Hoax Museum Blog: Urban Legends

Vending Machine Camouflage — The New York Times reports about a Japanese designer, Aya Tsukioka, who has designed clothes that transform into vending-machine costumes. The idea is that if you're being pursued by a criminal, you can quickly transform yourself into a vending machine, and the criminal will hopefully run right past you.
Tsukioka has also designed a "manhole bag," which is a purse that looks like a manhole cover: "Lay it on the street with your wallet inside, and unwitting thieves are supposed to walk right by."

The disguises don't look very convincing, but maybe if it was dark someone would be fooled... unless they saw the feet poking out from the bottom of the costume. Tsukioka herself admits the disguises might be a bit impractical, "especially when your hands are shaking." Still, she's managed to sell about 20 of them, at around $800 each.

Insomniac Fish — Big Gary, Deputy Curator in Charge of Fish, spotted this article about fish who suffer from insomnia:

I've heard that watching fish swim around in an aquarium can be very relaxing, but I wonder what effect watching insomniac fish would have.

Pizza Delivery Prank Goes Wrong — Ordering pizzas to the house of someone who didn't expect to get them is one of the oldest pranks around. The concept dates all the way back to the Berners Street Hoax of 1810 (although that prank involved just about everything except pizza being delivered to a woman's front door). Here's a case of the prank being perpetrated long-distance, from over a continent away:

I've never heard of anyone facing serious punishment for this prank, but Looi has been suspended from his job because of it, and that's just the start:

I'm making a note to myself never to order pizza to someone who doesn't want it while in Singapore!

$3 trillion in bonds could be fake — Police in the Philippines have found a chest in a banana grove that contains $3 trillion in Federal reserve notes and certificates. However, they're warning that the notes could be counterfeit. From Cebu Daily News:

I like the fact that the police are only willing to say that it "could" be counterfeit. Apparently they're not sure yet, despite the grammatical errors on the certificates and the lack of an embossed seal on the documents.

With $3 trillion you could buy an entire country somewhere. But where would you cash the certificates?

Man Attacks Inflatable Pumpkin — Do you ever feel like if you see just one more fake giant inflatable pumpkin, that you're going to go mad and attack something? Apparently this guy did:

The Dwarf in the Trunk — About four months ago (on June 3, 2007) this brief article appeared in the London Sunday Times:

Similar versions of the article appeared in other papers, all with the same vague details. To Peter Kenter of CanWest News Service, the story sounded like an urban legend that had made its way into the news. For instance, Kenter cited old stories of stoned teenagers tossing "leprechauns" into the trunk of their car, only to discover later that the leprechaun was actually a frightened child. Kenter also thought it was strange that Klaus Mueller would have an English nickname, "Shorty." And why was no one but Mueller identified by name?

I think Kenter was absolutely right to be suspicious of the story, but what he did next was even smarter. Instead of just figuring his hunch was correct, he did some more research. He emailed the press officer of the Bremen police, and to his surprise received this reply:

So unless the press officer was pulling his leg, that means the tale of the dwarf in the trunk was true. But the tale of the dwarf eaten by the hippo remains false.

Laughter Yoga — What do you get when you combine yoga and fake laughter? Laughter Yoga! The Ventura County Star has an article about this new twist on yoga. Groups of people get together and just start laughing. At first they fake the laughter, but after about ten minutes, apparently most people are laughing for real. Googling the term "laughter yoga" reveals that this seems to be a pretty popular new form of yoga.

The article explains that the technique was created by yoga instructor Madhuri Kataria back in 1995. At first Kataria started a group in which people sat around and swapped jokes. But then they ran out of jokes. So then he realized, "If you can't make it, fake it. If you can't laugh, pretend laugh."
I can understand how this could have therapeutic benefits. Releasing tension, etc. But it definitely seems like something you want to avoid doing in public. I've seen people doing yoga at parks and even in airports. But if you're standing there laughing loudly for no good reason, you might get carted away to the loony bin.

