Superbowl Mammal Malfunction
Feb 6th, 2008 by Eats Wombats
When I lived in America someone once tried to persuade me that American football was
like chess
I can play chess. I like chess. I understand the attraction of chess. American football is not like chess.
Why has someone not organized a competition between players of rugby and American football? It would make an interesting spectacle and the bookmakers would have a field day.
Now, thanks to the Internet the rest of the world can see the only thing about the superbowl that makes any sense to a non-American: the commercials.
That includes the one that can’t be shown on TV in America and which was advertised during the superbowl. Yes, a commercial for a commercial.
I happened to renew a domain name today at GoDaddy.com and I checked it out. First, I laughed. Then I shook my head.
That the American badger is no gent is not news; one of the superbowl commercials featured a man locked in a car with an American badger who, it was implied, might tear him shreds. This, it seems, is perfectly ok. But even to mention the name of another mammal is an enormous taboo!
America is a very strange place. But then you only have to watch American football to know that.
My son had a one of those unmentionable mammals and he was very fond of “him”. He came from a can purchased in the Four Corners store in Ottawa. They were inseperable, until the day the furry critter got left on a train in Brussels. The boy cried the most heartbreaking tears. He was unconsolable. And his distress was not for himself but for his lost companion, presumed desolate.
Using my connections in Ottawa I had another one FedExed to The Hague at once.
When the boy padded in to see his parents the next morning he first cried (that word that cannot be mentioned on TV during the superbowl) with joy and embraced the prodigal you know who. And then his expression changed, from delight to horror, and he exclaimed
This isn’t
and he mentioned that species again. Alas, it was true. His fur was slightly different, and he smelt different too, so we were told. What a cruel deceit! What kind of Daddy would do a thing like that?
It’s his brother
I suggested. But I could tell he was thinking
Go Daddy! you should be ashamed…
I’m not sure he’s ever forgiven me.
If, by any chance, you found a lost mammal answering to the right description on a train in Brussels in the mid 1990s…
