Hoax Museum Blog: Urban Legends

Panexa — Panexa is a drug you need to take, no matter what may, or may not be, wrong with you. As the Panexa site states:

No matter what you do or where you go, you're always going to be yourself. And Panexa knows this. Your lifestyle is one of the biggest factors in choosing how to live. Why trust it to anything less? Panexa is proven to provide more medication to those who take it than any other comparable solution. Panexa is the right choice, the safe choice. The only choice.

Now, Panexa is pretty obviously a parody of pharmaceutical advertising. For those to whom this isn't immediately clear, the Important Safety Information listed on the site should remove all doubts. (Side effects include: shiny, valuable feces composed of aluminum and studded with diamonds and sapphire... everything you think you see becomes a Tootsie Roll to you... inability to distinguish the colors 'taupe' and 'putty.') The Panexa site was created by Jason Torchinsky, who's a member of the comedy group the Van Gogh-Goghs and a contributor to Stay Free! Magazine (which interviewed me a couple of months ago, though I don't know if the interview ever ran in the magazine).

However, the parody was apparently lost on CafePress, which Stay Free! Magazine was using to sell Panexa t-shirts. Carrie McLaren, the editor of Stay Free!, reports that:

After a reader sent me a note wondering what happened to our Panexa merchandise, I noticed that Cafepress has removed it due to copyright and trademark infringement!... Apparently, one of the genuises in Cafepress's police division thinks Panexa is an actual product and that we are infringing. I sent Cafepress an email about this and am awaiting a response.

Maybe there are new copyright laws that prohibit anyone from making fun of pharmaceutical companies. Wouldn't surprise me a bit. (via J-Walk)

Mindbending Software — Mindbending Software claims to offer programs that will insert subliminal messages into the favorite computer games of your kids, thereby reprogramming them, as they play the games, to do as you wish. Their website states:

Mindbending Software Inc. is a company specialized on psychological conditioning software packages for children. With the newest technologies our products infiltrate the computer games of your kids and mingle various subconscious or conscious conditiong messages and images in the game contents. The technology can be compared with the subconscious pictures in the TV program, and if you don’t know about them, ask yourself why are you buying all those things you don’t need. You see it works ! Our software uses the same and some other patented methods to condition your kids. Try it out, if you aren’t satisfied you’ll get your money back!

Their subliminal control programs include the Tranquilizer™, Intellectualizer™, Selfesteemizer™, and Professionizer™. So is this real? Not really. It's an art project created by Robert Praxmarer. But what gets me is that he actually will allow people to buy the products listed on the site. Or, at least, he'll take their money. Click on the 'Add to Cart' button, and you'll be taken to a PayPal screen that will transfer money to his account. Most hoax sites, by contrast, carefully avoid taking anyone's money, because if they do take money and don't deliver what they've advertised, that's fraud. So maybe Praxmarer really will send some kind of "subliminal" software to people who pay for it. (He wants, on average, over $1000 per program.) But he could still be opening himself up to charges of fraud if the software doesn't work as advertised.

Chris Elliott Falls for Boilerplate — In my Gallery of Hoax Websites (which I created about four years ago, and which has since been superceded by the Hoax Websites category of the weblog), I list the website of Boilerplate, the Victorian Era Robot. The site details the history of a robot named Boilerplate who was supposedly created during the 19th century in order to replace humans in combat. I admit that the site had me going for a while, and that I only realized it was a hoax when I tried to check the bibliographic references, none of which referred to real books. It seems I wasn't the only one to be taken in by Boilerplate. The New York Times reports that comedian Chris Elliott, believing Boilerplate was a nineteenth-hoax (not a modern one), incorporated the robot into his historical novel, The Shroud of the Thwacker. Only when the creator of Boilerplate threatened to sue him for copyright infringement did Elliott realize his mistake. If only Elliott had checked my site, he would have known better.

Chinese Company Bids $450bn for Exxon — I find this very strange. A Chinese company, King Win Laurel, has filed paperwork with the SEC indicating that it's planning to make a bid to buy oil giant Exxon for $450bn. But analysts are dismissing the bid as a prank, since King Win Laurel doesn't have the kind of money necessary to make good on such an offer. Apparently King Win Laurel has a history of making hoax bids. Last year, for instance, it made a fake bid to buy Telstra. It also tried to buy a New Zealand firm called Restaurant Brands, but that offer was rejected by local regulators. So what we have here is a Chinese firm that simply likes making fake offers to buy companies. I have no idea what it's possible motivation could be.

