Hoax Museum Blog: Sex/Romance

Lucina Sine Concubitu — Lucina Sine Concubitu translates roughly to 'pregnancy without intercourse.' Here's a site that uses a 'strange book' by this title published in 1772 as a launching-off point to explore the history of the subject. It's full of fascinating and odd details such as medieval church debates about exactly how the Virgin Mary was impregnated by the Holy Ghost: was it "by way of the ear, the gullet, the nose, by way of breathing into her God's breathe, hearing God's word, being Overshadowed by a Divine cloud, etc." Or the old Roman belief that mares can be made pregnant simply by "turning east and inhaling the wind from that direction." Or whether sperm can be carried on the wind. Some of the most amusing details are the excuses that women throughout history have come up with to explain to their husbands how they managed to get pregnant even though the two haven't been together recently, such as the excuse of this somewhat naive girl: "It's true that my husband has gone a long time ago, but we write each other..."

Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2004.   Comments (3)

Name Change for I-69 — Is Indiana Congressman John Hostettler really introducing legislation to change the name of Interstate 69 to Interstate 63, because religious groups feel that I-69 is too risque whereas I-63 is more 'moral sounding'? Of course not. But the story has spread pretty far by now. When I first saw the headline linked to on Blogdex, I assumed it was real after glancing at it quickly. I should have known better. After all, the story comes from the Hoosier Gazette, which is becoming well known as a source of news hoaxes. Check out this article at Indystar.com about Josh Whicker, the creator of the Hoosier Gazette. He's already scored three successful hoaxes before this one. There was the one claiming that a five-year study at Indiana University had discovered that new parents often experience a sudden loss in IQ (that fooled MSNBC). There was the one claiming that Purdue University had given a basketball scholarship to the wrong Jason Smith (to a 5'6" Jason Smith computer geek, not 6'6" Jason Smith point guard). And then there was one about a guy who won the lottery two days after his divorce was final. As for the I-69 name change thing, it's already been picked up as real news by the Sierra Times, and reportedly, according to the Courier Press (requires registration), Hostettler's congressional office has been fielding outraged calls about the issue all day from people who don't realize the story was a joke.
Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2004.   Comments (14)

Weird Pillows — image Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have developed the latest in long-distance surrogate affection. It's a robotic pillow named The Hug. Katie in Kansas hugs her pillow, which then transmits a signal over the phone lines, instructing another pillow in Florida to start squeezing Grandma. It's meant to bring the sense of touch back to long-distance communication. But for some reason I think I'm going to stick with simple phone calls (I have visions of the pillow malfunctioning and not letting go).

Not to be outdone, Japanese inventors have developed the Girlfriend Lap Pillow. Put simply, it is "a pillow imitating a woman's legs made from urethane foam." Tired Japanese businessmen can pretend that they're taking a nap with their head on their girlfriend's lap. Kind of like the Boyfriend Arm Pillow, but slightly creepier. I'm sure a fusion of the robotic Hug and the Girlfriend Lap Pillow is being developed somewhere, by someone. And while listing weird pillows, of course I can't leave out the breast pillow.
Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2004.   Comments (4)

Boo Bee Juice Drink — image Could the makers of Boo Bee Juice Drink really not realize the double meaning of the product's name? Or do they realize perfectly well and are going for the titillation/subliminal advertising thing? I'm sure even kids would pick up on what the name means, especially when they hear the adults giggling behind their backs. I suspect it all could be another Haribo-Fruit-Chews-type marketing ploy. (via Boing Boing)
Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2004.   Comments (5)


Was the eBay Wedding Invitation Auction a Hoax? — Last week this was the big thing on the internet: some guy in Scotland was selling invitations on eBay to a wedding he didn't want to go to. He said that the groom was a former mate of his, but the bride was a "dog." Bidding on the tickets reached £400, and that was with strict controls to make sure all the bids were genuine. But last night Twinklydog (as the guy called himself) cancelled the auction, admitting that the bride was his former girlfriend and that he was still in love with her. He said he was going to the wedding after all, in a last minute attempt to win her back. I'm undecided about whether the auction was genuine or a hoax all along. I guess as long as Twinklydog remains anonymous we'll never know the real story.
Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004.   Comments (2)

