Friday, April 01, 2005
April Fool's!
The 100 Greatest April Fool's Pranks of all time.
UPDATE: I've decided to keep this post at the top of the page all day, adding to it as a stumble across appropriate April Fool's Day humor (and inappropriate AFD humor). Keep checking back here for new AFD material, and look down below for regular posts. Feel free to email suggestions for or links to other material via tigerhawkblog "at" verizon "dot" net.
First, a couple of tidbits from Sabbah's Blog. Where best to begin, but with Sabbah's story of Saddam Hussein's idea of an April Fool's joke:
Sabbah has also been reading the minds of my friends:
From North Korea:
Oh. Maybe they're serious.
This headline from the Yale Daily News looked very promising:
'Police find deer organs on sidewalk outside of the School of Medicine'
But then I realized it was on the up and up:
Dean Alpern obviously has a dim view of the average American.
As of 6:57 a.m. EST, this was the A.P.'s most recent Pope-watch headline:
'Vatican Says Pope in Grave Condition'
Emphasis added.
Who wants to bet me that they change it in the write-through?
Even I was able to locate the AFD story in The Daily Princetonian. This year, as in many years, it plays on the fears of seniors scrambling to finish their theses:
The New Jersey Brotherhood of Printers and Binders? Heh.
Wait, there's more:
It is a sign of our humorless times that the Prince felt that it needed to add this disclaimer at the end of the story:
It's April Fool's Day. Don't believe everything you read on the internet.
Sigh.
Meanwhile, Pat Buchanan didn't have the moxie to finish a speech because a demonstrator doused him in salad dressing, shouting "stop the bigotry!" C'mon Pat. It is April Fool's Day. The least you can do is finish the damn question and answer session. This transporting wimpiness compares quite unfavorably to Bill Kristol's stalwart performance after having been hit by a pie at Earlham College in Indiana.
Of course the students applauded Kristol -- it was cool of him to finish what he had come to do, pie notwithstanding.
Thirty or so years ago, the same thing happened to the TigerHawk Father, who was at the time professor of history at the University of Iowa. A student in a monkey mask hit him with a merangue pie half way through a lecture. Dad wiped off his face with his hanky, finished the lecture a la Bill Kristol, and was quite surprised when he got an ovation at the end. A couple of hours later he got an anonymous call from the "hit man," who confessed that he had been hired to pie the incredibly boring math professor who lectured in the same hall during the next period, but had gotten the time wrong and hit my father instead.
It is a great tragedy of our age that pies today are thrown in partisanship and rage, rather than for the simple fact that the professor is too damn boring.
This post is rapidly turning into a catalog of April's fools, rather than April Fool's. To wit:
There is a big difference between apologizing -- and I'm willing to consider that some apology is in order toward some Vietnamese -- and begging forgiveness. It is both remarkable and not surprising that many people do not understand that difference.
First masturbating, and now Viagra?!
'Viagra may cause vision loss' - headline, Reuters.
I hate to think what will come from reading Maxim.
Finally, there's this libelous headline from Al-Jaz:
'Israelis toast Arab footballers'
The Israelis would never be so cruel! Next thing you know, Al-Jaz'll republish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
It's been a long day. I'm going to close out this post before the Pope dies and I look way too insensitive.
UPDATE: I've decided to keep this post at the top of the page all day, adding to it as a stumble across appropriate April Fool's Day humor (and inappropriate AFD humor). Keep checking back here for new AFD material, and look down below for regular posts. Feel free to email suggestions for or links to other material via tigerhawkblog "at" verizon "dot" net.
First, a couple of tidbits from Sabbah's Blog. Where best to begin, but with Sabbah's story of Saddam Hussein's idea of an April Fool's joke:
Saddam Hussein and his sons may have been ruthless, power-hungry dictators, but that didn’t stop them from trying to give the people of Iraq a good chuckle every April Fool’s Day. On April 1, 1998 the Babil newspaper, owned by Hussein’s son Uday, informed its readers that President Clinton had decided to lift sanctions against Iraq, only to admit later that it was just joking. One can imagine the knee-slapping guffaws when readers realized how they’d been taken for a ride. The laughs continued in 1999 when Uday mischeviously announced that the monthly food rations would be supplemented to include bananas, Pepsi, and chocolate. Again, just a joke. At this point, the Husseins appear to have run out of material, because in 2000 they recycled the sanction-lifting gag, and in 2001 trotted out the ration-supplement crowd-pleaser one more time. The merciless quality with which the same joke was repeated year after year had an almost surreal quality to it. In fact, it almost makes one sympathize with Saudi Arabia’s chief cleric, the Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah Al al-Sheikh, who in 2001 decreed that the celebration of April Fool’s Day should be banned altogether. It’s not known if the Sheikh had his neighbor’s hijinks in mind when he issued the ban.
Sabbah has also been reading the minds of my friends:
From North Korea:
North Korea will not return to six-party talks on its nuclear program unless the United States apologizes for calling it an ``outpost of tyranny,’’ the communist state's deputy envoy to the United Nations said Thursday.