Yorkshire Man Raped By Dog — The following story has been circulating around, even getting posted in the hoax forum (warning: don't read it if you're easily offended):

Extract from the Yorkshire Evening Post:
A drunk who claimed he had been raped by a dog was yesterday jailed for 12 months by a judge. Martin Hoyle, 45, was arrested by police after a passing motorist and his girlfriend found a Staffordshire bull terrier, called Badger, having sex with him at the side of a road in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.
Prosecutor Ben Crosland said the couple had stopped to help because they thought Hoyle was being attacked by the animal. But when they got closer they saw that he had his trousers round his ankles, was down on all fours and the dog was straddling him from behind.
"The defendant mumbled something about the dog having taken a liking to him," said Mr Crosland. "The couple were extremely offended and sickened by what they saw." Another passing motorist contacted the police and Hoyle was arrested as he walked with the dog down the road.
Hoyle, of East view, Marsh, Huddersfield, told police "I can't help it if the dog took a liking to me. He tried to rape me."
He repeated the rape allegation at the police station and added "The dog pulled my trousers down." Hoyle, who has had a long-standing alcohol problem, was jailed for 12 months after he admitted committing an act which outraged public decency.
His barrister said Hoyle had no memory of the incident because of his drunken state, but was now very remorseful and incredibly embarrassed.
Jailing him, Judge Alistair McCallum told Hoyle "Never before in my time at the bar or on the bench have I ever had to deal with somebody who voluntarily allowed himself to be buggered by a dog on the public highway. Frankly it is beyond most of our comprehension. It is an absolutely disgusting thing for members of the public to have to witness."

So is there any truth to this story, or is it just a joke? First, it should be noted that the story dates back to 1998 and has been attributed to various publications, including the Yorkshire Evening Post, the London Evening Standard, and The Sun. A Dec. 19, 1998 posting in the usenet group alt.tasteless claimed it was printed in The Sun on Dec. 1, 1998. I don't know why the story has suddenly started to circulate around again now.

I can't find the story listed in any electronic news archives. However, the Lexis-Nexis archive for the Yorkshire Evening Post only goes back to 2000, and The Sun's online archive (which goes back to 1996) didn't want to work for me (probably because I'm not a subscriber). So I can't rule out that the story never appeared in a newspaper.

In the story's favor, there is a Yorkshire prosecutor named Ben Crosland, as well as a Judge named Alistair McCallum (who has a history of making memorable remarks about the cases he's judging. In 1996 he stirred up controversy by referring to a case of sexual harassment as mere "horseplay.") The main factor weighing against it being true is how ridiculous it is. It definitely has shades of being another Hippo Eats Dwarf kind of story (right down to the detail of the bull terrier being named Badger), but until I can determine that it wasn't printed as news in 1998, I won't classify it as a hoax.

Update: After subscribing to The Sun's archive (at their lowest rate), I discovered that this story was indeed reported there on Dec. 1, 1998, though in an abbreviated form. See the comments below where I've pasted exactly what ran in The Sun.

Number Two Appears in Eye of Hurricane — Viewers of NBC2 saw something strange during the station's coverage of Hurricane Wilma. In the Doppler loop video of the storm coming ashore, the number two suddenly appeared in the eye of the hurricane, formed momentarily by the swirling clouds. The number is so perfectly shaped that it seems like it has to be fake (some form of over-the-top station self-identification). But apparently it's real. The station swears that the image hasn't been altered, and they've provided a link to a NOAA image of the storm [the link is now dead] to prove that the number two really did briefly form in the eye of the storm. I'm sure that Scott Stevens will claim this is proof that the Yakuza really are creating hurricanes.

HETRACIL Anti-Effeminate Medication — According to the HETRACIL website, "HETRACIL is the most widely prescribed anti-effeminate medication in the United States, helping 16 million Americans who suffer from Behavioral Effeminism and Male Homosexuality Disorder." In other words, it's supposedly a drug to treat homosexuality. The look and feel of the site is pretty convincing, perfectly imitating the bland soothing nature of other pharmaceutical sites. And it's plausible that some drug company could try to devise such a product, given that up until the late 1960s the American Psychiatric Association actually did list homosexuality in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual on Mental Disorders as a psychiatric disorder. However, as far as I know, no drug company is currently developing a treatment for homosexuality. In other words, HETRACIL is a hoax. This is revealed on homomojo.com in an interview with Benjamin, the creator of the HETRACIL site. The interview explains that "What he intended with these creations was to spur conversation on a “what if” scenario in which a cure for homosexuality (or at least feminine tendencies) becomes a reality. What would be the ramifications to society if sexual orientation could be manipulated?"