Pork Stone — No, it's not pork. It's "pork stone." Sohu.com has posted these pictures (which they, in turn, got from the China News Network) of stone that looks like pork. Apparently this stone has been on display at the Suzhou International Expo, and has been attracting a lot of attention.

Reportedly, the stone hasn't been altered in any way. It's naturally formed in the earth to look like slabs of pork. It's selling for 120 yuan (about $16) per kg. (via spluch)

Exideal LED Therapy — The CScout Japan blog has posted about a new health/beauty product from Japan. It's called the Exideal. It's basically a panel of LED lights that you're supposed to sit in front of as it flickers and pulses. The company claims that the LED light will "“permeate the vitamins and collagen in your skin and make you beautiful from the inside”. This will set you back around $900.

I suspect you could probably receive the same health benefits from sitting in front of a regular lightbulb for a few minutes a day, and that would be a lot cheaper. (via OhGizmo)

Did Morrissey predict the death of Princess Diana? — Here's an unusual theory. David Alice, webmaster of dianamystery.com, argues that the singer Morrissey (formerly of The Smiths) predicted the death of Princess Diana. I would dismiss it all as an elaborate joke, except that the guy seems really serious about it.

The crux of his argument (at least in the video posted below) is that one of the songs on The Smiths' album The Queen is Dead, speaks about two people getting killed together in a car crash. And this song was released as an exclusive single in France. He comes up with a variety of other clues and weird coincidences, all equally farfetched.

The guy's theory is like a strange inversion of the Paul is Dead rumor, in that the Paul is Dead rumor involved people combing through the Beatles's music to find clues referring to a car crash that had supposedly happened in the past, whereas this guy is desperately searching through Morrissey's music to find evidence that the singer was providing clues about a car crash that would happen in the future.

Racelift — Racelift.com is the online home of the Institute of Ethnological and Racial Modification. The staff at the institute claim to have developed powerful new "Racelift Technologies" that allow you to change your race. For instance, among their testimonials is that of Hohepa Mikhailov, who transformed from what looks like a Russian sailor into a New Zealand Maori. His testimonial reads:
The site is pretty obviously a joke. If the dodgy science doesn't give away the joke, then the numerous spelling and grammatical mistakes throughout the site should. (Thanks, Oz)

Giant Creme Egg Crushes Car — I'm sure this can't be real. Is it, perhaps, an ad for Cadbury's creme eggs?

Campus Book Drop Volunteers Wanted — My publisher is looking for approximately 20 volunteers willing to participate in a campus book drop guerilla marketing effort for my new book, Elephants on Acid. Their idea is to have people leave copies of the book in highly visible places, such as on college campuses, where someone else will pick it up. Hopefully this will help spread the word about the book.

I'm not sure how many sales these book drop efforts actually create, but it's worth a try (especially since my publisher is the one paying for it!). If you volunteer, my publisher will mail you a free copy of the book. Of course, it's not a copy you can keep forever. The idea is to leave it somewhere after you've finished reading it. And yeah, it's all on the honor system, so you could just keep the book. But that would be dishonest!

Contact me by email if you'd like to volunteer. The only conditions are that you have to live in the U.S. or Canada. (Sorry, it's not being published anywhere else yet.) And we're also looking for some geographic variety, so that we don't get twenty people all in the same city.

UPDATE: So I've now already got all the volunteers I need. Thanks to everyone who's agreed to help out. And sorry if you wanted to volunteer, but are only reading the post now. You can always buy the book and leave it somewhere. 😉 The geographic location of volunteers turned out to be well distributed, just by random chance. The largest concentration of volunteers was in Missouri, but there's not enough Missourians to warrant dropping anyone for that reason. After all, It doesn't hurt to have a couple of the books circulating in the same state.

UPDATE 2: One other thing. A couple of people mentioned that the books should be marked in some way to prevent people from simply selling them on eBay. I assume the publisher is going to do this, but I'll point it out to them, just in case this possibility never occurred to them.

