In response to a posting I made on July 16 questioning the authenticity of an image showing the pope sticking his tongue out, the webmaster of popeface.com has contacted me to insist that popeface is not a hoax. I'm still a little skeptical. It could be genuine, but it's such an odd picture that it immediately triggers my suspicions. Why were the negatives destroyed? Why is he selling it through a website, rather than through more normal channels such as an auction house or even eBay?

There's an email going around claiming to be from a time traveler stuck in the year 2003 who needs a dimensional warp generator to get back home. Lots of people, myself included, are wondering what exactly this email is, and why someone is going to the trouble of bulk-mailing it to millions of people.

Here's a new hoax website: meatshake.com. It claims to be the homepage of the MeatShake Corporation, operators of the Meat Shake chain of fast food restaurants. You guessed it, MeatShake offers meat lovers the chance to quench their carnivorous appetites with ham, beef, and turkey shakes. Let there be no doubt. This is meat put in a blender and sipped through a straw. Their corporate vision is simple, "Meat. Lots of Meat." (Thanks to Jeff Whealton for pointing the site out to me).

In reality, the MeatShake website is the creation of a band from Long Beach called Ugly Duckling. Their latest album, "Taste The Secret," tells the story of the MeatShake restaurant and it's battles against the rival chain Veggie Hut. The three members of the band claim to have met while working at a MeatShake restaurant.

Need more proof that MeatShake is a hoax? Well, if you examine the images on the site, you'll discover that whoever created them forgot to change the hidden preview file attached to the images, and this preview file shows what the images looked like before they were photoshopped. Thus, we discover that:


  

The Meat Shake sign (left) was originally a sign for Champion Burgers (right)

  

and the Meat Shake store with a 'Taste the Secret' banner (left), is actually an abandoned store with a 'For Lease' sign (right).

19th century gold bar on display at the Smithsonian turns out to be a fake.

Woman cruelly poses as long-lost daughter of couple. Who knows what deranged motive was behind what she did. The woman, Donna Walker, has now been arrested.

Inspired by the movie Old School, a bunch of teenagers fake a kidnapping outside of a Wal-Mart. Succeed in terrifying the watching crowd.