Hoax Museum Blog: Urban Legends

No food in the loo — If you ever visit Beijing, no longer will you be able to buy soft drinks and snacks while relieving yourself in a public toilet. Chinese authorities have put an end to this practice, stating that, "It is not proper to sell soft drinks or snacks right at the toilets."

Thanks to Big Gary for the link. I can only echo his comment: "What? They sell food in the toilets?"

It reminds me of a cartoon I once saw in Mad Magazine about businesses unlikely to succeed. It showed "Bob's hand-made sandwiches and urine analysis".

The Great Cornish Shark Hoax — Kevin Keeble stirred up a lot of excitement when he sent pictures to the Newquay Guardian showing a great white shark that he claimed to have spotted about a mile off the coast of Cornwall. At the time he said, "We were out about one mile off Towan Head and I saw this fin in the distance. We were reeling in the mackerel but I picked up my camera and caught a picture with my telephoto lens. The shark was about 100ft away. It was only there for a few seconds before it disappeared."

A shark mania ensued. Others sharks were spotted, but they turned out to be harmless basking sharks.

Now Keeble has changed his tune, confessing that it was all a hoax. He's told a rival paper that he actually took the photo of the shark, "whilst I was on a fishing trip in Cape Town and just sent it in as a joke. I didn't expect anyone to be daft enough to take it seriously."

So it's once again safe to go swimming in Cornwall.

Office Prankster — C.P. Smith, an editor at the Orange County Register, has accepted a buyout and will soon be leaving his job. And during his final days at work he's decided to become a prankster. After all, what can management do? Fire him?

When interviews are being filmed in the paper's offices, he becomes "loud, disruptive, and performs antics for the camera." Here's one of his antics, as described by the KOCE-TV news director: I'm guessing there's more to this story than we're being told.

First review of Elephants on Acid — The first review of Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments is in. It's from Kirkus Reviews: The part of the review in bold is what appears on Amazon. The review botches the details of most of the experiments it mentions, but that's a minor matter. What I really like is that line, "One [of] the finest science/history bathroom books of all time." But, of course, while good reviews are nice, what really matters is that people buy the book. (Hint, hint.)

Badonkadonk Land Cruiser — I got an email from my wife with a link to a JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank being sold on Amazon. She had a single question: Is this real?

I think most of the reviews of the product are tongue-in-cheek, but the Badonkadonk itself does seem to be real. Methodshop.com sheds some light on this curious product: Apparently the Badonkadonk was dreamed up by two Stanford University Band drummers, Neal Ormond and Frank Pollock. It's built by NAO Design, and each one is custom made. There's even an option to have flame-throwers installed on it. Owning one will set you back about $20,000. But don't expect to drive it around town. It's not licensed for use on public roads.

Why it's called a Badonkadonk is a bit of a mystery. According to Wikipedia, Badonkadonk is "a slang term for a woman's buttocks that are voluptuously large and firm."

Cheap wine in a fancy bottle — Cornell University researcher Brian Wanskin arranged to give diners at a prix-fixe restaurant a complimentary glass of wine. The diners were shown the bottle before the wine was poured into their glass. Some of the diners were shown a wine bottle apparently from a fancy California winery called "Noah's Winery." Others were shown a bottle from a North Dakota winery. But in all cases the wine they were served was actually the same. It was a cheap Charles Shaw Cabernet (familiar to Trader Joes shoppers as "two-buck chuck").

Predictably, the diners seemed to appreciate the wine and their meal more when told that they were drinking a high-class California wine, as measured by how long they lingered at the table and how much food they ate.

I guess no one associates North Dakota with fine wine. Obviously they've never tried North Dakota Pumpkin Wine!

Wanskin concludes that, "Within limits, a food expected to taste good will taste good, and a food expected to taste bad will taste bad."

My theory with wine has always been that while there may be a noticeable difference between a $2 and a $15 bottle of wine, once you get over $15, there's really no appreciable improvement. People just expect very expensive wine to taste better, so they convince themselves that it does taste better. (via New Scientist blog)

High-Voltage Wire Repair — This video of a guy repairing high voltage cables from a helicopter has been going around a while -- for instance, it was posted on boing boing a few months ago, as well as digg -- but it was new to me. It has a surreal, science-fiction quality that makes it seem fake, especially when you see the repair guys sliding down the wires on all fours like spiders, but apparently this really is how live high-voltage wires are often serviced.

