So some dolt got gored to death this week, and four others got a taste of Ferdinand’s horns in Pamplona.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jUhAbBWpazo8ZDuaGsXAcZKIyZ_gD99CUND80
I hope they didn’t have families to care for. I know Hemingway did it, but he’s dead too.
Seriously, dudes, can’t you think of a better way to display your maleness? How about streaking down the high street? Crushing beer cans on your forehead? Fart contest?
Even while living in Europe I thought this was the dumbest event I’d heard of. I used to wait fir the news every year to see how many idiots got fucked up in it.
Reading the wiki article on the event, I’m a bit surprised at how few deaths there are. 15 in the last 99 years? Lots of traditional events around the world have killed more, I imagine.
Gee, usually it’s a hundred dollars an hour to get a girl on roller skates to beat me with a wiffle bat.
Why do I learn about these things too late?
Good ol’ American ingenuity. Why isn’t this better known?!?
Why must everything in the world be Pasteurized, homogenized, rendered safe and stripped of excitement? While in this modern world of shrink-wrapped beef and the Animal Channel it might seem strange, some people are still drawn to real adventure and actual emotions.
It would be an even more boring world if we could not take risks and see the world as it is.
Dude, huge differences between “seeing the world as it really is”/“real adventure” and deliberately putting yourself in the path of a huge charging mammal with horns.
What’s the next step in Xtreme Adventurism? A rousing game of Provoke The Cobra?
I don’t know - there’s something appealingly pagan about the whole thing. Like, now that someone’s been killed, Pampalona is sure to have a good harvest. Blood for the crops!
I have to admit I am always slightly pleased when an animal is able to kill one of its torturers.
That’s the one-size-fits-all-bike-helmet-wearing-tricycle generation for you. Me I like it. It’s fun. Everybody is in it freely. Well except for the bulls. But once in a while the bulls gets a kill. That’s only fair and adds to the excitement. If you don’t like it, you are free to stay away or stay indoor.
It seems to be no more dangerous than lots of other risky things people do for entertainment.
This. Once an spanish fanatic was mad at me: I cheered when the “Toro” got the Matador. It’s wrong to be a fan of the visiting team?
Pamplona is not ‘man against beast’ with the heroic human battling his wits against the dumb (but ferocious) animal. It’s a shit game where poor animals are let loose into narrow lanes with nothing on their minds but getting the fuck outta there, except their escape routes are hampered by these mind-bogglingly stupid humans in the way.
I’m no PETA sympathiser by any means, but this is one practice I’d like to see banned. The poor fucks are run up alleyways and roads, scared out of their wits by moronic blokes trying to prove some sort of manhood or lack thereof…and THEN the bulls are herded into the arenas to be harrassed and speared to death anyway. Surely ‘cruel and unnatural punishment’ (yes, I know it’s a defence currently reserved for humans) should come into account here?
Some things can be considered sport. Others are just humankind’s lust for blood and bullshit, literally.
Fucking ban the Bull Run. Whilst it does make sure some dumbfucks are eliminated from the gene pool (the Darwin Awards judges must be rather busy around this time eh? :D) it’s just incredibly cruel to the animals, in a way that is not intentionally seen in many other recognised ‘sports’.
Such as skiing, or riding a motorcycle regularly.
I will say that the animal cruelty side puts me off a bit, but the danger is just fine in my book.
It’s faux adventure for the frat boy crowd. That’s why it’s so funny when one of them dies on the street with a “what the fuck just happened” look on his face.
I suspect that if skiing is as dangerous as being charged by a bull in a narrow street, you’re doing it wrong.
I met a guy once who had run with the bulls, he said it was a great adrenaline rush. He also told me that a majority of people never get any where near the bulls because they are too scared. The guy had met a local at a bar the previous night who took him out and showed him how to do it and he had a friend get a picture of him running with his hand on the back of a bull.
I still think that is once of the coolest pictures I have ever seen.
Thing about skiing (and riding a motorcycle) is that you don’t do it once, for 20 minutes, in 1960. You do it over and over again over a long period of time, I suggest that being a skier is comparable to being a runner in terms of the overall likelihood of serious injury/death due to the activity.
I dunno… I’ve been a skier since I was 8 or 9 and I would much rather a day on the slopes than a day being chased by bulls.