Hydra High Energy H2O — The makers of Hydra High Energy H2O claim that most people in the world are chronically dehydrated. In fact, they claim that even people who are drinking up to half their body weight in water every day, are still dehydrated. They offer their product as the cure for this problem. They state that it "dramatically increases intra-cellular hydration – by an average of more than 22%"

So what makes Hydra H2O more hydrating than normal water? Well, according to the Hydra H2O website, normal water is comprised of large "H2O cluster aggregates" that have difficulty passing through the walls of cells. Hydra H2O, on the other hand, has been transformed via a proprietary process to become "micro-clustered." This micro-clustered water can pass more easily through cell walls, and thus hydrates the body more effectively. In fact, Hydra H2O is so potent that all you need do is mix two capfuls of it with one gallon of normal water "to make one gallon of super-hydrating Hydra Hi-Energy H20."

So what exactly is the secret proprietary process that transforms normal water into micro-clustered Hydra H2O? As far as I can tell, the secret is that they shake the water. However, they're not about to put it this plainly. Instead, they say that they use a "proprietary process of motion." They also note some mumbo jumbo about the use of "electromagnetic influences" and "pulsating vortexes."

In other words, my guess is that, except for its price tag, Hydra H2O is exactly the same as normal (shaken) water.

Jesus Tree — The latest face of a deity to be seen in a random object is the face of Jesus that some people claim they can see in the trunk of a tree on North Clinton Avenue in Rochester, New York. They're now calling it the Jesus Tree. Most of the time, when people start claiming to see the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich or Jesus in an oyster shell, I can at least make out the outline of a face. But in this case I can't see anything at all. Maybe you need to have more faith in order to be able to see it.

The Curse of Saint Edmund — A group of anti-development activists calling themselves the Knights of Saint Edmund have hit upon an unusual way of stopping a shopping center from being built in their hometown, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk. They're threatening to unleash the ancient Curse of St. Edmund upon the developers. Their website states that:

On St Edmund's day, the 20th November 2005, a formal and public cursing ceremony will take place at Bury St Edmunds to once again summon the avenging saint and dread King to punish his 21st century enemies. The ancient curse of St Edmund has not been used for over 500 years, but with the determination of developers to destroy the whole character of a town laid-out almost 1,000 years ago, leaves the good people of Bury St Edmunds with no other option. They will have to summon divine vengeance down upon those hell-bent on wrecking their town, unless Centros Miller Ltd., Miller Group and Debenhams unconditionally withdraw all their plans for redeveloping the cattle-market site by close of business on Friday 18th November 2005.

Victims of the Curse of St. Edmund have supposedly suffered some gruesome misfortunes, such as blindness, madness, syphilis, and being "eaten up inside by worms." However, the town historian of Bury St. Edmunds denies that there is any legend of a curse: "They have no historical authenticity – there is no such thing as the curse of St Edmund." Still, you've got to give them credit for trying. Maybe there's some ancient American curse that can be used to stop Wal-Mart from opening more stores.

Peanut Butter Slices — This really shouldn't surprise me, but for some reason it does. A company has developed peanut butter slices that come in packs (similar to packs of sliced cheese). I'm not sure how they made the peanut butter rigid enough, and non-sticky enough, that it could be formed into a plastic-wrapped slice. But somehow they did. I'd be worried that whatever they did to it would affect the taste. No word on whether anyone has developed sliced jam. [Update: they have; see the comments below.] I think if you're going to eat sliced peanut butter, you naturally should have it on Sara Lee's crustless bread. It would be the perfect meal for anyone too lazy to do anything on their own. (Thanks to Kathy for giving me a heads up about this product)

The Grafton Portrait of Shakespeare — The National Portrait Gallery has reported that the Grafton portrait, long thought to depict Shakespeare as a young man, doesn't depict him at all. They don't know who the guy in the painting is. The portrait apparently served as the inspiration for the portrayal of Shakespeare in the movie Shakespeare in Love.

So the Grafton portrait will now join the Flower portrait (revealed to be a nineteenth-century fake earlier this year) in the category of "portraits of Shakespeare that don't actually show Shakespeare." My hunch is that all the depictions of Shakespeare are unreliable. We'll never know what he looked like.

