April 1, 2009
yes that's actual poop ha ha ha
4/1/09
My feeling is this: fuck April Fools' Day and the stupid motherfucking jokes concomitant to the "holiday".
Oh, I'm sorry... do I lack a certain sense of humor? Do I just not get how goddamn hilarious you can be on April 1st? Should I "lighten up" and "just go with it because you were only kidding"? I have a better idea: how about you eat shit, and afterwards, have a nightcap by sucking my balls?
I have never, ever in my life seen one genuinely funny April Fools' joke. I remember in 4th grade, we read a story about April Fools' where one brother tricked the other brother into eating cardboard pancakes. I guess the "comically amusing" brother managed to dress up the cardboard convincingly enough, and poured syrup on it, and then the other brother... oh god, I can barely keep writing, I'm so overcome with mindnumbing ennui.
There was this kid in our neighborhood who put a bucket of water over his parents' door, and... oh fuck it. I can't remember the rest of it, but it ruined some project the mother was working on, and warped the floorboards. Yay April Fools' Day.
How about some radio DJs tricking people into thinking their heroes are dead? How about changing your website to something useless for a day? How about informing your workers about some horrible change to their lives, just to watch their stomachs fall out? OH GOD, THE HILARITY IS FUCKING UNBEARABLE! I have to agree with the seniors I sat with at Chi Psi: if "the joke" is the lowest form of humor, then surely April 1 is the High Holy Day of low thrills.
Here's the thing - where I grew up, you didn't need April 1st to fuck with anybody; it was open season all year! I got hit with iceballs, tricked into thinking some girl liked me, harassed in the cafeteria and fed dirt... regardless of the date! You have to give it up for public schools, they made sure the laffs never stopped. When I was a kid, I found April Fools' Day to be painfully redundant.
These days, I think we all have enough trauma without the "Gotchya!" Brigade pulling some motherfucking stunt. I love the Improv Everywhere guys (and some were friends of mine at UNC), but I could do without stuff like their Best Gig Ever, which cringingly raised the expectations of a lowly rock band for one night, only to devastate them later. I much prefer the Best Buy gig (which flummoxed a moronic big-box corporation) or the Frozen Grand Central, which was as beautiful as a ballet.
You know me: I do holidays right. I painstakingly line up stockings, I spend a gajillion man-hours on Halloween, I do bizarrely-silly photo essays for Thanksgiving, and I try to make birthdays really cool. When Lucy was almost 2 years old, I was hyping up egg-dyeing so much that she actually turned to me and said "I'm a little bit scared of Easter." (Tessa and I use this statement now, whenever we vaguely don't want to do something.)
So I think I'm well within my right to say this: April Fools' Day should be shitcanned. I think it should be replaced with something we can actually look forward to. How about French Fries and Massage Day?
from our Easter Egg hunt in Italy last March
I see the egg! I see the egg! It's in the branches on the right before you walk down that little lane! I see it!
very funny.
I am so supportive of French Fries day. Where can I sign up?
I'm totally with you. I hate this crap. It's unfunny and distracting. The point is to make people feel stupid. Great! The student newspaper where I work annually produces an April Fools issue, and I NEVER read it anymore; the "joke" articles are stupid and obvious.
Maybe we're just grinches. Or fools.
Massage Day -- now that's one I could get behind. Starting right NOW.
I completely agree with you! I hate April Fool's. I have enough stress in my daily life that I don't need my blood pressure raised any further.
I noticed that my daughter's school has been hyping up the holiday. Lots of dumb jokes and stuff. I try to humor Helen, but the rest of the jokes are very annoying. Yesterday, she came home with a field trip information sheet/permission sheet about a white water rafting trip that cost $150.
On the back of the form, in small type was a notice that it was an April Fool's Joke. Oh really? Given the tuition and all the nickel and diming that goes on at her private school, I thought it was for real and did not appreciate having my chain jerked like that. I am thinking of sending an email to the principal, telling her that I am assuming that the recent notice about the yearly rise in tuition is a Joke as well.
you're just fucking with us, right?
I have never agreed with a blog post more in my life.
Yes and no. April Fool's Day jokes that are mean, cruel, humiliating or demeaning (none of these are exact synonyms!) annoy the shit out of me, and I hope never to see one again. Those that are clever or witty can be a kind of performance art, as the Improv Everywhere Grand Central piece was.
Unfortunately, I did my share of immature pranks when I was a kid -- my sister didn't appreciate it much when she put salt instead of sugar on her Corn Flakes one morning -- but there was one in particular I enjoyed. One April 1, I stole the morning newspaper and hid it away. The following year, I replaced the real newspaper with the year-old version. As my parents read it in the morning, it took them several minutes to realize that everything seemed a bit off, and they got very confused. But when they glanced at the top of the page, it still said "April 1" even though they never bothered to check the year. Not a rip-roaring laugh, but as a 12-year-old, I enjoyed watching my parents struggle to figure out what the hell was going on!
I can't agree with this any more. It would be one thing if someone did something funny, or original, or something that wasn't the same hoax crap recycled over and over.
The only april fools day thing I heard about that actually made me chuckle at all was that Trent Reznor was going to put out an album produced by Timbaland and that was mostly as a dig at Chris Cornells new album.
Yesterday passed without incident at my house. I was fully expecting something from my 10 year old son - because truly, April Fools Day is perfect for his age, but he didn't mention it.
Laurie - that is just crazy!
i'm with you. my brother in law left a message on my cell phone saying he'd been in a really bad car accident and to call him asap. wtf.