Oh. Maybe they're serious.
This headline from the Yale Daily News looked very promising:
'Police find deer organs on sidewalk outside of the School of Medicine'
But then I realized it was on the up and up:
New Haven Police officers found what appeared to be a kidney and a liver on the sidewalk [Not in and of itself surprising in New Haven. - ed.] of South Frontage Road near the Yale School of Medicine and Yale-New Haven Hospital after responding to a call from a concerned resident early Wednesday evening.
Though the police originally believed the organs were human, an investigation by the state medical examiner confirmed yesterday that the organs belonged to a deer....
"I worry that stories like this discourage people from donating organs," [School of Medicine Dean Robert] Alpern said.
Dean Alpern obviously has a dim view of the average American.
As of 6:57 a.m. EST, this was the A.P.'s most recent Pope-watch headline:
'Vatican Says Pope in Grave Condition'
Emphasis added.
Who wants to bet me that they change it in the write-through?
Even I was able to locate the AFD story in The Daily Princetonian. This year, as in many years, it plays on the fears of seniors scrambling to finish their theses:
Employees at Smith-Shattuck Bookbinding and Triangle Printing walked off the job late Thursday afternoon as part of a statewide strike initiated by the New Jersey Brotherhood of Printers and Binders (NJBPB).
"Our demands and management's offerings are still miles apart," Brotherhood spokesman Simon Brown said. "We expect a resolution will take the better part of a month, if not longer. We will stay on strike until all our demands are met."
As a result of the strike, it appears that seniors will be forced to travel to Philadelphia or New York to bind their theses, or else attempt to do it by hand.
The New Jersey Brotherhood of Printers and Binders? Heh.
Wait, there's more:
The unanticipated strike comes on the 550th Anniversary of German inventor Johannes Gutenberg's printing of the "Forty-Two-Line" Bible, the first book ever printed from movable type.
Tony Pepperoni, the president of the NJBPB, told the 'Prince' that the strike comes in protest of the numerous workplace injustices that his union members must face on a daily basis, including having to talk to "really obnoxious Princeton kids."
"It's just like Bon Jovi sang," Pepperoni said. "'It's my life, and it's now or never, I ain't gonna live forever.' I mean, he's right, we ain't gonna live forever, so we had to put our feet down."
It is a sign of our humorless times that the Prince felt that it needed to add this disclaimer at the end of the story:
It's April Fool's Day. Don't believe everything you read on the internet.
Sigh.
Meanwhile, Pat Buchanan didn't have the moxie to finish a speech because a demonstrator doused him in salad dressing, shouting "stop the bigotry!" C'mon Pat. It is April Fool's Day. The least you can do is finish the damn question and answer session. This transporting wimpiness compares quite unfavorably to Bill Kristol's stalwart performance after having been hit by a pie at Earlham College in Indiana.
Kristol, editor of the influential conservative magazine The Weekly Standard and former chief of staff to Vice President Quayle, was splattered by a student during a speech Tuesday at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind.
Members of the audience at the Quaker college jeered the student, then applauded as Kristol wiped the pie from his face and said, "Just let me finish this point." Kristol then completed his speech and took questions from the audience.
Of course the students applauded Kristol -- it was cool of him to finish what he had come to do, pie notwithstanding.
Thirty or so years ago, the same thing happened to the TigerHawk Father, who was at the time professor of history at the University of Iowa. A student in a monkey mask hit him with a merangue pie half way through a lecture. Dad wiped off his face with his hanky, finished the lecture a la Bill Kristol, and was quite surprised when he got an ovation at the end. A couple of hours later he got an anonymous call from the "hit man," who confessed that he had been hired to pie the incredibly boring math professor who lectured in the same hall during the next period, but had gotten the time wrong and hit my father instead.
It is a great tragedy of our age that pies today are thrown in partisanship and rage, rather than for the simple fact that the professor is too damn boring.
This post is rapidly turning into a catalog of April's fools, rather than April Fool's. To wit:
It's been 30 years since the last bombs fell during the Vietnam War, and longtime peace activist Peter Yarrow says it's about time that America apologizes....
Yarrow is famous for the song Puff, the Magic Dragon and his rendition of Bob Dylan's classic Blowin' in the Wind.
He said he came to Vietnam "ready to get down on my knees as one American and say, `Please forgive us. We who are a good country -- and a great country in many ways -- also have made some terrible mistakes,' " he said.
There is a big difference between apologizing -- and I'm willing to consider that some apology is in order toward some Vietnamese -- and begging forgiveness. It is both remarkable and not surprising that many people do not understand that difference.
First masturbating, and now Viagra?!
'Viagra may cause vision loss' - headline, Reuters.
I hate to think what will come from reading Maxim.
Finally, there's this libelous headline from Al-Jaz:
'Israelis toast Arab footballers'
The Israelis would never be so cruel! Next thing you know, Al-Jaz'll republish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
It's been a long day. I'm going to close out this post before the Pope dies and I look way too insensitive.
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