Hoax Museum Blog: Sex/Romance

The Lavabrator — Check out the lavabrator. A vibrator that doubles as a lava lamp. Great idea. Unfortunately, it's a joke. (safe for work).

A Wedding and a Funeral — New York artist 'Shishaldin' has announced her intention to marry the French poet, Isidore Ducasse. The one catch is that Ducasse has been dead for 134 years. But in France the President is allowed to approve marriages between the living and the dead thanks to a law that was passed following a case where a woman's fiancee died right before they could get married and the grief-stricken woman pleaded with the President to allow the marriage to proceed anyway. My one question here is that, okay, say Shishaldin gets married to the dead poet. What if she later changes her mind? How does she then go about getting a divorce? I mean, most of the time you're no longer considered married once your spouse dies, but if you marry your spouse after they're dead, surely the situation is different. Of course, before this marriage proceeds President Chirac would have to approve it, and I'm guessing that the chances of that happening are slim.

Did Lynne Cheney really write a racy novel in her youth? — Over at whitehouse.org (which is not the website of the whitehouse), there's a page describing a novel, titled Sisters, written by the notoriously prudish Lynne Cheney back in 1981. This must have been in Lynne's wilder days because the book is apparently a sexy tale set on the American frontier involving brothels, attempted rapes, and lesbian love affairs. According to this news report, a publisher was going to reissue the book, but was blocked from doing so by Ms. Cheney. 'Goo' sent me the links to these pages and asked if the book was real. At first I was suspicious because I couldn't find it listed in any library catalogs, or on used book sites such as abebooks.com. But then I found it listed on Amazon (no copies are available, but some of the reader comments are quite amusing). So I'm assuming it's real.

You Make Me Feel Like Gancing — A recent issue of Stuff Magazine described the latest dance craze hitting the clubs: Gancing. That's short for guy-on-guy dancing. Not gay dancing, mind you. This is heterosexual (or metrosexual) guy-on-guy dancing. The theory is that this is actually a great strategy for picking up women, since the women are turned on by the sensitivity of the dancing men. There are various 'gances,' such as the Shark, in which one guy pretends he's a shark and chases another guy around the dance floor. News of this club sensation received quite a lot of media attention after Stuff broke the story. Jay Leno, for one, talked about it on his show. Ryan Seacrest even admitted that he had done some gancing himself. Unfortunately for the media, gancing is a hoax. It was made up by Stuff features editor Bill Schulze as an early April Fool's Day joke.

Belle de Jour Commentary — The Guardian invited Cynthia Payne, "Britain's best-known madam," to comment on the Belle de Jour weblog, i.e. did she think it's really written by a London call girl, or is it all the product of some writer's imagination. Payne declares that it's "a load of rubbish."

Who is Belle de Jour? — The Belle de Jour weblog, which records the daily trials and tribulations of a London call girl, began attracting a lot of attention a couple of months ago. It wasn't just the racy, sexy content that got people hooked. It was also the fact that the writing was unusually good. So it wasn't a surprise when the anonymous Belle landed a book deal. But now a new element of controversy has been added to the story. As the London Times writes, "There is growing evidence that Belle may be a fictional character who has never been a prostitute." Dr. Dean Foster, who earlier unmasked the author of Primary Colors, analyzed Belle's writing and concluded that it was very similar to that of 33-year-old music journalist Sarah Champion (see thumbnail). Champion's agent is denying the charge, but Champion herself is staying mum, though she has stated that she's never been a prostitute. So we'll have to wait and see how this plays out. When I first came across the Belle de Jour site I suspected it might be a hoax just because Belle's life seemed a bit too exciting and glamorous. It seemed like something a writer would make up.
Update 3/21/04: Sarah Champion has written a piece in the Guardian responding to the allegations and insists, "I am not Belle de Jour."

Mobile Phone Birth Control — This one had me going for a while before I figured out it was a joke. The EETimes reports on a small Belgian company called Prophy-Lectric that has developed a cellphone add-on, dubbed the Nippit 3000. This remarkable device "projects a high-intensity ultra-sonic electromagnetic 'sound cone' that is inaudible to the human ear but fatal to any sperm cell within a range of six meters, or about 18 feet." In other words, just place it next to the bed during moments of intimacy, and that's all the birth control you need. As an added benefit, the high-pitched sound also keeps the dog away. I've noticed that quite a few websites have linked to this story without any acknowledgment (or apparent recognition) that it's a joke.

Boyfriend Marker — It's become popular to give party guests little tags to put around their wine glasses so they always know which glass is theirs. Now the same concept has been extended to boyfriends. It's Boyfriend Marker. (via J-Walk)

Dear Abby meets the Simpsons — Dear Abby answered a letter from a woman who described the following situation. Her brutish, insensitive husband gave her a bowling ball for her birthday fitted to his own hand size. She retaliated by taking up bowling as a hobby, but soon met a man at the bowling alley and fell in love with him. So what should she do? Dear Abby advised trying to save the marriage, but an alert newspaper editor realized that the letter actually described an episode of the Simpson's in which this exact situation happened to Marge. The letter was pulled before it had a chance to appear in papers

I Can Still Tell Your Wife, Bill — The advertising agency Yarnbird is trying to make a name for itself as a creator of viral content. It invents odd sites that appear to be the creations of weird, eccentric people. The hope is that the popularity of the sites will provide publicity for Yarnbird. One of its previous sites, that I've linked to before, was My Son Peter. Another site that people have been linking to recently is I can still tell your wife, Bill. It appears to be created by a woman who's mad at Bill, a married guy she had an affair with. But like I said, it's really created by Yarnbird. I guess their strategy works because people like me link to them.

