mechanics, you can take a region of space, and put an impenetrable barrier in the middle. Then when you place an electron on one side of the barrier, there is a chance, the electron will "tunnel" through the barrier and appear on the other side.

Taking this a step further, it is possible, although admittedly highly unlikely, I will become a millionaire overnight through the same randomness of quantum physics.

Likewise, there is a chance, any, or even all of the urban myths above, will come true at some given point in time.

If the universe never ends, and hence there is enough time, then it is perhaps a foregone conclusion that all of the above will in fact eventually happen, and indeed, perhaps all at the same time.

[sej]

Any bank tellers out there? Look away now!

Julie,

I worked at a bank's IT helpdesk for a period of time... and the stories of the calls the guys would take from the branch staff were amazing... let's call the bank Acme.

Helpdesk: I've reset your password to 'acme'.
Caller: How do you spell 'acme'?
(And it's plastered all over the walls of the branch).

Helpdesk: I've reset your password to 'acme1', all in lowercase.
Caller: What about the 1?

Helpdesk: I've reset your password to 'acme', all in lowercase.
Caller: Is that big letters or little letters?

And these are the people who look after your money...

[Nury]

Thanks, Julie, love the story about the couple who fled with millions of dollars -- their story would make a great book or movie. While normally one frowns upon breaking the law, I must admit I would be tempted to do what they did just for the fun of it.

And Sej, hmm, I love probability games like the one in your first posting above.

If the universe is infinite then it is as you say, a foregone conclusion that all the things above will happen all at once, somewhere.

The tricky thing is, how to get there.

Sci-fi story idea coming up: guy sets up an intergalactic taxi transport system which guarantees to get you to the most interesting alternative universe in which you feature.

I wonder if anyone has done such a tale yet?

[Angela]

Nury, if you will be writing this story, may I suggest you recruit taxi drivers from Singapore? Their myriad of talents is not only limited to correctly predicting the unpredictable weather of this island but they can also give you stock value predictions, EPL scores, and which guy will make the most suitable husband, among others. The only talent they lack is in driving directions and following road rules. Which I think may not be a handicap for driving intergalactic taxi.

[Dr Ngozi Mbeko]

My name is Dr Ngozi Mbeko. I have 400 MILLION DOLLARS left over from an illegal contract.

I need some trustworthy person to help me store it. I was giving your name by mutual contacts. You will receive 10 per cent of the sum for helping me.

[banana]

I found the article about the crim who ate the banana. It was quite funny. The police photographed the skin for use in court. They said they were going to charge him with 'destroying evidence'.

[Henri Lois & Elfia Lois]

Hi, Mr Nury Vittachi...
I am a speech therapist for hearing impaired children (Auditory Verbal Therapist)from Jakarta, Indonesia....

You are really a CREATIVE WRITER!..
Thank you sooo much for sharing your ideas and stories with us here...
I visit your website regularly and I am coming soon to the bookstore to get your books...

Best regards, Mr Nury Vitacchi

Louis
Jakarta

[Uli]

My father once upon a time had a serious misunderstanding of his bank:
he was in Bahrain buying a couple of flight tickets with his credit card. The credit card company (one of the big ones operating internationally) did not "know" that in Bahrain there are 1,000 fils to one Dinar. So the flight tickets valued 4,000.000 (fourthousand) Dinar became four million Dinar! Charged to my Dad's account! I still remember vividly his changing the facial colour when he read his account statement denoting he was millions in debt. Even the interest for the few days amounted to more than 5,000 German Marks (at that time)...

[Henri & Elfia Lois]

Thank you so much, Mr. Nury Vittachi, for sharing your fabulous stories and ideas with us around the world...

You are really a creative and humanistic writer...
I am coming soon to the bookstore to get your books..

Best regards,

Louis, Fia, Given
Speech Therapist for hearing impaired children
Jakarta, Indonesia

[Nury]

Louis, thanks for your kind words, I love Indonesia and try to visit whenever I can. By the way, some of my books are available in Bahasa translation if that is better for you.

Uli -- your poor father he had opposite experience of the couple in the news -- a bank error made him a debtor instead of a millionaire!

I think if I accidentally got millions in my account, I would go on the run just to see what happened. I would in my younger days, anyway.

These days I have a wife and children and a dog. Who needs a million dollars?

[Nury]

Anyone know where Fardel is? I haven't seen a comment from him for a while. I've dropped him a note on email. Maybe he is on holiday.

When he gets to Asia next year, we'll all have to meet.

[sej]

Or your story could be based on GwongJau taxi drivers. I remember catching a taxi there once before. They put seem to suit your story line down to a "T". They seem to be able to switch universes at will (and speed) to get around/through the traffic.

[Harry]

A priest, a blonde and an Irishman? Why not a blond, Irish priest?
But you did say "blonde", ie a female. And women can't be priests. So that's not possible. But you could have meant a blond, ie male, Irish priest.

[TS]

I think an alternate reality taxi ride story should have a Malaysian taxi driver as the main character.
Tobaiti times when we've been travelling in Malaysia and missed a bus or a train, we have asked a taxi driver if he could to take us to a place outrageously far away, he would just think about it for five seconds before accepting a journey so lengthy that normal people would need a couple of weeks to ponder before partaking.
Even when it was so late that he most certainly could not be assured a return fare, the price quoted would be so touchingly low that it would bring tears of joy to our eyes.

In London they will kick you out of the cap if the trip is not somewhere between five and twenty miles.
In comparison, Malaysian taxi drivers got hearts of the purest green.

[jaime]

harry - fortunately the english language does not have masculine and feminine adjectives; blond/blonde are interchangeable for fair-haired whatever the gender. an exception i recall is filipino/filipina when referring to nationality although filipino covers both genders (i,e, from the philippines)

[fardel]

sorry guys
away on a trip out of reach of internet.
will be back tomorrow

[Shaik Anwar Ahamath]

In a quiz program, the quizmaster misreads the question and asks 'Who wrote Handel's Water Music?'. The contestant answers 'Pass!'