Sleep Sex — Australia's The Age reports on the strange nocturnal exploits of a middle-aged woman living with a steady partner. "By night, she crept out of their house to seek random sex with strangers. But the woman was unaware of her own double life, which was conducted while she was asleep." The doctor who is treating her, Dr. Peter Buchanan, claims that she is suffering from a rare syndrome known as 'Sleep Sex', which he's hoping will soon be officially recognized as a legitimate sleep disorder. Dr. Buchanan also notes that "Incredulity is the first staging post for anyone involved in this... One has to maintain a healthy degree of scepticism." I think I'm definitely still in the incredulity and skepticism stages, because I'm having a very hard time believing this could be true. I can understand doing things around the house like making a sandwich (or even trying to have sex with your partner) while asleep. But I can't understand how anyone could leave their house, meet a stranger, and engineer a sexual encounter... while being asleep the entire time. I would accept that she may be suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder, but Sleep Sex... I'm not buying that yet.
Update: Here's an article in New Scientist about the sleep-walking woman. I'm still not convinced she was really sleeping. But it mentions a prior case where a man drove 23 kilometres, killed both his in-laws, then pleaded innocent to the murders by reason of being asleep... amazing. Can a person get out of anything by claiming to be asleep?
Posted: Thu Oct 14, 2004.   Comments (9)

False Alert — Normally I ignore things like bomb hoaxes, but this one was too good to pass up. Security officials at Mackay Airport went on high alert and evacuated the terminal when a "rubbish bin started humming furiously." Upon inspection, they discovered a vibrating sex toy "emitting a lively buzzing sound" inside the trash can. A sheepish 26-year-old man stepped forward and admitted the device was his. He had thrown it away before boarding because he didn't want to go through security with it. "But instead of remaining discreetly discarded, it somehow managed to turn itself on."
Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004.   Comments (5)

Lonely Hearts Scam — So out of the blue this girl from Russia sends you an email via Yahoo Personals. The two of you start corresponding. She sends you her picture... and she's really freakin' hot! Then she says she wants to call you. But she also insists that you give her your mailing address and full name. Why would she need that? So the question is: are you being set up to be scammed? If so, then what's the scam? That's the real-life question facing Johnny over at LiveJournal. I don't know exactly what the scam is, or even if there is one, though it sounds like one to me. Posting under the username 'hornswoggle' I theorized that Johnny could be faced with either some kind of identity theft scam, or the classic Lonely Hearts Scam. In the Lonely Hearts Scam, men are duped into sending gifts and money to beautiful female pen-pals, not realizing that their pen-pals are never who they claim to be. One of the most famous practitioners of this con was Susanna Mildred Hill, a 60-year-old mother of ten who conned hundreds of men out of thousands of dollars during the 1940s by convincing them that she was actually a beautiful young woman in her 20s.
Posted: Sat Sep 04, 2004.   Comments (14)

Explicit Scenes On Haribo’s Fruit Chews? — image Do the new graphics on boxes of Haribo's Maoam fruit chews show scenes of explicit sex? The members of St. Blasien Jesuit College think they do, and have publicly complained about them. The boxes depict various fruits frolicking with a blobby lime-colored creature. Are the scenes as bad as the college says? Well, you've got to admit that the College has a point. After all, what is that lemon doing with the lime-blob? Even Haribo admits that the packaging is "very racy." So my guess is that the sexual overtones are deliberate. But on the other hand, we are just talking about fruits and a lime blob. So maybe all of us who think the lemon and lime-blob are getting it on, just have dirty minds. The controversy reminds me of that rogue tin of Huntley & Palmers biscuits, but on a much larger scale.
Update: The story gets even better. Turns out that the faculty of the Jesuit College never complained about the racy candy packaging. The letter of complaint actually was "a hoax perpetrated by pupils at the school who admitted writing it and posting it on the Internet 'as a joke'." The German tabloid press found the letter, thought it was real, and reported it as news. You gotta love the tabloids. Of course, this still doesn't answer the question of just what is that lemon doing with the lime-blob?
Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004.   Comments (27)