The guy doesn't get fried by the electricity because he's wearing a metal-fiber suit that acts as a "faraday cage" allowing the current to flow around him without harming him. Because the helicopter isn't touching the ground, it can safely be brought to the same voltage potential as the line, "like a bird on a line." (I really don't understand the technical aspects of electricity very well, so I'm just parroting the explanation given in the movie.)

The footage comes from an IMAX movie called Straight Up: Helicopters in Action, which is a Smithsonian documentary about "helicopters and their many and vital roles in contemporary society."

Do babies born on buses get free rides for life? — About a week ago Lydia Irvin gave birth to a daughter while riding on a New York City Transit bus. Apparently it even specifies on the baby's birth certificate that she was born on a bus. So now Ms. Irvin is hoping that her daughter will qualify for free bus rides for the rest of her life. She'll just have to wave her birth certificate at a driver, and be able to go wherever she pleases. After all, according to urban legend that's the freebie that bus-born babies get.

However, the transit authorities have splashed cold water on Irvin's hopes: Gee, you would think they could at least give her a free one-month pass, or something. (Thanks, Joe)

Cardboard Kids Slow Traffic — Mike Wood of West Salem, Ohio has figured out an ingenious way to slow traffic in his neighborhood. He makes life-size cardboard cutouts of his children. Then he places the cutouts along the side of the road. People driving by think there's a real kid standing by the side of the road and they slow down.

I could use some of these on my street. I live on a busy road and sometimes people just go tearing up it. Though some traffic cones and a detour sign might be able to eliminate the speeding cars altogether.

Forever Fresh Bread — 85-year-old Gladys Wagner purchased a loaf of bread from her local convenience store on November 10, 2006. When she got back home, she cut off two pieces from it to make a sandwich. Then she rewrapped it in its bag and put it in her cupboard. The next day she went to live with her daughter for the winter, forgetting about the bread. But amazingly, when she returned home in the spring, THE BREAD WAS STILL FRESH! There wasn't even any mold on it.

Ever since then, the bread has sat on a shelf in her daughter's home, refusing to go stale. Finally, Gladys contacted the media about it. The academic community is at a loss to explain this miracle bread. The Canadian National Post reports: The company that baked the bread speculates that the bread might have frozen during the winter, but they have no explanation for why it would still be fresh. They insist there's nothing unusual in the bread.

Sounds to me like Gladys should try selling her loaf of bread on eBay. Though it would fetch a higher price if it bore an image of Jesus or the Virgin Mary, in addition to being forever fresh.

Jesus appears in yet another tree — Here's yet another image of Jesus on a tree to add to my collection.

Irma Lopez, of Moorpark, CA, was watering her front yard when, she says, "I noticed an area on the tree that resembles Jesus. I threw down the hose and told my daughter Lisa to come outside." Lisa happens to be pregnant, and neighbors are suggesting that the image and her pregnancy might somehow be related... i.e. that the sudden appearance of the image is a "sign of God," "a true blessing for her and her family." More likely, it's just another case of pareidolia.

Sometimes these faces in trees are easy to see, but quite frankly, I'm not seeing anything on this tree.

Redneck Limos — Pictures of so-called "redneck limos" are very popular on the internet. There's quite a few of them to be found, and here's a selection of the ones that seem to be most frequently posted on blogs.

Are they real or fake? My hunch is that most of them are probably real. After all, there's no reason vehicles like this couldn't be built, and there are companies that specialize in building things like this. One such company is SuperDuty Headquarters, whose sign can be seen in the rear window of the truck in the first picture below (although I can't find any pictures of that truck on their website).

The picture I'm most skeptical of is the one of the white stretch limo with the trailer attached to the back. That trailer could easily have been photoshopped on.

Sale of Fake Manure on the Rise — I found this news story from India intriguing: So, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that these farmers are complaining about fake bullshit. Obviously they're in the wrong country. They should come to America, because no country mass produces truer bullshit than us. It's one of our country's leading exports.

But what exactly is fake manure? How do you produce such a thing? I'm confused.

Wormburgers — An article in the Japanese Mainichi Daily News (which claims to be merely repeating a story that appeared in a magazine called Fushigi Knuckles) tells the story of the attempt to introduce Wormburgers in Japan. An Aomori Prefecture company, so the story goes, tried to market worms as food for human consumption because of the high nutritional value of worms: Maybe this really happened, but probably not. It's more likely that this is a recycling of the old Wormburger urban legend from the late 1970s. This urban legend got launched when papers reported that food scientists were experimenting with earthworms as a source of protein. Take, for instance, this UPI article that appeared in a number of American newspapers in mid-December, 1975: After a few articles like this appeared, it was simply a matter of time before tales began to spread of McDonalds and other fast-food chains secretly using worms in their burgers. However, worms are in no way cost competitive with other sources of protein such as beef. So there's little reason to fear that fast-food chains will start padding their burgers with worms any time soon.

