Hoax Museum Blog: Urban Legends

David Manning Settlement — A week or two ago papers were reporting the final verdict in the class-action suit against Sony stemming from the David Manning phony critic case. Sony got slapped with a $1.5million fine that was supposed to compensate moviegoers who felt defrauded by the fake ads. But William Booth of the Washington Post did some research and found out that not all was as it seemed with the payout:

News of the settlement created a stir in cyberspace and the entertainment press, with visions of tens of thousands of chagrined rubes lining up around the studio with their palms outstretched. Like, right on! Multiplexers unite! We did some follow-up and learned that Sony paid out $5,085 — total — to 170 real, honest-to-goodness ticket buyers. The rest of the cash? Brace yourself, Virginia: According to court papers, the attorneys for the plaintiffs got $458,909. Sony paid an additional $250,000 for administrative fees and costs associated with alerting moviegoers to the settlement and processing the claims — all 170 of them. Not a bad payday. The settlement, in which Sony conceded no wrongdoing, stipulated that any money left over from the $500,000 the studio set aside for claims would go to charity. And indeed it did, with $494,915 donated to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and the Women’s Care Cottage in Los Angeles.
Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2005.   Comments (2)
Yearbook Photos: Fake Sweat — Newsweek had a short blurb about the enormous money people are paying for high school yearbook photos nowadays. I know something about this because my cousin Kelsey just spent A LOT of money on shots for her yearbook. But one line in the Newsweek article (the part about the fake sweat) caught my attention:

Cindy Glover, 41, remembers her high-school yearbook photos: "All the girls wore wool blazers." But for her son, Austin, 17, a senior from Spencer, Iowa—and many of his peers nationwide—it's another story. Photographer Rick Krebsbach spent four hours shooting Austin indoors, outdoors, in his wrestling gear and shirtless while holding his football helmet. For the athletic shots, Krebsbach even "put water on him to make him look like he was dripping [sweat]," says Glover. She expects to spend about $700 on the photos and "image collection" book.

I also couldn't help but notice how odd it is that Austin's photo shoot looks more like a soft-porn spread for some beefcake magazine than what you would put in a high school yearbook. I think I preferred the days of grainy black-and-white head shots.
Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2005.   Comments (15)
Gross Candy — The Strange New Products blog has word of two new gross faux foods. First there's Harry Potter's Cockroach Clusters from Cap Candy. "The juicy gummy underbelly is covered with a crunchy candy shell, just like real cockroach wings." Yum. I definitely have to try some of those. Then there's ABC Gum. The ABC stands for "Already Been Chewed." "ABC Bubble Gum is a brand new novelty bubble gum that has been formed to look exactly like a piece of gum that's ALREADY BEEN CHEWED!!" I would love to offer that to unsuspecting guests.
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Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2005.   Comments (11)
New Orleans Euthanasia — A report in the Daily Mail claims that doctors stranded in New Orleans hospitals after Katrina hit decided to give some patients lethal doses of morphine, rather than watching them die in agony. A few bloggers are suggesting this report has all the markings of an urban legend, given that it's based on only one identified source. If so, it wouldn't be the first urban legend emerging from the disaster. However, the recent discovery of 44 dead bodies in a New Orleans hospital would seem to add credibility to this report.
Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2005.   Comments (19)
Soylent Green Collagen — If you live in the UK and you've ever had collagen injections for lip or wrinkle treatments, do you have any idea where that collagen has come from? According to this Guardian special report, it could come from skin harvested from the corpses of executed Chinese convicts. "The agents [for the collagen import firm] say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is 'traditional' and nothing to 'make such a big fuss about'." The special report goes on to state:

Peter Butler, a consultant plastic surgeon and government adviser, said there had been rumours that Chinese surgeons had performed hand transplants using hands from executed prisoners. One transplant centre was believed to be adjacent to an execution ground. "I can see the utility of it, as they have access and no ethical objection," he said. "The main concern would be infective risk."