Cat Urine Criminal — Big Gary sent me a link to this story with the comment, "I'm not sure who was haoxing whom, but something strange is going on here. If there's a hot black market for cat urine, I think I may be rich." From Yahoo! News:
I once bought coyote urine. It was supposed to scare away animals such as opossums, though it didn't work on the opossum living in our attic. Maybe cat urine does something similar. I can't believe it took the police almost two months to figure out that the substance actually was cat urine.

True Art or Fake Quiz — Mikhail Simkin has a "true art, or fake" quiz on his website, reverent.org. It doesn't test your knowledge of art forgery. Instead, it tests whether you can spot the difference between what critics call true art (which will cost you thousands of dollars to buy) and fake art (produced by a non-artist, which will cost you nothing). I got a 58%.

Below are two images from the quiz. One is a Mark Rothko masterpiece. The other is Mikhail Simkin non-art. I think they both look nice, and would happily hang either one on my wall.

Three-Headed Dog Costume — Halloween Mart has a page of "Halloween costume masterpieces." I couldn't help but notice the one of the three-headed dog. It reminded me of Vladimir Demikhov's two-headed dogs, that I included on my list of the top 20 most bizarre experiments of all time. On the left is a fake three-headed dog. On the right is a real two-headed dog.

Past Life Analysis — The Past Life Analysis website offers you a chance to find out who you were in your past life. I entered my birthday, and this is what I got:
Interesting that I was a writer in my past life. Maybe I was the Pharaoh's Official Debunker of Legends and Hoaxes! Unfortunately, I remember none of it.

The disclaimer for the past life analysis admits that, "you should know that this software is only slightly more sophisticated than an electronic fortune cookie."

Fishmouth — Pictures of an unpleasant looking character, apparently called "Fishmouth," have been circulating via email. As you can see, this guy has done his best to improve his appearance by inserting black disks into his cheeks. It creates a lovely effect, rather like a stormtrooper.



It seems that this guy is real. The BodyTwo ModBlog reports that Fishmouth is originally from Poland where everyone called him "ZygZag," but now he's living in a punk squat in Germany. They have some pictures of him without the cheek inserts.



I think the cheek inserts actually make him look younger.

Making Mountain Dew Glow — Can you make Mountain Dew glow simply by adding some baking soda and hydrogen peroxide to it? That's what this video claims. I was so excited after watching it that I was all prepared to go out, buy a bottle of Mountain Dew, and try the experiment myself. Thankfully I didn't, because the video is a fake. If you watch it closely, you can see that a break occurs after the person pours the Mountain Dew into the glass. During this break is when the contents of a glow stick were added to the Mountain Dew bottle. According to Wikipedia, hydrogen peroxide serves as an activating agent for the glow-stick dye. "It reacts with the ester to form an unstable CO2 dimer which excites the dye to an excited state; the dye emits a photon (light) when it spontaneously relaxes back to the ground state." I don't know what the purpose of the baking soda is.

The Happy Endings Foundation — The Happy Endings Foundation believes that all children's books should have happy endings. Those that don't should be banned.

The organization was (supposedly) started seven years ago by Adrienne Small after she noticed that her daughter seemed miserable after reading Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Mrs. Small plans to rewrite the Lemony Snicket books to give them a happy ending.

Some upcoming events planned by the Happy Endings Foundation include a Halloween "fun and greeting" celebration instead of trick or treating. "Children will be encouraged to knock on someone's door and offer a smlie." Sounds fun. A few days later the foundation will also be hosting a Bad Book Bonfire. Bring along a book with an unhappy ending and watch it go up in flames!

Although the media seems to have accepted the Happy Endings Foundation as real, based on the uncritical articles about it in the press, it definitely isn't real. The biggest clue is the disclaimer that appears on its site:
Internet sleuths have also figured out that the Happy Endings Foundation website is registered to an advertising firm, artscience.net, that lists A Series of Unfortunate Events as one of its clients. In other words, the Happy Endings Foundation is a marketing hoax.