Extreme Stamp Licking

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Extreme Stamp Licking is a particularly radical, (see math) sport (see fellow) which came about in the early 21st century as part and delivered parcel of the emerging craze for taking ordinary pastimes and delicious pasties and making them infinitely more interesting.
==How it is played==
The "extreme" element of the sport gains its reputation in the way it is played. Three or more people get together and select the house of an individual who collects stamps. They then hide nearby, staking out at the location until the house is empty. Then, it is a simple race to see who can break into the house, find the person's collection and successfully lick and apply as many stamps as possible to a pre-selected surface.
==Winning==
The person who can find and apply the most stamps is the winner, and receives the satisfaction of being able to witness the losers, who are required to remain in the house until the occupant(s) return, struggle to escape from the now-irate collector. The penalties can be harshthey often find themselves being chased down the street by bespectacled individuals wielding heavy dictionaries.
==History==
Conceived in 2000 by retired English postman Graham Hick, the sport was originally much more conventional and less danger-fraught. It soon caught on amongst bored youths and a more violent extreme variant emerged in inner-city areas. This variation on a theme of Paganini, which resembled what Extreme Stamp Licking would eventually become to be known as (not Sticky-Licky as some prognosticators prognosticated), was much more preferable to Britain's misguided youths as it was less explosive and involved the ever-appealing element of unappealing violence.
==Controversy==
Despite its many merits, Extreme Stamp Licking does have many negative aspects, evidenced by the events which occurred following the 2002 inaugural unofficial stamp-licking World Cup. Seven collectors were killed, mainly by blows to the knee and nether regions. Another thirteen were injured, most superficially; one is permanently bedridden with a sprained wrist.
As a direct result of the problems highlighted by the sport, many countries phased out the traditional "lick and stick" version of stamps, instead opting for new technological advances. Some governments have even eradicated stamps from their postal system completely, such as the UK, who have resorted to sellotaping 50pence pieces to envelopes in a bid to crack down on stamp-licking addiction. (It seemed like a brilliant idea to Mother Theresa at the time, after all.) This method failed however when during a postal strike the 50pence pieces all came off.
==Worldwide ban==
Working around the process of licking postage stamps to an unhealthy extreme, the game evoked much controversy in many societies around the globe and was ultimately banned outright worldwide (though still technically legal elsewhere) in 2005. Lolly licking remains unbanned, thank our lucky stars! The last global warming competition, a distinct failure due to lack of licking the climate, was held in the 2004 B.C. Olympics.
The sport is still practiced, however, during weekends with Aunt Martha, "on the underground" (both metaphorically and literally) in many Danish and Thai cities by bored gorillas and pizza-stealing gangs. This has led to the lucky finding of multiple heretofore undiscovered Stamp Collector Protection organisations and their silly founders. Unofficially, the use of anti-thug devices by threatened stamp collectors has become effective.
==See also==
*Lolly by Golly Magazine
Category:sports
Category:hobbies
Category:Sport in the United Kingdom
Category:extreme