Here's an email I received today. I don't think that what it describes is a hoax in any way, but it seemed weird enough to be worth posting. I blurred out the names on the attached picture (click to enlarge) at the request of the emailer.

I so love your website, that I sometimes think that I shall send you more stuff. Let me explain : I work in the head office of a psychiatric hospital, I am the personal assistant to the director which means I am the one opening all the mail. Few weeks ago I got this bill.
So I know this is in Franch, but I will translate it for you, you might find it interesting to know what will ahppen toyou if you give your body to science and how much you cost when you are dead.
As the description you can read "tronc huain non bisexué" which in english would translate to the top part of a human body that is not bisexual. Particulary poetic! It's just half of a human body ! It says the price next to it, after taxes and such. And it's getting worse. The bottom line it says there is a special offer with 5% off !
I though that in the serie of particular things, that may be interesting for you. We actually paid that bill too. :o)

What seems really weird to me is that these human-corpse retailers classify bodies by whether or not they're bisexual. What's the reason for that? Also, I think I can spot a hoax in the email. They obviously didn't take 5% off. I believe they took a full 50% off.

If you've ever wanted to phone up someone who's dead, then Jürgen Bröther has the solution for you: the Phone Angel. If I understand it correctly, this is basically a speakerphone installed inside a coffin. It's configured so that whenever it senses an incoming call, it'll turn on, so that your voice will be broadcast inside the coffin. Just don't expect the occupant of the coffin to speak back. Or maybe they will... The weirdest part of the whole deal is that he offers a rebate if you return the phone once it's battery wears out. Of course, to retrieve the phone you have to dig the coffin back up. (via The Anomalist)

A fake news story about the death of actor John Goodman raced around the internet today. It's hard to understand why people believed this for a second, since the story was filled with spelling mistakes and bad grammar. Here's a sample:

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) - Actor John Goodman, star of such hits as Monsters Inc and Beyond the Sea, found dead today in his home. Cause of death is not known. Recently seen in the Kevin Spacey epik Beyond the Sea, Goodman was deemed in fine health by his doctor just three days ago. Cause of death is not yet known, but it is suspected natural causes. Goodman was most notably known as the blue-collar patriarch Dan Conner on the hit TV show Roseanne. Goodman also lent his vocal talents to such films as The Emperor's New Groove and Mosnters Inc, as well as being a semi-regular guest on Saturday Night Live.

Defamer debunked this pretty quickly, even managing to grab a screen shot of the original fake news story before it disappeared. I'll add this to my growing list of celebrity death hoaxes.

One of the many random viral videos that floats around the internet is this 'Aicha Kid Video' that shows a skinny teenager singing and dancing to the song 'Aicha'. But before you click on the link to see the video, first read about the urban legend that accompanies the video, because I think it makes the video itself much more interesting. According to the UL, there's an 'uncut' version of this video, and in this uncut version... well, this poster from ebaumsworld summarizes it better than I could:

it is hard to get the unedited one, most of them stop after he is dancing. In the full version after he dances, he gets a knife out from under his minnie mouse comforter and slits his throat. He bleeds out all over his adidas sweatshirt and falls on the floor. The camera keeps taping for another 5 minutes until the tape runs out. I think you can get the full version on http://www.rotten.com Ya it. is sad.

So does this uncut suicide kid video actually exist? I don't think so. At least, if it does I can't find it anywhere. Though in a variant of the UL, the non-existence of the extended video is explained away by the fact that the skinny kid's parents supposedly filed a lawsuit to get it removed from the internet. If the video does exist I'm sure that I'll hear about it eventually, but I'd bet good money on it just being a stupid rumor.

This attracted quite a bit of attention (relatively speaking), but I only found out about it today, once it was revealed to be a hoax. It was a Countdown-to-Suicide Journal on LiveJournal:

My name is Jerry Romero, and I am 23 years old. If you have found this journal, it is through your own actions. I will not comment on other entries in an attempt to make friends. I am leaving this in the hands of Fate and no-one else. This journal was created solely for the purpose of providing one last lifeline in a vast sea of hopelessness.
On January 13th, I am going to kill myself.

