++ [ originally posted by swag ] ++
Well, it was originally real. Then someone turned that guy's Web site into a game of "telephone" by morphing it, adding their own commentary, etc.
The funniest thing was that Mahir became an Internet folkhero over that site around 1998. At the time, I was working at a dot-bomb that had included Xoom.com among its properties. Xoom was then was a personal Web page hosting site like Geocities, etc. Mahir's page was the most popular thing on all of Xoom -- a network of home pages which had millions of daily page hits.
Some clever person in marketing (once in a while, there are those) thought to contact the real Mahir and offer him a trip to the States for a publicity tour.
Man, thinking back to that stuff makes me feel old...