I do not like April Fool’s Day. I find it dull. The only worse day of the year is “Speak Like a Pirate Day” — that I battle each year with “International Never Speak Like a Pirate Day” — because one idiocy deserves another.

It’s a pain to put up with everyone trying to put one over on you on April 1. Have you ever been played as the April Fool? If so, how did they “get” you?


On this year’s Big Brother 9 borefest, the houseguests were “scared” by masked marauders appearing behind the two-way windows as the April Fool’s joke from their keepers.

Shining a flashlight on the mask allows those on the other side of the mirror to “see into” the area behind the mirror — thus striking both fear and trembling in the bones of those seek to win $500,000 USD by vacationing in a house for three months.

Google’s attempts at playing the April Fool are always tedious and rarely funny.
This year you can use Google Docs to build a paper airplane. Please! I’m laughing so hard my fingers hurt! Stop! Stop the comedy already!

My favorite attempt at playing the April Fool actually happens every day in “The Pink Panther” cartoon.

I can’t get enough of the panther’s pink pranks — and I’m not fooling around today — that cartoon enlivens my day and makes me smile. I don’t need the date to read April 1 to get my daily dose of pesky, pink, prankishness:

If you decide to prank someone today — please be kind about it — because many April Fool’s jokes only tend a laugh one way: The pranker against the pranked — and that’s really no laughing matter.

37 Comments

  6. Call me crazy but I love it. I actually love a good, ultimately harmless prank. Maybe it’s my juvenile mind but I always thought the Google 4/1 jokes were not low-larious. I am not keen on jokes that make a person upset, like saying that you have a tumor or have to take a job in Alaska. I could live without those.

  10. I think it’s great because it’s so absurd that if you’re not aware that a joke is being played you think – how will they do that? It’s not doable! It’s like Google Paper – oh, I thought they would care more about the environment. That sounds like it’s going to cause a lot of trouble for the postal service. Oh, they got me!
    I’d like to believe I’m more of a good sport than a patsy. Especially not this Patsy.

  11. Gordon —
    Don’t remind me of “Google Paper!” What a groaner.
    But, really — what’s funny about the Blogger Buzz post today? I get that it’s stupid, but does that make funny? Where is the line drawn between humor and unfunny?

  13. I actually don’t think of it as stupid. It’s more a silly than stupid. How could it be, a person thinks. I’m a terrible writer, this would be great for me because it knows the best part of my writing, and lets people think I’m a good writer by putting my good stuff up top! How clever – if it were to exist. 🙂

  15. Here’s a hurtful joke : radio stations that claim that a musician is doing a free concert in a park. Seems innocent, no? But then thousands of people unnecessarily crowd into the park and get… to say the least… upset that their favourite musician isn’t going to be there. That’s just wrong.

  17. It really did! Shocking but true!.
    This year a radio station claimed a band was going to play a secret acoustic show. People made last minute flight plans and took the day off and it was revealed that the radio station planned on putting a boombox on stage. They quickly had to apologize. Silliness is not the right word there.

    “This is what happens when fools plan April Fool’s jokes. Word spread beyond far and wide.”

  19. Gordon —
    They should’ve had to pay those people for the excess of that rotten joke.
    The problem I have with April Fool’s Day is it requires the goodness of a person to believe in a purposeful lie to get the joke to play. I don’t like the deceit of it one bit.

  21. There is a weird one I remember from the past. My husband’s office assistant (20 odd years ago April Fool’s) posted an answering machine message that the law firm’s phones were being vaccuumed and would be inoperable until noon. Thay advised all callers to put a plastic bag on their receiver so that the process would not be interrupted by their phone call. One young secretary, late for work called in to report she’d be late, and was even later because she first had to wrap her phone in plastic and toook some time to fing a rubber band with which to seal it around her receiver. She arrived at work to find her desk phone similarly wrapped but none of the other office phones. She really fell for it, unbelievable as it sounds. G

  22. suburbanlife —
    That’s a sort of a funny answering machine message, but I feel sorry for that young secretary. She believed what she was told and followed instruction. How many people do that?
    Those types of “soldier workers” — those who don’t question authority and those who just do what is asked without questioning the instruction have incredible value to a company. They are also rare.
    To belittle them with laughter and a joke only coarsens them and makes them have to work out hurt feelings at work where they were only doing what they were asked to do. I don’t find her gullible or humorless — I think she was a real pro, and a team worker.

