Hoax Museum Blog: April Fools Day

Government Records Your Phone Calls — Has the government been monitoring and recording your telephone conversations? A government contractor was able to copy 1 terabyte worth of phone calls recorded by the government. Enter your phone number to find out if they've been spying on you!

April Fool’s Day Effect — The site seems to be loading very slowly today, and a few people have reported not being able to access it at all. This is the beginning of the April Fool's Day effect. Traffic to the site increases and causes the performance of the site to nosedive. I'm guessing this will last until April 2nd. There's absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Family Pranks for April 1st — FamilyFun has a list of thirteen pranks that can be played on family members on April Fools Day. The list includes:

• Wake the kids up at 3am and tell them it's time for school
• Sew shut the fly on Dad's underwear
• Create a fake coffee spill (includes a recipe for doing this: mix together equal parts white glue and brown puff paint and let the mixture dry on wax paper... I have no idea what 'puff paint' is)
• Fasten a rubber band around the spray attachment on the kitchen sink

20th Annual April Fool’s Day Parade — Joey Skaggs has announced details of NEW YORK CITY'S 20th ANNUAL APRIL FOOLS' DAY PARADE (he's got that page very oddly formatted in a single long column, but you can also read the news release in pdf format). A few details:

This year's parade, "Divided We Stand", will memorialize the efforts made by people around the world to maintain their power, whether political, religious or personal, at the cost of the greater common good. The Parade Grand Marshall will be Ex CBS Anchor, Dan Rather. The theme song "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" will be sung by President George W. Bush. The public is encouraged to participate, in or out of costume, with or without floats, and may join the procession at any point along the parade route. Large float entries must be at 59th Street and 5th Avenue no later than 11:30 a.m..

Top 10 WORST April Fools Ever — To complement my list of the Top 100 Best April Fool's Day hoaxes of all time, I've now created a list of the Top 10 WORST April Fool's Day hoaxes ever. These aren't jokes that are just lame or old. These are (at least in my opinion) attempts at humor that are profoundly awful. But they're so bad that a few of them are kind of funny, in a dark, twisted way. Enjoy.

Catfish Licking, Part Two — About a week ago I linked to an article that discussed how Gulf Coast teenagers have been going around licking catfish, in the hope that it'll make them high. Now a follow-up article reveals the source of this strange behavior. It all started out as an April Fool's Day joke published in Sport Fishing magazine five years ago:

OK, listen up catfish lickers.
You've been punked. There's no hallucinogen in the slime.
A Florida magazine editor said he made the story up five years ago for an annual April Fool's special - and somehow it just kept on going...

He [Doug Olander, editor-in-chief of Sport Fishing magazine] claimed the catfish goop was popular among college kids, who called themselves "slimers" and paid as much as $200 for a fresh catch.
The slime was supposed to produce a "whisker-lickin' good" trip that would give users the sensation of being under water.
He attributed the information to University of Florida scientist Dr. Benjamin Joon.
As in "Benny & Joon," the romantic comedy with Johnny Depp.

Horse and Hound Humor — According to Horse & Hound magazine, British health authorities have decided to make it the law that all children must wear face masks and rubber gloves while doing yard work or grooming horses. Health and Safety spokeswoman Lirap Ducek is quoted as saying, "Childhood asthma has increased three-fold in the last 10 years, and we want to ensure that children are protected against picking up bugs which can have long-term health implications." But before you send your kid out in a rubber mask, you might want to check the release date on that story: April 1. That's right, it was an April Fool's Day joke. But apparently hundreds of people in England fell for it.

Best and Worst April Fools, 2004 — After having had a few days to consider this year's crop of April Fool's Day hoaxes, I've picked a personal favorite, which would be NPR's news story about the "portable zip codes" program. This program, inspired by the new FCC ruling that lets you take your phone number with you when you move, would supposedly allow people to take their zip code with them when they move. I like the story because, unlike most of the hoaxes this year, it's actually semi-believable. Absurd, of course, but somehow believable.

The prize for the most successful hoax, in terms of how many people actually fell for it, would seem to go to a story in Norway's Aftenposten about a supposed plan by government health authorities to plant electronic id chips under patient's skin in order to better monitor their medical needs. Apparently thousands fell for it, and I can see why because it doesn't sound that far-fetched to me, even knowing that it's a joke.

Finally, the prize for the absolute worst April Fool's joke goes to this guy who called up his ex-wife and told her to come over, then strung himself up with a harness so that when she arrived she thought he had hung himself, prompting her to immediately call 911. No wonder she divorced him.

Stories that sound like jokes, but aren’t — Every year on April 1 reporters test our wits by mixing in a few joke stories with the real ones. But then there are also the stories that are real, but sound like jokes. These stories challenge us to keep our skepticism under control. This year, the biggest example of that was Google's Gmail announcement that had many people swearing it must be a joke. Then we also had an article released by the British National Archives describing a bizarre WWII plan to place chickens inside of nuclear bombs (to keep the bombs warm). Apparently true. Finally, there's this story about Canadian plans to annex a group of Caribbean islands, thereby transforming Canada into an expansionist, imperialist power. This reminded me of the Canadian World Domination site, which is now unfortunately defunct.