I totally agree with this post! I will admit it was slightly funny though when, yesterday, my 6-year said that he was so excited to do an April Fool's joke today (April 2) and I told him he couldn't -- too late -- April Fool's only works on one day out of the year. He teared up and said "Is that your April Fool's joke on me?"
I said no, gave him a big hug, and told him to go ahead and do the joke then. "Mom there's a spider coming down to bite you." (Me--"really where?" look all around) "Made you look; April Fool's!" I can handle those :)
Craighill, that type of prank is mean and unfunny.
But April Fool's Day should be for lighthearted humor, not really making people feel bad. C'mon.
I'm generally with you, but I propose a Didactic Purposes Exception to the general rule that April Fools' Day sucks. Sometimes, AFD provides a license to do certain beneficial things that would otherwise be unacceptable -- maybe the same reason why Sadie Hawkins Day was once an important outlet.
Consider this: A couple of jobs ago I worked for a high-integrity organization, but somehow a certain oleagenous vendor I'll call Joe (a few other facts are changed to protect the innocent) charmed the right people and had developed a long-term cozy relationshp. It was obvious to some of us that this guy was a scandal waiting to happen, but he was in a position of significant fiduciary responsibility on high-profile matters. On AFD I picked a few partners with good senses of humor and breathlessly reported that Joe's offices were being raided by the SEC even as we spoke, that Joe could not be located and there was some concern he had taken flight, and that some nice folks from the SEC had called me asking for information. This was met with ashen faces, eyes filled with panic, and -- here's the important part -- not a bit of disbelief. In hindsight that was a stupid risk to have taken, but it worked out and everyone liked the joke. In the retelling, folks tended to say something like, "well, it DOES seem plausible." Joe's contract was put out to bid when it came time to renew and he is no longer a vendor. Lots of factors contributed to that, but my AFD joke opened some eyes and put a nail or two in Joe's coffin. And the very best part of the story: he's currently being investigated by -- you guessed it -- the SEC.
So there's my best example. I could not have pulled off my joke except on AFD, and my point could not have been made with a memo re my misgivings about Joe. And it did some good by playing at least a small part in keeping a good company from being embarrassed by an unethical con-man.
I pretty much agree with you, Ian. I'm perhaps not so pissed about it but I generally agree. I'm for the laffs all the time and not mean-spirited ones. That's not cool.
My husband played a pretty good joke on me once: I tend to get out of bed to pee about a half hour after I get in bed. I don't usually bother to turn the lights on. One night, he put Vaseline on the toilet seat and I skidded off onto the floor when I sat down. I mean, I suppose I could've broken my neck and dies or something but it was pretty funny. Luckily I wasn't midstream or anything.
Caroline - tell your husband next year, use toothpaste. The all-white brands are nearly undetectable and would just cause stickiness, not possible injury. Just ask my mom - we pulled that as youngsters one AFD.
My four-year-old wanted to have an AFD joke this year. Every day at preschool each child chooses his/her nametag from the bunch on the table. We agreed that it would be funny for him to choose someone else's, insist that he was the other child, then say April Fools. Of course, the one curmudgeon lady was working check in and when he selected the "wrong" one, she said "I would have thought you could read your name by now". Talk about a bitchy buzzkill - he had the most stricken look until I tried to explain. She didn't even crack a smile and I am sure she will write on his progress report that he can't distinguish his own name. Hate the game, not the player!
Feeling a little guilty, but here goes...I baked cupcakes for my daughter's 1st grade class - except the cake part was meatloaf and the icing was really food coloring dyed mashed potatoes. I topped the miniature cakes with sprinkles to add to the effect. Her teacher was completely in to it and supported it. The kids were hysterical and ended up LOVING the joke. I promised the class to bring the real deal to them next week. No harm, no foul. And, I think my daughter will remember it fondly for years to come.
Just get a nice fake turd:
or it's equal - should be adequate for the season...
Do they pay someone to polish that plant?
The only good April Fools' Day prank I noticed that I like is what Woot.com did... They only sell 1 item/day and every so often they sell a grab bag for $3 that always sells out in minutes (and crashes their servers)
Yesterday they raised the shipping price from the standard $5 to $1,000,000, but if you figured out the coupon code, you could get a $999,995 discount. No harm, no foul, just clever and fun.
Fair point, and PTSD is a bitch, but don't throw out the baby with bathwater. Rehabilitated or reshaped a bit, it could be a great civic tradition like Thanksgiving. Fooling can be sympathetic and compassionate, and as with exchanging gifts it can be reciprocal. It doesn't have to be a celebration of victimization. It could be a tradition that teaches people to be playful and not to fear misjudgments and mistakes. It could teach _against_ sadism. Maybe if the country had a healthier April Fools' tradition we'd see less sadism--in hazing, in prison keeping, in interrogations....
Good morning, Happy Fool's Day!!!
Two guys were in a bar, and they were both watching the television when the news came on. It showed a guy on a bridge who was about to jump, obviously suicidal.
"I'll bet you $10 he'll jump," said the first guy.
"Bet you $10 he won't," said the second guy.
Then, the guy on the television closed his eyes and threw himself off the bridge. The second guy hands the first guy the money.
"I can't take your money," said the first guy. "I cheated you. The same story was on the five o'clock news."
"No, no. Take it," said the second guy. "I saw the five o'clock news too. I just didn't think the guy was dumb enough to jump again!"
Happy April Fool's Day!