  23. Garret Rogers has a great take on April Fool’s Day:

    I remember when April Fools rolled around, things remained in a state of normalcy, with the odd joke you really couldn’t tell if it was real or not. Today, April Fools has taken a turn for the worse. Everybody and their dog at Google has spent the last month preparing jokes instead of working, and that doesn’t even include all the other Google-related pranks being pulled across the web too.

    http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=991

  26. How I long for a good old-fashioned practical joke: a whoopie cushion, hand buzzer, or a little vaseline on a doorknob. I love it!
    I’ll tell you a sweet story: A few years ago my daughter celebrated her birthday with a sleepover. The girls were kind enough to give her some very nice gifts. One of the girls gave her a whoopie cushion as a joke gift and it was a monster hit. Believe it or not, none of the girls had ever seen one and they were absolutely enthralled with it.
    They all ended up going out and buying whoopie cushions.
    I actually wish someone had April Fooled me today. My lovely daughter wrapped her orthodontic retainers in a paper towel. You guessed it. I threw it out while cleaning. So far no sign of it after going through some rather nasty garbage. Still waiting for the April Fool’s joke cuz those retainers are going to cost about $400 to replace!

  29. I believe that I threw them out because I’ve done it before thinking it’s a used paper towel.
    But nowhere to be found. It’s possible they went out in Friday’s garbage pick-up because lovely daughter could not quite remember when she wore them last.
    Moral of story: Do not wrap expensive orthodontic retainers in a paper towel when you have nice purple containers to store them.
    But we do have until Thursday to locate them otherwise we’ll be making new impressions and ordering new retainers. I actually didn’t feel so bad when the receptionist asked if this was the first time lost because apparently patients have lost them multiple times. We get a discount because we are first-time “losers.”
    Must be my lucky day!

  30. Hi David!
    It’s been ages since I saw anyone play an April Fool’s prank. It used to be big in school. I’ve seen some being played at work but they were obviously tired rituals and fooled nobody…

  31. dmtessi!
    I’m so sorry the retainer is lost! That’s an added expense nobody wants to bear.
    It’s great you have a dentist willing to give you a “loser” discount! 😀

  32. Dananjay —
    It is much harder to fool people today, I think, we we expect the worst in others now and that ruins the prankster’s best opportunity to punk us.

  34. Hi David!
    I have to iterate my complete detest of April Fool”s Day! Don’t get me wrong. I love to laugh and enjoy people telling a good joke. I do not enjoy a joke or prank when it is at the expense of other people’s feelings!
    It is however, the one holiday where nearly everyone has been on the “giving” and “receiving” end of a joke or prank. Does that even things out and make it okay? Not in my book! That’s debatable!
    Unfortunately, being the naive country bumpkin that I am … it generally means that I am the unsuspected target. I laugh it off and pat them on the back for being “so clever” while thinking the whole time “how stupid”! I never correct them or reprove them because I refuse to entreat them the same way they entreated me! Truthfully, there is nothing funny about humiliating someone in front of everybody … no matter how strong a soul they have!
    Anywhere we can sign up to abolish this crazy holiday! If not, I guess we will just have to “grin and bear it”:-)

  35. Heartmelody69 —
    I’m with you on loathing today, but the quickest way to ruin April Fool’s day is to commoditize it and commercialize it just as Google have been doing — so there may be hope for us yet! Nothing kills the surprise of a joke faster than big business trying to be intentionally, internationally, funny.

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