April Fool’s Day Roundup — Apple Announces iPod V Portable Video Player from iPodLounge (would have been cool if true).
The iShave: An attachment to turn your iPod into an electric razor. (iPod jokes seem popular this year).
DeadJournal: The alternative to LiveJournal.
Bob Carroll, creator of the Skeptic's Dictionary, announces he's seen the light and abandoned skepticism.
L-plates for yum cha carts (But what's a yum cha cart?)
Kids Fly Free on RyanAir (for as long as they can hold on)
Theatre-goers weighed before buying tickets (from stuff.co.nz)
Japanese government hands out lottery tickets in lieu of pension payments
Sony Ericsson left-handed cellphone
God holds press conference at Galapagos Islands: denies evolution
Day Lost to Stronger Trade Winds (from Nature.com)
There's a whole bunch more listed over at urgo.org, but most of the remaining are a bit lame... along the lines of 'site hacked by teenagers' or 'site sold to microsoft'. There's also a list over at waxy.org.

Oprah Becomes 4th Member of Holy Trinity — The major Christian denominations have jointly agreed to make Oprah Winfrey the fourth member of the Holy Trinity, thereby broadening its appeal and making it less gender-biased. "Along with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the popular talk show host will be recognized as one person in the sacred and indivisible unity of the Godhead--or Quadhead, as the updated Trinity will now be called."

TV on your Mobile — In an update of the Instant Color TV prank from 1962, Sweden's largest newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, is reporting that mobile phone users can watch movies on their phone screens, simply by pointing the phones at a tv and punching in the appropriate access code.

Opening Belch — The Motley Fool reports a mishap at the New York Stock Exchange today. Russ Cooper, CEO of Farmland Enterprise Associates, misread the instructions and thought the invitation to ring the opening bell at the exchange asked him instead to emit the opening belch. He performed as he thought he was required.

New Atlantic Tunnel — The new Atlantic Tunnel will open in September 2009. It's being built by the Atlantic Tunnel Corporation (who else?). Check out their website to learn all about this amazing feat of engineering. You can even enter a competition to win a trip on the first train through the tunnel. There's a rumor that the London ad agency TBWAGGT is also somehow involved in this.

ThinkGeek Hunger Eliminator — The folks at ThinkGeek have zeroed in on why people get fat: because they eat too much. Scientifically speaking it's called the ETM (eat too much) Syndrome. Their solution: the Gastron(tm) Remote Controlled Hunger Eliminator. "you can easily control your exact hunger level at any time. Simply swallow the tiny non-digestible Gastron base station and use the remote to adjust your personal hunger level. The base station inflates to fill your stomach, giving you that satisfied full feeling with zero calories." Hmmm. Kind of reminds me of FatSox, from a few years ago... the socks that would suck the fat out of you as you walked around during the day.

BMW Offers New Way to Cook — BMW has announced a cutting-edge innovation for commuters that allows them to prepare dinner, while driving home in the car. It's called SHEF, which stands for Satellite Hypersensitive Electromagnetic Foodration. Basically all your oven controls are built into the dashboard of your car, and they communicate wirelessly with your actual oven back in your home. You can monitor the progress of your meal via a built-in oven-cam.

Google Copernicus Center — Google has announced that they're now hiring for their new 'lunar hosting and research center': Copernicus Center. Applicants must be "capable of surviving with limited access to such modern conveniences as soy low-fat lattes, The Sopranos and a steady supply of oxygen."

Google Launches Gmail — Google has announced a new email service called Gmail, that will give each user one gigabyte of free storage. Strangely, the press release is dated April 1, leading many to speculate that it's an April Fool's Day joke. Maybe it is, but if so it would seem a very odd one. Usually April Fool's Day jokes involve a certain minimum level of wit, and you should feel foolish for believing them once you find out they're a joke. But if someone were to tell me that Gmail is a joke, I wouldn't feel foolish. I'd just feel like Google had lied. There is some goofy language in the press release, but otherwise it just doesn't seem over-the-top enough to be a joke. But time will tell.

BBC Ducks the Issue — I just heard about this early April Fool's Day fumble on the part of the BBC. As the Times of London reports: "Declan Curry, the intrepid television hack, broke the embargo on a fascinating British Waterways study that revealed that ducks living on canals weigh, on average, about a pound more than those living on rivers. The slow-moving canal water, so the story went, provides less opportunity for the ducks to swim and as a result they piled on the pounds. Mr Curry and the BBC should have taken note of the embargo date. April 1. The name of the academic quoted, Olaf Priol, is an anagram of April Fool." Unfortunately I can't find a link for this.

More Spam on April 1st — Makers of network security software are warning that there may be an increase in spam leading up to April Fool's Day. "Spammers are expected to use subject lines such as "great joke," "free jokes," "prank," or "April fools" to entice users into opening attachments that carry viruses or objectionable content, potentially putting company networks at risk."