too good to be true

it was one of those stories that defied belief... one of those stories that are believable but yet so unbelievable that it gets labelled "only in japan".

i first caught the story on smh, and received a few emails from friends alerting me of the story in the morning... im sure many of you have already read the "baby sheep sold as poodles" story in the herald and had a great laugh. i know i did. i was in stitches... which moron would mistake a sheep as a poodle, it just sounded too stupid to be true. the problem is that anything sounds believable if its followed by "only in japan". any story that might be worthy of making it as an april fools hoax story could, and will happen in japan... i know im a sucker for these stories. ive been fooled so many times its unbelievable... L plates on yumcha trolleys, yep i believed that one too...

so i started to do some research... not to disprove the story. i wanted to see a picture of the sheep that was masquerading as a poodle!! but after some googling, the story sadly turns out as a hoax... for those of you who know the story, the movie star who made the alleged statement was misquoted in the story... she just said that she had a friend who bought a poodle off the internet, and it was delivered by mail... it was a fabricated lie told to get the banter going... she mentions something about the dog not eating dog food, but that's about it...

now, never let the truth get in the way of a good story... but in this case, the SUN in the UK who published this story first has got it wrong, and i wonder how many stories that get published are just rubbish...

smh updated the story to confirm the hoax... but they just updated the html to the original story.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/unusual-tales/baaking-mad-japan-scam/2007/04/27/1177459927942.html