Most people think the musician Jim Morrison, lead singer for the Doors, died in Paris on July 3, 1971. But Gerald Pitts says that he "discovered Jim Morrison Living on a Ranch in the Pacific Northwest in the summer of 1998." According to him, Morrison is living a quiet life as an American cowboy "away from the Hollywood scene." Even though Morrison evidently engineered an elaborate death hoax to escape publicity, he agreed to appear on film for Pitts. You can buy a copy of this film for only $24.95 (shipping is extra). Pitts' site includes a video comparing the features of Jim Morrison the fifty-something cowboy to Jim Morrison the twenty-something singer. However, no matter how many times I watch the video, I just don't see any similarity.

I saw this story on the news last night: lava lamp explodes and kills man. It's definitely a candidate for the Darwin Awards, but it also sounds a bit like an urban legend (Big Gary wrote asking 'Can a lava lamp really kill someone? Have I been foolish to turn my back on my lava lamp?') It's been pretty widely reported, so I have to assume the story is true. And I could also imagine that if you heat a lava lamp on top of a stove, it could explode, and if you're really unlucky a shard of glass from that explosion could puncture your heart. The question in my mind is why this guy was heating it on the stove. I bet he thought he could speed up the lava bubbles by cranking up the heat a bit.

Terminal Tours provides a service for those who are near death or just thinking about dying, whisking them away on the vacation of their dreams. It gives them a chance to do that one thing they always wanted to do, but never got around to doing. The guide on this 'terminal tour' is Michael Keever. Except Michael Keever doesn't actually exist. He's a character from Tom LeClair's recent novel, Passing On. Nor does Terminal Tours itself exist. LeClair left some comments in the hoax museum message board, noting that the Terminal Tours site "extends the fiction of the novel and parodies 'promise you everything, including eternal life' web sites." He also tells me that in the spirit of the Museum of Hoaxes, his next novel, The Liquidators (due out next fall), features a Museum of Lead. Cool.

I thought I had some strange teachers in my time, but none as strange as this Manchester teacher who told her students that a meteor was going to hit the earth in a week and they were all going to die. Her point: to motivate them to 'seize the day'. The logic seems to be 'make them think they're going to die so they appreciate what they have.' Kind of like that guy who tried to save his marriage by electrifying his wife in the bathtub.

On a completely unrelated note, the widespread use of the phrase seize the day (from the latin carpe diem) is a pet peeve of mine, since I think it's mistranslated. The latin word carpe is principally an agricultural term meaning to harvest, pluck, or gather. It only secondarily has a military usage. So the phrase should really be translated as harvest the day, which is a lot more laid back than seize the day. Though maybe my real problem with the term are those people who are always lecturing other people to seize the day.

Reality TV has definitely sunk to a new low. Reuters reports that Channel 4 in Britain is considering televising a human corpse as it decomposes. They're currently searching for volunteers willing to donate their body after they die. This reminds me of two things. The See Me Rot Decomposition Cam, and also that theater group that held auditions to get someone to donate their corpse.

I've heard about people who find their own obituaries mistakenly printed in papers, but I imagine that discovering you've been killed by Islamic militants in Iraq would be a little more off-putting. As the Associated Press reports: A woman was shocked to learn Friday that a photo of what appeared to be her old driver's license showed up on an Islamic Web site along with a claim that she had been captured in southern Iraq and slain. She's never been anywhere near Iraq, but she speculates that the militants got her name from a Kuwaiti guy she dated in the '80s. So not only has she been killed by Islamic militants, but also an old relationship is coming back to haunt her. That's got to be the worst. (via hoaxes' journal)

An urban legend has been circulating about Pimp My Ride, the MTV show on which people get surprised by having their raggedy hoopties (read: old cars) transformed into tricked-out pimp-mobiles. I'll let this poster from the Elle.com forums describe the rumor, since she does it so much better than I could:

okay remember the beloved episode of the girl Nile with the pink cadillac and they put the river in the back her car. i think it was like episode 2 or something. i was told that she was car jacked and killed like 6wks after the show aired. did anyone else hear this? i searched the internet looking for this and i did see it posted somewhere else but you chicks are usually up on stuff like this, so did someone else hear this or am i just the last person to find out?  that is so sad!

So was Nile the victim of carjackers? No. At least, if she was, it hasn't been reported anywhere in the news. Another poster on Elle.com claims to be Nile's friend and assures everyone that she's still alive, but who knows if that person really knows Nile. Anyway, I'd classify this rumor as yet another of the perils-of-sudden-fame-and-being-too-ostentatious variety.