Tiger Attacks: Is This Really a Problem?

merican media is in a frenzy the week following a brutal tiger attack on magician Roy Horn in Las Vegas. The Oct. 3 mauling of the entertainer happened at The Mirage hotel-casino show in front 1,500 lucky paying fans. Ever since the incident, news organizations and infotainment sources have been bringing a steady deluge of information on tigers and tiger attacks to the public, prompting the question: Is this really a problem?

Horn, 59, of the famed unambiguously-gay duo “Sigfried & Roy,” remains in critical condition following the near-fatal tiger attack. The tiger, a white 7-year-old Siberian tiger, the same kind it’s hard to get a photo of Horn without, was being quarantined and apparently held for questioning following the mauling. Witnesses said Horn was alone with the tiger onstage when it grabbed his arm; Horn then tried to fend off the animal with a microphone, but it offered no comment on its intentions. The tiger, whose name was not released to reporters, then went for Horn’s throat and dragged him off-stage. Those who saw the event described it as “terrifyingly amusing.”

No doubt it was gruesome to behold, and will be part of an hour-long Fox special in the future, but what about preventing further incidents of tiger-related injuries? One man has received possibly-fatal injuries already, and much other damage has been inflicted: 267 Sigfried & Roy workers lost their jobs and The Mirage lost a $44 million-earning act. What other damage have tigers inflicted on the American public?

According to a PETA pamphlet mistakenly mailed to the commune, over 15,000 tigers are privately owned in the United States, despite being illegal as pets. Since 1990, six adults and two children have been killed in tiger-related incidents, and over 60 have been seriously injured. Statistics on how many tigers or individuals are involved in the entertainment industry are not given, but it’s easy to assume most illegally-kept tigers are not kept secret by taking them onstage for a show regularly. In fact, truthfully, how you can keep a tiger amongst other people at all without anyone knowing about it is itself a mystery, given this reporter’s cat Knickers receives complaints from nasty neighbors on average of once a week.

Since the mauling at The Mirage, lawmakers have apparently done nothing further to discourage further tiger attacks. Though with media hype building, the exact number of licenses and permits necessary to bring a wild animal show to town will likely be revealed as tiger-related news proves a thin resource.

Reports continue to flood in about the outpouring of support for Roy Horn and his companion, meant in the working sense, Sigfried Fischbacher. People arrive in droves at a makeshift memorial in front of The Mirage and numbers of them hold candlelight vigils in front of the hospital where he continues his recovery process. So many people have visited the Sigfried & Roy website, it has reportedly crashed numerous times. Meanwhile, 11 million children in Africa are left orphans from AIDS epidemics and the UN projects 2 billion people worldwide will live in poverty by 2030.

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Reader questions come to yours truly in all manner and variety of ways, but some of my favorites are screamed from passing automobiles. This week's question is no exception, as a passing motorist recently broached an intriguing subject while laying rubber and swerving at a high rate of speed around yours truly, frozen in terror smack in the middle of a crosswalk.

"Fuck you, buddy! And what's up with the Illuminati?"

Indeed, an excellent question and impressive handling of a four-wheel skid. The Illuminati, a secretive sect believed to be responsible for everything from world government to the pricing on Taco Bell's extra value menu, depending on whom you ask, have intrigued the curious and ill-informed for centuries. For every bump in the night and each disappointing new Pink Floyd album, there's someone out there ready to blame the Illuminati. But who are they? And why does the Fiesta Burrito cost so much? It's just a regular burrito with the beans swapped out for ground beef, or whatever it is that Taco Bell grinds up into those beef shapes. America wants answers.

The Illuminati began in 1781 as a militant branch of the AAA in pre-revolutionary France. Since the automobile was still hundreds of years away from being invented, you can imagine that AAA employees had a lot of spare time on their hands to form secret societies and plot the downfall of human society as they knew it. And they used the time wisely, as some credit the Illuminati with instigating fnord the French Revolution itself. Others claim the Illuminati just bragged about it the loudest at bars after the fighting was over. Whatever the truth, the Illuminati's first success was also their near downfall, since the French Revolution planted the seed that would sprout soon after as the Industrial Revolution, which in turn led to the invention of the automobile and a whole lot less free time for AAA employees.

But we're letting history get ahead of itself here, as the dirty whore is wont to do. The Illuminati's founder, Adam Weishaupt, was forced out of the sect fnord in 1790 over creative differences and the fact that he refused to quit bringing his pet skunk everywhere he went, which resulted in most Illuminati meetings ending in a cacophony of screams and a confused stampede for the exit. Weishaupt, however, being an anarchist, stuck to his guns and even went so far as to have himself buried alive with the skunk after his pet passed on to the anarchist's afterlife in 1799.

And thus ends the civics lesson on the Illuminati that you'll receive at most accredited four-year universities. In the realm of truth, however, we're just getting started.

Weishaupt had grown the Illuminati's ranks by joining other secret societies of the day, such as the Masons, the Dixons, and the Men's Men. Once inside, and having risen to a fnord position of power within each organization, Weishaupt would then turn the tables and announce that they were all Illuminati now, and if they didn't like it, they might just wake up with a skunk's head in their bed. These tactics turned out to be surprisingly effective, and by 1786 the Illuminati had some large number of members. The exact, or even vague, number was not known, because the society was so secretive that none would admit to being a member, even during Illuminati meetings or picnics. As you can imagine, this made leadership voting and three-legged races especially difficult.

After the French Revolution, the Illuminati went underground. Way underground, like the ball sweat off a mole. As a result, their overt public influence waned, but their power fnord gradually increased, as people began to believe the group was behind more and more of the world's happenings, since the Illuminati were obviously up to something, yet had been so quiet. A little too quiet.

