Anti-Climacus

SO, SO WEIRD: As reported in Best of the Web Today:

"During September 2003," the Middle East Media Research Institute reports, "mass hysteria spread through Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, which was ultimately quelled by police intervention and statements made by the health minister. The panic was caused by rumors of foreigners roaming the city and shaking men's hands, making their penises disappear." Memri summarizes newspaper accounts of the scare:

Two of the "victims" agreed to tell their story to the London-based Arabic daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi. One of them, fabric merchant S.K.A., said that a man from a West African tribe came into his shop to buy fabric, but an argument quickly developed between the two. Then the West African shook the store owner's hand powerfully until the owner felt his penis melt into his body. The store owner became hysterical, and was taken to the hospital.

While the majority of accounts involved handshaking, another victim, who refused to give his name, said that while he was at the market, a man approached him, gave him a comb, and asked him to comb his hair. When he did so, within seconds, he said, he felt a strange sensation and discovered that he had lost his penis. It was also claimed that once "'Satan's Friend' drains a man's virility," he demands that his victim pay him over four million Sudanese pounds (about $3,000) to get it back.

After going over the evidence with a fine-toothed comb, Sudanese police determined that "what is at issue is not sorcery or magic. The many young men who complained were under the influence of suggestion."

Jafar Abbas, "a Sudanese columnist living abroad," seems to have been taken in:

In his Al-Watan article, Abbas wrote: "Even though what I write today will harm 'tourism' in Sudan, I consider it my duty to warn anyone who wants to come to Sudan to refrain from shaking hands with a dark-skinned man. Since most Sudanese are dark-skinned, he had better avoid shaking hands with anyone he doesn't know . . ."

Focusing on the report of the Sudanese man who lost his penis after contact with a comb, Abbas wrote: "No doubt, this comb was a laser-controlled surgical robot that penetrates the skull [and passes] to the lower body and emasculates a man!!

"I wanted to tell that man who fell victim to the electronic comb: 'You jackass, how can you put a comb from a man you don't know to your head, while even relatives avoid using the same comb?!' "

Abbas adds that the man with the robot comb "is an imperialist Zionist agent that was sent to prevent our people from procreating and multiplying."