dvd wars...

From the AP this afternoon I learned of the thrilling adventures of pirate dvd busting in Malaysia. Apparently, the Motion Picture Association of America has donated two labradors from Northern Ireland to Malaysia's Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs. The two dogs, Manny and Paddy, are trained to smell the chemicals used in the production of dvd's. The story, by AP writer Julia Zappei has a hysterical twist in that apparently (and I seriously could not believe this when I read it) the 'movie pirates' had placed a bounty on the heads of the previous team of dvd-sniffing canines, somewhere in the purported ball park of $29K. The article ended assuring us that the MPAA and the MDTCA were doing everything in their power to protect the two new dogs, but never answered the question of whether or not the previous 'team' were indeed collected upon by prospective assassins. After doing some sniffing of my own I found many articles, this one being fairly representable of the rest:

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/article2909580.ece

Bounties on dogs? This is a new age people; a new age of criminal practice, of one-eyed pirate loyalists committed enough to their cause to don ski masks and hide behind grassy knolls, taking careful aim at Labrador retrievers racing into Malaysian airports at moments notice to catch twisted pirate freaks running off copies of the next Adam Sandler mega-hit in the bathrooms, swallowiing balloons full of USB cables and dvd spindles, turning the once great flea markets of this nation into dens of sinister debauchery where at any moment YOUR son or daughter could spend their hard earned allowance money on these sub-par discs, complete with homemade menus and ill-proportioned aspect ratios.

It is a cold day in hell my friends, and I have seen the evil of the next millenium.