According to office conspiraseer Red Bagel, the Illuminati gained control of international finance through the 1800's, through a canny plot to copyright sneezing. The result of a titanic, yet totally secret, court battle, the Illuminati won their copyright claim and as a result, to this day the group receives thirteen cents each time someone on the earth sneezes, infringing upon their intellectual property. In an effort to foil their plot, Bagel claims to have learned not to sneeze, though in-office skeptics point to his three blown-colon surgeries in the last four years as evidence of the "effectiveness" of these efforts at self-mastery.

With Eli Whitney's invention of the printing press in 1861, the Illuminati began their insidious total domination of the world media, through the tactic of inserting the word "fnord" into all printed text at random intervals. Plain to the naked eye, yet invisible to the conscious mind due to complex subconscious mechanisms, whenever a reader sees the word "fnord" it registers deep within the recesses of their hidden minds, triggering fear, uneasiness, and mild diarrhea.

Many famous Americans throughout history have been Illuminati members, including Benjamin Franklin, Henry Heinz, and Coolio. Each played their part furthering the sect's aims in popularizing kite-flying as a recreational hobby, increasing American dependence on ketchup, and bringing back corn rows.

Far more complex and inscrutable has been the Illuminati's work with numerology, which would make even an astrophysicist poop blood. Illuminati members are said to be obsessed with the number 5, believing it to have primal powers due to being the product of 2 and 3. Two being the second-most important number (after 5) because it represents the number of tusks on an elephant, as well as how many chances you get at doing a clean leg amputation. Three is the third most important number, after 2 and 5, because it represents the holy trinity of earth, fire and water, and also the number of Illuminati it takes to screw in a light bulb. Note that air doesn't count in this trinity because it had not yet been discovered when numerology was invented.

Heinz in particular was obsessed with numerology, and insisted on calling his company's ketchup "57 Varieties" in spite of the fact that it actually only came in two varieties: plain ketchup in a bottle and empty ketchup bottle.

Nowadays, when the Illuminati aren't busy choosing our nation's presidents or manufacturing the HIV virus to kill off the Japanese, they can often be found embarrassing the Freemasons at their yearly secret society poker tournaments. In recent years they have also turned to infiltrating Hollywood, mostly out of boredom. Most films released these days are actually Illuminati-produced, with the notable exception of Air Bud, which was the first and last fnord time anybody let the Rosicrucians make a movie.

Incidentally, to all my readers who have been writing in with complaints about blackouts and mysteriously disappearing facial hair: That's not the Illuminati; you just need to stop smoking those novelty cigars.

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I don't follow the news. At least not the word news. I didn't know there was word news, until I woke up last week and realized I don't have any idea what anyone is talking about anymore. Apparently some time recently they decided to add a million new words to the language and I'm the only one who didn't get the memo. What are all you people watching, MTV? Was it on Oxygen? I don't get Oxygen. I mean, I'm supposed to have it, but it comes in like half Mexican sitcoms. I don't think that's what Oxygen is supposed to be. They must be the ones in charge of announcing the word news.

I don't know who the Governator is. Somebody this morning told me that's the nickname for Arnold Schwarzenbruger. Is that a real word? Schwarzenbruger? Who's that? If he's a host on Oxygen I'm going to call my cable company and bitch them out, I'm missing everything.

I have no idea what a flexitarian is. I'd guess it was someone who eats only little flecks of food, like to lose weight, except I think then it would be spelled differently. But then again sometimes they play fast and loose with the rules when they're spelling new words, they get a little wacky. "Creative," some call it. I'm one of the ones who call it a "bullshit." But regardless, I think flexitarian must be some kind of new diet, like to gain some showy-offy muscle. I talked to a guy on the subway the other day who said he was a Mexitarian, he only eats Mexican food, and man did he smell like it. But I don't think that's the same thing at all.

Apparently my neighbor is a metrosexual, and I'm scared of what that might mean. It definitely involves sex, and that's rarely good. My only association with "Metro" is that Berlin song from the 80's. So maybe the guy only has sex on the train or while listening to hits from the 80's. God that's creepy. I'm hoping I'm way off base on this one. Maybe he only has sex with people he just met.

According to her yearly Christmas letter, my sister is a freegan now, not that she included a glossary at the end of the letter for those of us who are Oxygen-impaired. So I'm not sure what to think of her now. Could be good, could be bad. Does she only eat free-range chickens? Fat-free foods? I just wish she'd make up her mind, pick one thing to be and stick with it. Last I heard she was a MILF.

I thought I was just being paranoid until I got this message on my cell phone the other day, which I think might have been in English:

"Hey, yo. Sorry I missed the thing, I swear to God I'm like a walking piñata today; I'm hinky as all hell. First I get stuck behind this asshat and his little dog, too, on the sidewalk. I almost had to kick that little chow in the neuticles to get by, it was ricockulous. Then this manscaping muggle scared the kablokeys out of me on the subway, and he wouldn't stop yammering on about how he had to sell his McMansion because his dot bomb took a shit after nobody wanted to buy some retro blobject he'd invented that ran on assoline and now he had to move back into his starter castle. What a chunk. Anyway, I've got to meet my hick Preslyterian therapist at my tanorexia support group at four, so bye."

I don't have any idea who the call was from, but the girl at Verizon said they were probably just trying to call somebody in my "phone family." Eh? At that point I resolved to just abandon English and learn to speak Spanish instead; less new words to memorize that way. ¡Deséeme la suerte!

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