Loo With A View — A photo is doing the email circuit, showing a bathroom that men who don't enjoy being watched as they 'go about their business' might not want to use. Yes, it is a real bathroom. It's located on the second floor of the Sofitel Hotel in Queenstown, New Zealand. Here's from a press release about the bathroom:

Queenstown photographer Sheena Haywood shot the images of models from local agency Ican -- after Auckland model agencies turned down the job when they heard where the images were going to be placed. “We had a lot of fun with the shoot, made all the better for the fact that there weren't any men there when we did it,” said Sheena.

The general manager of the hotel commented that "he was now under pressure from those of the female persuasion to decorate the neighbouring women's toilets with something equally eye-catching."

Volkswagen Autostadt Car Tower — Here's a new picture doing the email circuit. It's accompanied by this caption:

A Volkswagen Polo is loaded in the car towers of the VW Autostadt in Wolfsburg, northern Germany on Wednesday. The Autostadt, situated next to Volkswagen's headquarter, is the company's theme park, and distribution centre where daily 5,500 visitors view Volkswagen brands like Bentley, Audi, Lamborghini.

It looks like something out of a science-fiction movie, but it's real, as is the caption. The picture was taken by AP photographer Fabian Bimmer. It appeared in SFGate.com's photo gallery on October 19, 2005. (Thanks to Dipankar Mitra for sending it to me.)

Chess Boxing — Chess Boxing seems to be getting a lot of attention lately. The basic premise of this sport is that you play chess for four minutes, and then you box for two minutes. Then you go back to playing chess, followed by another round of boxing. And this goes on and on for eleven rounds until someone is either knocked out, or checkmated. The website of the World Chess Boxing Organization states that:

One of the goals of this new sport is the old ideal of a healthy mind in a healthy body: mens sana in corpore sano. During a chessboxing fight the control of aggression plays a big role. That's why WCBO's motto is: "Fighting is done in the ring and wars are waged on the board".

A search of news articles about chess boxing confirms that this is, indeed, a real sport. Though it may be a while before it gets included in the Olympics. The Wikipedia article about Chess Boxing provides this history of the sport:

The concept was invented in 1992 by cartoonist Enki Bilal, and a match of chess boxing was a major plot point of his graphic novel Froid-Équateur. Iepe "the Joker" Rubingh, a Dutch artist, inspired by Bilal's book, brought the concept to life in the spring of 2003... The first world championship was held in Amsterdam in 2003 and was won by Iepe Rubingh himself. The 1st European Chess Boxing Championship took place in Berlin on 1 October 2005 when Tihomir Titschko of Bulgaria defeated Andreas Schneider of Germany after the latter conceded defeat in the seventh round.

(via The Presurfer)

Plastic Pumpkin Carving — The newest thing for Halloween is fake pumpkins. Made out of polyurethane foam, they can be carved just like the real thing. But don't try to eat the seeds. A guy quoted about this issue in the Loudoun Times-Mirror notes that: "There's something wrong with society if people start carving plastic pumpkins." I don't think I have anything to add to that statement. The article also notes that once you've carved your foam pumpkin, it wouldn't be wise to light it up with a candle. You need to use a flashlight.

Museum of Hoaxes Mentioned in the Wall Street Journal — I've learned that the Museum of Hoaxes got mentioned in the Wall Street Journal last week. The title of the article was "Photo Firms Hunt Copyright Violators" (October 19, 2005) by Vauhini Vara. I got included because of my brief fight with the Science & Society Picture Library over my use of the Cottingley Fairy images. Unfortunately the reporter didn't fully represent my side of the argument. Here are the relevant sections from the article:

Bloggers, beware: That photo of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes on your Web site could be fodder for a lawsuit. Stock-photography companies like Getty Images Inc. and Corbis Corp. are using high-tech tools to crack down on Web site owners who try to use their photographs without paying for them...

Earlier this year, the Science & Society Picture Library in London, which manages copyrights on more than one million images, sent letters to several Web sites asking them to take down copies of the "Cottingley Fairies" -- photos that appeared to show two young girls playing with ghosts, and later turned out to be a hoax. One site, the Museum of Hoaxes, left the photos up, arguing in a message on the site that fair use should apply since it displayed the photos alongside an article critiquing them. Chris Rowlin, acquisitions executive at the Picture Library, said it didn't pursue the issue further, partly because the Museum of Hoaxes isn't trying to sell the photos for profit.

