What about Dumb and Dumber?
Did you know that Walt Disney was afraid of mice? That bats always turn left when exiting a cave? Or that Adolf Hitler's mother seriously considered having an abortion but was talked out of it by her doctor? If you're rolling your eyes and sighing tell-me-something-I-don't-know sighs, you've probably read the latest bunch of 'Fun Facts' now forwarding its way through cyber space.
Soon you'll probably be dropping those little factoids into casual conversations without bothering to cite the source.
Which is harmless enough.
It's not like they could end up quoted in the New York Times or anything.
Could they? A while ago, a bunch of 'Hong Kong Chinese translations of English film titles' found their way into America's paper of record.
The article concerned described how foreign-language names can capture the essence of the films crossing their language barrier.
The story provided some Hong Kong examples without citing the source.
Lai See thinks the translations are a definite improvement on the originals: Leaving Las Vegas - 'I'm Drunk And You're a Prostitute'.
Interview With The Vampire - 'So You Are A Lawyer?' My Best Friend's Wedding - 'Help! My Pretend Boyfriend is Gay!' George of the Jungle - 'Big Dumb Monkey-Man Keeps Whacking Tree With Genitals'.
Babe - 'The Happy Dumpling-to-be Who Talks And Solves Agricultural Problems'.
Field of Dreams - 'Imaginary Dead Baseball Players Live in My Cornfield'.
Barb Wire - 'Delicate Orbs of Womanhood Bigger Than Your Head Can Hurt You'.
Batman and Robin - 'Come to My Cave and Wear This Rubber Codpiece, Cute Boy'.
The Crying Game - 'Oh No! My Girlfriend Has A Penis!' After that, the list's fame spread rapidly, with extracts featured on CNN's Showbiz Today.
In a bizarre twist, it also made it on to Jeopardy! (in the form of a clue).
The Los Angeles Times ran it and the list was also aired during author Christopher Buckley's lecture at the Smithsonian.
Peter Jennings of ABC World News poached the Babe translation when he came out with this comment: 'And finally, the new title for Babe reminds us that in China the communists are still in charge. Babe is now 'The Happy Dumpling-to-be Who Talks and Solves Agricultural Problems'.
Yes, the list had travelled quite a long way from its little corner of cyber space.
Amazing. Isn't the flow of information a powerful and wondrous thing? It's a shame it is total bollocks.
The translations are completely made up.
To be honest, we would have thought the Barb Wire one would have set a few New York Times alarm bells ringing.
Turns out those titles started life as part of the Topfive.com.
The humour site invites members to submit their own entries for an ever-changing array of David Letterman-style lists.
Topfive's founder tells us that the confusion began when 'an unknown denizen of cyberspace stripped the credits from the list and attached it to the bottom of a legitimate Wall Street Journal article on poorly translated movie titles and tossed it back into the cyber-sea.' From there it was salvaged by 'those little scamps at the New York Times'.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
When the truth emerged, the Washington Post ran a gloating report on their rival's cock-up under the headline 'Titles Too Bad To Be True'.
Needless to say, the Topfive.com people were delighted by all the publicity.
Founder Chris White told Lai See that he and his fellow humourists are planning to post a sequel list of top Chinese movie title translations this coming Wednesday.
He can only hope that the joke will once again manage to transmogrify itself into fact.
We suppose we should add that Peter Jennings did make an on-air apology.
Said he: 'The title for the film Babe was not actually 'The Happy Dumpling-to-be Who Talks and Solves Agricultural Problems'.' 'The real title for Chinese movie-goers was 'I May Be A Pig, But I'm Not Stupid' '.
Yeah, right. You can't trick Lai See that easily; We know that's not a real film title.
It's a Joe Bananas chat up line.
