Clubbo.com is definitely one of the most elaborate, in-depth hoax websites that I've ever come across. The attention to detail is astounding. The only site I can think of that rivals it in this respect would be Boilerplate, the Victorian Era Robot. 
After whining about the vacuum cleaner being visible in the picture of me that appeared in the NY Times yesterday, I got an apologetic note from the photographer, Alan Decker, which made me feel bad. The presence of the vacuum cleaner was, of course, my fault, since I was supposed to move it before he arrived. Anyway, as Alan pointed out, in the other pictures he took (a few of which he just sent me) you really couldn't see it... except in this one puzzling shot. And here I am in my 'Buy Dehydrated Water' t-shirt. 
You wouldn't want to run into this thing while out for a stroll in the woods. It's a 1000lb wild hog with 9-inch tusks, nicknamed Hogzilla, that hunting Guide Chris Griffin claims to have shot in Georgia last month. To put this in perspective, 500lb wild hogs are considered enormous. No one has ever heard of a 1000lb wild hog before, so it's raising a few eyebrows. Plus, the only evidence for the creature's existence is a picture Griffin snapped of himself posing beside it. He says that he buried the hog soon after killing it. In the picture of Griffin with Hogzilla, the hog sure looks big. Hogzilla could be real. Or the picture could be photoshopped, though I haven't seen a good enough copy of the image to make a judgement on that. Or Griffin could have obtained a large hog from a farm. In the hoax forum, posters have pointed out that tricks of perspective might make the hog look bigger than it really is... though even taking distorted perspective into account, that still seems like a big hog. If I were Griffin, I'd dig the skeleton up to prove that Hogzilla is real, because a picture alone is not indisputable evidence. 
This is going to be an egocentric post, because it's about me. I got my picture in the New York Times today. So does that mean I'm famous? Can I walk into an expensive restaurant now and get a table right away? I'm not betting on it. I'm featured in an article by Daniel Terdiman about hoax weblogs. Not that I've ever created a hoax weblog, but I do write about them. My friend Odin Soli, who created the Plain Layne hoax, also got his picture in there (Odin and I studied American History together in Grad School at UC San Diego). That animal on the left side of the picture is a jackalope. And if you look closely you can see my vacuum cleaner behind me, partially hidden by my shoulder. The photographer swore to me that there was no need to move it, because he said it wouldn't show up in the picture. Guess he was wrong. Not that anyone would really notice it... except my wife. The first thing she said when she saw the picture: "And there's our vacuum cleaner."
Ear Candling is an ancient home remedy in which wax and other impurities are supposedly drawn out of a person's ear canal by sticking a burning hollow candle in their ear. The theory is that the hollow candle creates a vacuum that sucks everything out.
I found this photo over at J-Walk Blog. J-Walk can't tell if it's real or fake, and the people who have posted comments over there seem split also. I think the image itself has to be real, in the sense of not being digitally manipulated... simply because the image quality is too high. Typically photoshopped images tend to be low-quality, to hide any mistakes. One person claimed that the guy falling off his bike is actually a statue, which could be, though I haven't been able to find any verification of this. If it is a photo of a statue, that would put it in the same genre as the Splat photo (i.e. photos of life-like, bizarre statues). I'm not sure where the image is taken. Is that the Vienna Opera House?
Norma Khouri's bestseller Honor Lost (published in Australia where Khouri now lives as Forbidden Love) tells the story of a Jordanian 'honor killing.' Dalia, a young woman, falls in love with a Christian man and is murdered for this transgression by her father in order to defend the 'honor' of the family. It's a shocking story, and Khouri has always insisted that it's entirely true. She claims that she lived in Jordan for many years and personally knew Dalia. But the Sydney Morning Herald has done a lot of investigative work into Khouri's background and is now alleging that Khouri's story is far more fiction than fact. They put it more bluntly: "Norma Khouri is a fake, and so is Forbidden Love." Among their accusations: the Dalia character never existed, and Khouri herself grew up outside of Chicago (contradicting her claims that she grew up in Jordan). Khouri completely denies all these claims, but the editors of the Sydney Morning Herald seem pretty confident that she's a fake, predicting that "Khouri's hoax will take its place in a long Australian tradition of literary fraud, from Ern Malley to Helen Darville-Demidenko."
Why bother with having a tree in your backyard that grows just oranges, or just lemons, when you can have one tree that simultaneously grows peaches, apricots, plums, and nectarines or oranges, mandarins, lemons, limes, tangellos, grapefruit, and pomellos? What you need is a Fruit Salad Tree from the Fruit Salad Tree Company. My wife insists these have to be a joke, arguing that everyone would already have a fruit salad tree if they were really possible to buy. I, on the other hand, think they're real... maybe because I don't know much about botany. But I figure they're just grafting different types of trees together. (via About.com's urban legends forum)
Bruce Simpson is advertising that for a very modest sum he'll show you how to build your very own cruise missile. As he says on his website: "Whether you're a very small nation looking to extend its military capabilities while perhaps creating a highly profitable export industry, or an entrepreneur seeking to enter the massive market low-cost UAVs, RPVs and other pilotless vehicles, or whether you just want a single missile to mount on your SUV as a roof ornament -- I'm your man." 