Yes, I do feel that my use of the images would qualify as "fair use" since I directly comment on them. However, I argued to the SSPL that I didn't need to make a claim of fair use, because the Cottingley Fairy images are in the public domain. The law in America is that anything published before 1923 is automatically in the public domain. As far as I'm aware, there are no exceptions to this. The Cottingley Fairy images were published in America in 1922. Therefore, they're now public domain. Anyone can use them without having to seek permission from anyone else. In fact, I noted to the SSPL that they were probably making an illegal claim of copyright by sending me a cease and desist letter in regards to the images. Apparently they never mentioned any of this to the Wall Street Journal reporter. And somehow the reporter mistook my argument about the images being in the public domain for an argument of fair use, even though I thought my statement was pretty clear.

Pet Rat Grooming — Gary emailed me this article with the comment "Please tell me this is a hoax." Sadly, I think it's not. Here are some highlights from the article:

Grooming isn't just for dogs anymore, and many pet owners are bringing in their rats to groomers like Garrison, who uses waterless shampoo to make their coats shine and smell sweet... "We need to be there for all our clients," Garrison said. "I think we might be the only place around that grooms rats."...
"The most difficult part of grooming rats is trimming their nails," Garrison said. "They have very small feet." Ferguson recommends pet owners get their animals groomed at least once a month to protect them from parasites. "I love rats," she said. "It's an obsession to me. Sometimes when they get nervous they (urinate) but they don't usually bite. We know how to handle them because that's what we do."

A quick Google search brings up quite a few resources for rat owners who want to groom their pets. The biggest challenge for rat lovers seems to be the little drops of urine the delightful creatures leave as they walk around.

Do Round Bowls Make Goldfish Go Blind? — CNN reports that the city of Rome has passed a set of laws to prevent cruelty to animals. For instance, dog owners will be forced to walk their dogs regularly. And round goldfish bowls have been banned because round bowls supposedly cause the fish to go blind. Specifically, the article says:

The newspaper [Il Messaggero] reported that round bowls caused fish to go blind. No one at Rome council was available to confirm this was why they were banned. Many fish experts say round bowls provide insufficient oxygen for fish.

I have never before heard this claim about the dangerous effects of round bowls. I tried to google "round bowls goldfish blind" to see if anyone has written about this, but no luck. However, depending on the size of the opening in the bowl, it does seem logical that the fish may not get enough oxygen. And if they don't get enough oxygen, maybe they'll go blind (shortly before they die).

Incidentally, I'm totally in favor of laws forcing people to walk their dogs. I hate it when people (such as my neighbor) keep their dog chained up in their yard all day, every day.

Ice Giant Found in Siberia — Russian geologist Arkady Simkin claims to have participated in an oil-surveying expedition to Northern Siberia that found an enormous, skyscraper-size creature buried in the ice. He gives the following description of the creature (which he refers to as Taurus Major) on his website: The animal appears to be a huge quadruped with horns much like a bull. In fact it looks to be a hybrid of a bull, woolly mammoth and a rhino – if such a thing existed. But its size is truly colossal. The horns are immense in dimension and protrude from the head with incredible length. The body is covered with a combination of coarse fur and what can best be described as ‘body armor’ (like an American armadillo) – protects its enormous joints and head.

What makes Simkin's site interesting (and I'm referring to Simkin as a real person, though I doubt he is) is the movie and radio interview that he's posted on the site. The movie is pretty impressive and indicates that someone spent some money to produce it. The radio interview, by contrast, is fun to listen to, but is obviously scripted.

I'm taking it as a given that the ice giant is a hoax, but I have no idea who's behind it. Maybe it's a publicity stunt for a book, movie, or video game. I'm sure that we'll find out soon enough. The name Arkady may be an allusion to Arkham from the work of H.P. Lovecraft. The Taurus Major creature itself also seems very Lovecraftian. (Thanks to Darrell for the link)

Update: It's part of a viral marketing campaign for a new Playstation game called Shadow of the Colossus, which involves hunting and killing giant creatures. The website giantology.typepad.com, supposedly about "the mythology and culture of giants throughout the ages of humanity," is also part of this same marketing campaign. The giantology site has been hosting footage showing the skeleton of a giant uncovered on a beach in India by the tsunami. Quite a few people have linked to this footage, but it's all part of the same marketing effort.