The Comforting Machine — This has nothing to do with hoaxes, but I thought it was interesting, so I'm posting about it anyway. Also, it reminded me of the Compliment Machine, which I posted about just a few days ago.

I received an email from Jennifer Baumeister, who tells me that she's an artist from Berlin working on a project called Comfort XxL, the comforting machine. Here's a description of it: Jennifer's website has some examples of clips viewable on the comforting machine. Jennifer is currently in England collecting comforting clips. She's next going to be in Belfast, from the 9th till the 18th of August 2007. So if you live in Belfast and want to say a few comforting words, check out where she's going to be.

I think I'm, in general, a pretty bad comforter. My usual tactic is to express puzzlement at why the person is so upset, and then I try to analyze the situation logically. However, I don't think logical analysis is what people seeking comfort are typically looking for.

New Last Supper Theory — An Italian scholar, Slavisa Pesci, claims to have uncovered new secret images hidden in Da Vinci's Last Supper by superimposing the painting on to its mirror image. When you do this you can supposedly see a woman holding a child, as well as a goblet in front of Jesus. Personally, I can't see anything at all. It all looks like a blurry mess. But Pesci seems to feel that Da Vinci intended for his painting to be viewed this way. He says, "from some of the details you can infer that we are not talking about chance but about a precise calculation."

Two years ago I posted about another Last Supper theory: The idea that an image of the holy grail is hidden in the painting, located on the wall above the head of St. Bartholomew, the disciple at the extreme left.

The hidden holy grail theory seems a lot more plausible to me than this mirror-image theory. (Thanks, Big Gary)

To Embiggen — Scientific American reports that a nonsense word from The Simpsons has made its way into a scientific paper. Stanford University physicist Shamit Kachru managed to slip the word "embiggen" into a journal article titled "Gauge/gravity duality and meta-stable dynamical supersymmetry breaking."

The word embiggen first appeared in a 1996 episode of The Simpsons. It was used by Jebediah Springfield in these lines of dialogue: Here's how Kachru used the word in his article: This isn't the first time joke words have made their way into usage. I think the words "hornswoggle" and "absquatulate" started out as jokes, invented by people in the midwest. But now they appear in many dictionaries.

Wayne Redhart’s Amazon Reviews — Many of you may remember Amazon reviewer Henry Raddick. Sadly, Raddick hasn't reviewed any books since 2003. But a new Raddick has emerged: Wayne Redhart. At least, Redhart seems to be doing what he can to fill the void left by Raddick.

And I was quite pleased to discover Redhart has reviewed Hippo Eats Dwarf. Here's his review:


I wonder what he'd have to say about Elephants on Acid?
(Thanks, Andrew)

Controversial Sprinter Ad — Lots of blogs have been posting this recent Intel ad, pointing out the racist implications of six black men appearing to bow down to a white man. (I actually think all the crouching runners are the same guy, photoshopped into six different places.)

Whether or not it's racist isn't the question. The question for the MoH is: Is it really an ad by Intel? After all, although it's been widely posted, most blogs haven't specified exactly where the ad ran.

The answer is that it definitely is an actual Intel ad. It appeared in a recent Dell catalog. Penciledin.com seems to have been the first blog to post it. Intel has recently posted an explanation and apology on their blog:

Rent a Pet — FlexPetz is a San Diego-based company that allows people to rent out dogs by the day. So if you want to be able to take a dog to the beach on the weekend, but you don't have time to care for it during the week, this is the service for you. Marlena Cervantes, the founder of the company, doesn't like the term "rent-a-pet," according to this AP article. Instead, she likes to think of what she's offering as "shared pet ownership." The service is quite pricey, but it's doubtless cheaper than caring for a dog yourself for its entire life.

As soon as I read about this company, I thought about the many "rent-a-something" type hoaxes that have been reported here over the years, such as: Rent my Son, Rent a Wife, Rent a Negro, Rent a Midget, Rent a German, and Rent a Dildo.

However, I'm pretty sure FlexPetz is not a hoax. Though many might think that it's such a bad idea they would prefer it was a hoax.

My first reaction was to be appalled. Pets, to my way of thinking, are part of the family. They're not something to be rented on the weekend. But the more I've thought about it, the more I've started to grudgingly accept the idea of this company, because if you want a pet but you're not sure if you can take care of it for its entire life, renting one would be better than buying one and later trying to get rid of it. (via Art of the Prank)