I think there have been several horror movies made with premises similar to this.
Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2005.   Comments (12)
New Orleans Alligator — Here's another New Orleans image that's begun to circulate. (Travis of Ohio State sent this one in.) Evidently this alligator has just enjoyed a good meal. However, this photo isn't a fake. It appeared in Der Stern accompanying an article about the many dangers that now exist in New Orleans, and is credited to photographer Marvi Lacar. The photo's caption reads (in English): "An alligator in the church: the 'swamp critters' are an additional danger."
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Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2005.   Comments (24)
Fishing in New Orleans — image Quite a few hoax photos inspired by Hurricane Katrina are now popping up. Here's one that's now doing the rounds, as reported by David Emery on his site, showing the two Bushes (father and son) fishing in the streets of New Orleans. As hoax photos go, it's pretty obviously a joke. The image of the Bushes with the fish was lifted from a picture taken by AP photographer Steven Senne up in Maine on Father's Day, 2003.
Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2005.   Comments (5)
Opossum in the Attic — Over the weekend my wife and I discovered that we have an uninvited guest living in our attic crawlspace: an opossum. (This isn't a hoax.) As we were sitting on our patio we heard it moving around and soon discovered that it had found a gap (that we had never been aware of) in the side of the overhang above the kitchen door whereby it could gain access to the crawlspace. I rigged up a camera and managed to get a picture of it sticking its face out. So my question is, does anyone know what to do about an opossum in the attic? Will it leave of its own accord after a while? (We suspect it's been there for at least a couple of weeks.) Or do we have to get professionals out to remove it? I don't want to hurt it, because from what I understand they're fairly useful animals that kill rats, snakes, cockroaches, and other rodents.
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Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2005.   Comments (38)
Fake Photos of Katrina Arriving — LaMa forwarded me some pictures of Hurricane Katrina that he says have been doing the rounds in Holland accompanied by the caption: "These were taken in Alabama of Katrina coming in. These photos are amazing. Sometimes there is beauty in a storm. Thought you might enjoy something different than what we all have been inundated with of late." He notes that "a few of them look familiar to me, I think I have seen them before." And indeed he has! I posted them here back in May when they were doing the rounds as a "storm near bunbury" (in Australia). They're cool photos, so I can see why they would be recycled with every new storm. I believe (as one of the commenters pointed out when I posted them before) that they're storm chasing pictures taken by Mike Hollingshead in Iowa in 2004.

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Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2005.   Comments (9)
Liquid Oxygen Skin Cream — New Scientist has flagged a product whose promoters are guilty of making a few misleading claims. It's Neaclear facial cream, and it's advertised as containing a "powerful combination of liquid oxygen, vitamins C & E, sage, chamomile, seaweed and rosemary, coconut oil, sweet almond oil and hydroquinone." The company even boasts that they're the first company "to combine stabilised liquid oxygen into all of its products." New Scientist notes that "We have certainly never heard of a skin cream that contains liquid oxygen, the temperature of which is normally somewhere below -183 °C."
Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2005.   Comments (15)
Yakuza Caused Katrina — Weatherman Scott Stevens claims that "Japanese gangsters known as the Yakuza caused Hurricane Katrina." Here are more details (thanks to John for sending me the link):

Scott Stevens says after looking at NASA satellite photos of the hurricane, he is convinced it was caused by electromagnetic generators from ground-based microwave transmitters. The generators emit a soundwave between three and 30 megahertz and Stevens claims the Russians invented the storm-creating technology back in 1976 and sold it to others in the late 1980s. Stevens says the clouds formed by the generators are different than normal clouds and are able to appear out of nowhere and says Katrina had many rotation points that are unusual for hurricanes. At least ten nations and organizations possess the technology but Stevens suspects the Japanese Yakuza created Katrina in order to make a fortune in the futures market and to get even with the U.S. for the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima.

Also check out Scott Stevens's website, Weather Wars, where he elaborates on his theory of scalar weather (as he calls it) and provides a lot of hurricane imagery to make his case. Stevens really seems to believe his theory, so I would classify it as a conspiracy theory rather than a hoax.

Update: Here's a page with more pictures of supposedly artificially created scalar weather phenomena.
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Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2005.   Comments (37)
Synthetic Fecal Fluid Patent — This 1994 patent for synthetic fecal fluid makes fascinating reading. I had never realized the diaper industry had such a pressing need for fake feces (to test their products), nor did I realize the lengths they had gone to in order to create substitutes:

It is not practical to use actual body fluids. As a result, synthetic materials and substitutes are used. Strange as it may seem, materials used in the past have included mashed potatoes, brownie mix, peanut butter and pumpkin pie filling.

I'll never look at mashed potatoes the same way again. But one issue the document doesn't address is this: to create synthetic fecal fluid I presume they had to compare their product against the real thing. That's a job I wouldn't want to have.
Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2005.   Comments (4)
Downloading Communism — image Jelena sent in the image to the right, asking "Americans do have a reputation, but this can't be for real, can it?" By real, I assume she means--is the RIAA really distributing this poster? The answer is no. Looking at the fine print on the side of the image, I can see that it's author was modernhumorist.com.

Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2005.   Comments (8)
Dead Jackalope — In Jackalope news: a Minnesota woman found in her yard a dead rabbit with horns growing out of its head, exactly like a jackalope. A veterinarian declared that it had been infected by Shope papilloma virus, "a highly contagious disease that causes rabbits to grow things on their head and face that look like horns." The veterinarian's explanation is, of course, part of the continuing conspiracy to conceal the existence of jackalopes from the general public.
Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2005.   Comments (23)
AtomChip Notebook Computer — image You may never have heard of the Atom Chip Corporation before, but you will if they've really built what they claim to have built--a notebook computer that boasts a 6.8GHZ CPU and 2TB of non-volatile Quantum Storage (in place of a hard disk). For those who aren't tech savvy, a notebook computer like this would be years ahead of anything else on the market. The company says that it will present this miracle technology to the world during an upcoming Consumer Electronics Show. However, the pictures it has on its website look strangely amateurish, like pieces of computer hardware glued together. The liberal use of the word "quantum" in its description is also a clue that this thing is totally bogus. The Register states that it's a "trifle sceptical" of the company's claims.
Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2005.   Comments (90)
Kangaroo Testicle Hoax — The organizers of the world testicle-cooking championship in Serbia were all prepared for the arrival of Nigel Bevan, Australia's leading kangaroo testicle cook. They even had a supply of kangaroo testicles on hand, ready for him to cook up into a delicious dish. But Bevan never showed up. It's hard to tell from the text of the article, but it seems to imply that Nigel Bevan, master kangaroo testicle chef, is real enough, but that some prankster was pretending to be him. However, a google search turns up no references to a testicle cook named Nigel Bevan (except for the references made in this article itself).
Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2005.   Comments (12)
Hippo Eats Dwarf Cover — image Hippo Eats Dwarf now has a cover, thanks to the art department at Harcourt. This will almost definitely be the final cover unless (as my editor cautions) changes are made after the sales conference in October. Ideally one wants a cover that will make people curious enough to pick up the book and flip through it, and I think this does the trick. Oh, and I shouldn't forget to point out that the book can be pre-ordered on Amazon.
Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2005.   Comments (6)
Skype Prank — Here's a prank perpetrated on the Skype system (an internet-based phone and chat service) that proves you never know who you're talking to online:

A profile is put up with a girl's name and picture, and put in "Skype me" mode. Within minutes some seedy guy will invariably try calling/chatting, and there's a little program I made running the whole time which will partner up people 2 at a time, and send messages from the first person to the second, & vice versa. This way both people think they're talking to a girl, when they find out, well, they're not normally too happy about it...

It reminds me of the VixenLove program (which was a computer program designed to simulate a 19-year-old girl). But this is better, because it pairs up two real people and makes them waste their time hitting on each other.
Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2005.   Comments (10)
Esquivalience Copyright Trap — The most recent edition of the New Oxford American Dictionary (NOAD) defines esquivalience as "the willful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities." However, esquivalience isn't a real word. It's a copyright trap, placed in the dictionary so that the editors can know when others are stealing their work. This was reported in last week's New Yorker. The editors of NOAD admit that they made up esquivalience: "An editor named Christine Lindberg came up with “esquivalience.” The word has since been spotted on Dictionary.com, which cites Webster’s New Millennium as its source." But, of course, if enough people start to use the word, it could become real. I think the most famous case of fake entries in a dictionary occurred in the 1889 edition of Appleton's Biographical Dictionary. But in that case, the fake entries weren't put there purposefully. (At least, not by the editors.)
Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2005.   Comments (2)
Hypnosis Diet — CNN reports that the latest weight-loss fad to sweep the country is the Hypnosis Diet. Therapists place hypnotic suggestions in their patients' minds, telling them to "picture themselves in a relaxing place whenever they feel the impulse to overeat." (Hopefully their relaxing place isn't a donut store.) I was going to chalk up whatever effect this therapy might have to the power of suggestion, but I guess that's the whole point.

Hey, if it helps some people, that's great. But I'd assume it would work best on highly suggestible people. I wonder if the hypnosis therapists have ever considered taking a cue from Elizabeth Loftus and tried hypnotically implanting fake memories to help their patients lose weight.
Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2005.   Comments (4)
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