Heaneyland!

Fool disclosure

Today, incidentally, is my birthday. People usually ask me, when they learn this fact, oh, what was it like growing up with a birthday on April Fool's Day? And, you know, there was some teasing involved, but it wasn't really a big deal. If I had been born on some other day, I'm sure whatever April-Fool's-Day-related teasing I received would have been quite efficiently shifted to some other sort of teasing.

But my birthday has perhaps contributed to my acute interest in hoaxes, whether perpetrated on April Fool's Day or not. I'm especially fond of the fake newspaper article brand of April Foolery, such as the front section in this week's Time Out, which was nothing but fake articles (a divorce lawyer looking forward to the inevitable boom in gay divorces following the legalization of gay marriage, etc.), or the yearly Google news release (apparently the other thing Google rolled out recently, free e-mail with a gigabyte of storage, is not a hoax, despite the press release featuring a date of April 1; Rose is still a little dubious but is currently "cautiously believing"). This is generally a useless interest (as indeed many of my interests are), but it does come in handy every now and then.

Anyway, today Jon sent me a link to the April Fool's Day clearing house. The top 100 April Fool's Day hoaxes of all time? That is like crack to me. This is the first I've heard of many of these pranks -- which might make a suspicious person wonder if any of the pranks are themselves fake -- but I choose to be trustful this time out.

Posted by Francis at 11:08 PM