World Piggyback Championships Start

The much awaited World Piggyback Games,

last televised in 1989, began outside the city of Bandar Seri Begawan yesterday with much fanfare and an eight gun salute from Borneo's part-time Volunteer Death Squad.

International Piggyback Federation (IPF) chair, Paduka Maulana Mahasari Sharif Sultan Hashem Abu Bakr Bin Wellhung was ecstatic as he reviewed the opening ceremonies attended by the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Wajiristan as they joined the only other country participating in the event: the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

For no apparent reason, the much heralded event traditionally occurs every 1 K'atun (or 19.7 years on the Mayan Long Calendar) and is ideally timed with the arrival of a ravaging monsoon. "This keeps the unfortunate contestants on their best game," Mr. Wellhung told this reporter.

Pictured above is a special handicap event featuring the transfer of the person being carried (or backi-packi in the vernacular of the sport) to an undisclosed military psychiatric hospital where his family can then begin the scavenger hunt for clues as to his location. The time to beat for this event, and a world record time at that, is a remarkable 38.66 years.