Child Pimp & Ho Costumes — image Looking for a unique Halloween costume for your kid? Then check out the Child Pimp & Ho Costumes offered by Brands On Sale. For your boy you have a choice of the generic pimp suit costume, the long pimp daddy suit, cheetah pimp suit, or zebra pimp suit. But for your girl you're limited to just a single ho costume (though you could send her out in the spoiled brat girl costume). And let Fido join in the fun with the pimp suit dog costume. A link to these costumes was doing the blog rounds last week, and when I first saw them I figured they were simply costumes in bad taste... not a hoax. But according to des femmes they are a hoax. Des femmes reports that, "I spoke with Jonathan at Brands On Sale. He said the page was hacked and they're still trying to remove it from the server. The pimp costumes are actually zoot suits and the ho costume is supposed to be a flapper." This was posted on the 25th. It's now six days later and Brands on Sale apparently still has not been able to correct the item descriptions, which seems a little suspicious. But we'll have to wait and see what happens.
Update: Looks like I was wrong. This Yahoo! News story that Dwight linked to in the comments seems to indicate that Brands on Sale is seriously selling these outfits... that they weren't the creation of a hacker.
Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004.   Comments (9)

British Gamers Prefer Virtual Girls — image A survey of British (male) gamers found that 61% of them would rather go on a date with the virtual Lara Croft, rather than the real flesh-and-blood model Jordan. These must be the same people who have a virtual girlfriend on their mobile phone and order up imaginary girlfriends from eBay. In fairness, I can see why the gamers might have said this. After all, Jordan doesn't rank too high on the reality index herself (and as one guy put it, she seems like she'd be "mind-numbingly dull" in person). But still, she does have the benefit of being real. (via Sexy Pop Culture)
Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004.   Comments (13)

JDate Personal Ads — image Banner ads for JDate, the Israeli dating service, promise to match Jewish bachelors up with attractive Jewish women. For instance, one ad shows blonde-haired, 22-year-old Hila from Tel Aviv who's "looking for a single Jewish guy." Another shows 26-year-old Sharon who's looking for a Jewish husband. But as it turns out, there is no Hila from Tel Aviv. The woman in the picture is actually Hungarian porn star Kari Gold. And Sharon? She's really Devon Sweet, a bisexual model from the United States. Neither Kari Gold nor Devon Sweet are affiliated in any way with JDate (so no luck meeting them that way). Their pictures were just randomly collected on the internet. I guess this is another shocking reminder that advertisers sometimes bend (or completely disregard) the truth.
Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004.   Comments (4)

The It-Was-My-Twin-Sister Excuse — image Aylar's career as a finalist for Miss Norway was about to come to a crashing end when her secret past in the adult film industry was revealed. The rules of the Miss Norway competition clearly forbid contestants from having posed nude for money. But luckily Aylar had an explanation ready at hand. That woman doing all those things in those movies wasn't her, even though it looked exactly like her. It was her twin sister. (Wasn't there an episode of Friends where this happened to Phoebe?). Unfortunately for Aylar, a quick investigation revealed that she had no twin sister. She's now the ex- an ex-finalist for Miss Norway.
Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2004.   Comments (7)

Paper Napkin Rejection Service — Almost two years ago I posted an entry about the Rejection Hotline, which is a service that provides you with a phony number to give to losers in clubs (or elsewhere) who are trying to get your phone number. When they call it up they hear a message telling them that they've been rejected. A new internet version of the Rejection Hotline is called Paper Napkin. It provides you with a phony email address to give to people. When they write to it, they automatically get this response: "This email is a rejection notice directed toward yourself from someone who gave you this bunk email address. That lovely person wants to communicate a message to you. In short, they are not interested."
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2004.   Comments (1)