Imaginary Girlfriends — A few weeks ago I noted the growing popularity of buying and selling imaginary relationships on eBay. Now the concept has migrated off of eBay and became the basis for a new company: ImaginaryGirlfriends.com. As the site explains:

Okay, but what about the imaginary boyfriends?

The Love Lump — When you're in the mood for something erotic, do you fantasize about "artificially-engineered transgenic tissue sculpture." If so, then the LoveLump, created by EroTech Industries (not safe for work), is just the thing for you. The LoveLump, in concept, is like a blow-up sex doll, except that it's designed from real, living tissue. Oh, and it also doesn't look anything like a sex doll. While it bears all the appropriate sex organs, it's lacking a head or limbs. It's just a lump. To keep your LoveLump alive, you have to inject it with nutrients on a regular basis. So is the LoveLump real? No. EroTech Industries is a mock biotech company created by Vancouver-based artist Christopher Moses. It won a Memefest award last year.

Imaginary eBay Girlfriends — Buying imaginary girlfriends (and, less frequently, boyfriends) is the latest fad on eBay. What happens is that if you're the winning bidder, the person you bid for will pretend to be going out with you for a set period of time, such as a month. This imaginary relationship will be limited to emails and letters... you won't ever meet your eBay lover in person. But by showing off the communications from your new girlfriend, you might be able to convince your friends that you aren't quite the antisocial loser they thought you were. That is, until they find out that you paid for an imaginary friend, at which point they'll think you're an even bigger loser than they thought before.

Superbowl Overexposure — Half of America saw Justin Timberlake 'accidentally' expose part of Janet Jackson's breast on live tv during the Superbowl halftime show. But now a great controversy is sweeping over the internet. Was the exposure really an accident? Or was it planned and staged? Matt Drudge is reporting that it was planned and even approved by high-level CBS officials beforehand. Plus, the accidental exposure fit in remarkably well with the lyrics of the song, which made references to getting naked before the end of the song. Finally, how exactly does one 'accidentally' rip away part of a costume? I mean, it wasn't like something got snagged. He quite purposefully reached over and grabbed her costume.

Hot Noodz — Hold onto your hats for this one. Hot Noodz offers you uncensored noodle porn. That's right. Noodles strut their stuff in all kinds of provocative poses. Is it safe for work? That depends entirely on if your boss would be offended by the sight of naked noodles. (Thanks again to Phil Carmody for the link. Phil reports that he was the 'purveyor of background tiles' for this site).
WARNING: pop-up ads. (I didn't notice these until someone pointed them out to me... my browser automatically blocks pop-up ads).

Butt-Skirts Become Real — You might remember the infamous 'Japanese Butt-Skirt Hoax,' in which pictures circulated around the internet showing Japanese women wearing skirts that supposedly had buttocks airbrushed onto them. The buttocks in those pictures were created via photoshop (i.e. they were painted on the photos, not the skirts), but a fashion designer has now been inspired to create real 'butt skirts.' Check them out at Alba D'Urbano Couture. (Warning: contains fake nudity. The women are wearing clothes, but the clothes themselves have pictures of naked bodies on them).

Philanderers International — Here's another site that makes you wonder if it's real or fake: Philanderers.com. It's a service to help people who are married have extramarital affairs. My first thought was that it was a joke. But upon looking around it for a while, it appears legitimate. I wonder if any single people use this who want to have an affair with someone who's married? And here's an evil thought: if you ever try to cancel your membership, they could threaten to tell your spouse.

Vixen Love — If you're ever instant messaging on AOL and strike up a conversation with a 19-year-old female from California named Vixen Love, watch out. You're not really talking to a teenage girl. Vixen Love is actually a computer program. Quite a few people apparently have failed to realize this.

He casts a long shadow — This photo of Dick Gephardt's shadow cast across an American flag was snapped today (Dec. 1) at a campaign rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It appeared on Yahoo News and is quickly spreading across the internet. Despite the suggestive nature of part of the shadow, one has to assume that it hasn't been photoshopped. It's one of those things that seems like a hoax, but actually isn't, much like the picture of the Jamie Oliver calendar that was circulating around recently. Thanks to Kentaro Mori for giving me a heads up about this.

The Naked Chef — Here's a picture of the 2004 calendar of Jamie Oliver (aka The Naked Chef). Note the suggestively placed piece of bread. This image originally appeared on the website of Boots, which is a British pharmacy. And it quickly attracted attention, at which point Boots cropped the image in order to remove the offending piece of bread. I can't find another picture of the calendar anywhere online to compare this picture to, but I'm assuming that the piece of bread must have been photoshopped in. Probably by a mischievous Boots employee.

Update 2 (11/17/03): David Emery reports that he was able to find the real version of the Jamie Oliver 2004 calendar, and it looks nothing like the fake version that appeared on the Boots website. Oh, and what I thought was a piece of bread was actually a brown paper bag that had been photoshopped.
Update 3 (11/18/03): David Emery has done some great sleuthing and discovered that the Jamie Oliver calendar being sold by Boots is absolutely real and unaltered. Boots sent him a full-size image of the calendar cover (which he was kind enough to forward along to me). It shows Jamie taking oranges out of a paper bag and peeling them. Full-size the image looks quite innocent, but shrunk down to thumbnail size, the position and shape of the paper bag becomes rather suggestive. Personally I think that whoever created that calendar must have been aware of the two ways of viewing that paper bag when they chose that image. It's an old advertising strategy: put a bit of subliminal (or not so subliminal) sexual imagery in an ad and watch the product fly off the shelf.