Where to Stay in Athens — The Olympic Games are about to start and a lot of people are probably thinking that it would be fun to go to Athens to check them out. But where to stay? Well, if you're "a girl, aged between 18 and 32, reasonably good looking and open-minded, you can stay in Athens in a beautiful house, free of charge." (Some language might make it NSFW). Oh yeah. There are just a few rules: "1. You cannot stay for more than 4 days. 2. You cannot bring any males with you. 3. You've got to be the landlord's lover for a night." Sure, this could be real. People do far more outrageous things. But what makes me think it's all a hoax is that a number of links on the site deceptively lead to commercial porn sites (though the links on the frontpage seem to be okay). In other words, it's a kind of bait-and-switch scam. The url 'EZ-B8' should have given it away. I guess it's working because people like me link to it anyway.
Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004.   Comments (0)

Devirginize Marc — image This falls under the category of 'could easily be true, but seriously, you've got to be kidding.' It's DeVirginizeMarc.com. Marc (if that's his real name) is 26 years old and a virgin. Or, as he puts it, "My name is Marc, and I'm a virgin... and I'm okay with it." But he's obviously not that okay with it, because he's soliciting applications from the public to help him change his situation. Maybe it's just me, but Marc looks like he's closer to his late 30s than his mid 20s. Could he be lying about his age? I immediately checked to see who the website was registered to, but it's registered anonymously through Domains by Proxy. I guess if it were my website, I'd try to stay anonymous too.
Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2004.   Comments (5)

Escape-a-Date — The Arizona Daily Star reports that Cingular Wireless is preparing to debut an Escape-a-Date feature on its phones. It will allow you to prearrange a phone call to interrupt you during a date, providing you with a convenient out, should it be necessary. Excuse messages offered up will include "my friend is having some trouble with superglue and needs some help" and "my friend was looking in his fridge and found some pudding that's shaped like Elvis." That second thing about Elvis really happened to me, except it wasn't pudding. It was a potato chip. (via BoingBoing)
Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004.   Comments (3)

Boyfriend Arm Pillow — image For those women who don't want to sleep with a real man, but like to have an arm wrapped around them at night, Japanese manufacturer Kameo has come out with the Boyfriend Arm Pillow. A Kameo spokesman says that, "It has been so successful we have had to draw up a waiting list. Women of all ages have been queueing round the block to take one home." Kameo also plans to introduce a Girlfriend Arm Pillow later. But this is my question: If you're married would it be considered cheating to sleep with a boyfriend/girlfriend arm pillow?
Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004.   Comments (13)

Nude Photos Required to Enter Canada — The Toronto Sun reports that exotic dancers applying for a visa to enter Canada are now expected to submit photos of themselves performing in the nude... to prove that they really are exotic dancers. Immigration lawyer Mendel Green claims that the rules are quite specific: "They can't be partially nude. If they don't have pictures in the nude, they are not going to wiggle their bottoms in Canada." This sounds very weird. Could the Toronto Sun be the victim of a joke? Are they pulling our leg? Or have Canadian immigration officials just figured out a great way to get their hands on lots of free pictures of naked women? I'm not sure, but given how many other bizarre rules and regulations government bureaucrats manage to come up with, I'm guessing the story is probably true.
Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2004.   Comments (5)

Sperm Race TV — Reality TV shows just keep getting weirder and weirder. The latest one being developed in Britain (unless it's all a hoax, like Lapdance Island or Quarantine) is Sperm Race TV, in which a group of guys get to compete for the prize of fathering a child. Two finalists are chosen, one chosen by the mother on the basis of romantic attraction, the other chosen by the show's producers on the basis of 'genetic compatibility' with the mother. The two guys will then compete in a sperm race, filmed with special fiber-optic cameras, to see whose sperm can inseminate the mother's egg first. To me this sounds hoaxy on a number of different levels. First of all, what do they mean by 'genetic compatibility'? I can understand you might want to screen to make sure two partners aren't harboring deadly recessive genes, but beyond that what exactly makes two people genetically compatible? Second, how exactly will they stage this 'sperm race'? I assume they'd have to introduce the two sperm samples at the exact same time into the woman to make it a fair race, but then how will they know which sperm belongs to which father? And finally, are they seriously contemplating getting the woman pregnant? Or will they abort the child? Either way, they're going to outrage a lot of people.
Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2004.   Comments (12)

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