Hoax Museum Blog: Urban Legends

Glencullen University — Alan Williams, a professor at Southwestern Adventist University, received a Ph.D. from Glencullen University. For some reason, he didn't think it odd that Glencullen had no campus, no faculty, and required him to do nothing to earn the degree. In reality, Glencullen didn't even exist. Despite its Irish name and Irish-themed website, it's just a diploma mill based in Romania. Williams claims that he's shocked, shocked to learn this. For some reason, I don't know why, it's hard to believe that he's really an innocent victim.
Update: Brian Kelly informed me that my link to the Glencullen University website is incorrect. The site I linked to originally is actually a spoof site created by him that he uses as an example in a talk about spoof sites. So it's a spoof of a spoof, so to speak. Very confusing. So here's Brian Kelly's spoof Glencullen University site, not to be confused with the website of the real Glencullen University, which is a fake university (and the url of which I now don't know).

Clone Number Six — Clonaid now claims that it has created its sixth human clone, in the form of a baby boy born in Sydney last week. Once again, no evidence of any kind was provided to back up this claim. You're just supposed to take their word for it. And come on! They seem like an extremely credible bunch, don't they?

The Love Lump — When you're in the mood for something erotic, do you fantasize about "artificially-engineered transgenic tissue sculpture." If so, then the LoveLump, created by EroTech Industries (not safe for work), is just the thing for you. The LoveLump, in concept, is like a blow-up sex doll, except that it's designed from real, living tissue. Oh, and it also doesn't look anything like a sex doll. While it bears all the appropriate sex organs, it's lacking a head or limbs. It's just a lump. To keep your LoveLump alive, you have to inject it with nutrients on a regular basis. So is the LoveLump real? No. EroTech Industries is a mock biotech company created by Vancouver-based artist Christopher Moses. It won a Memefest award last year.

Liver of George Best — Any self-respecting British soccer fan will know the legendary George Best. They also know that Best enjoyed his drink. And so it should be no surprise that his liver, which was recently put up for auction on eBay, looks rather diseased and unhealthy. The seller claims that the liver was "recovered from the incinerator organ bin at London's Cromwell Hospital in July 2002." He also cautions that it's "not suitable for transplant or for serving with bacon and onion gravy." So the question is, is this really George Best's liver? I don't know. I guess only a dna test would answer that question. But it looks suspiciously like calf's liver to me. The item is no longer for sale, probably because it was pulled by eBay for being so obviously fake.

Mountain Lion Email Hoax — Quite a few people have received this picture in their email showing a man holding up a giant (dead) mountain lion. According to the accompanying text, the lion was shot by the man near Leon, Kansas while he was out deer hunting, though different versions of the email list different locations. Is the picture real? It is. But the accompanying text is incorrect. According to this article on Buckmasters.com, the lion was actually shot near Seattle, Washington. The picture first appeared in Fair Chase magazine, published by the Boone and Crockett Club, before it spread to email.

PC — The hoax that everyone was linking to last week was an article on overclockers.com written by a guy who claimed that he had received a brand new dual-processor Apple G5 for Christmas, but because he had been hoping for a PC, he gutted the computer and installed a cheap PC motherboard into it instead. For those who don't know computers, that's a little like getting a Ferrari and replacing its engine with that of a Geo Prism. The Mac community hit the roof when they heard about what this guy had done. But of course, as the guy now explains, he was just kidding. Wired has an article detailing the hoax and the reaction to it.

Decomposition Cam — The folks over at SeeMeRot.com have engineered something rather unusual: a webcam set up inside a coffin so that you can see their friend's body decompose. At least, that's what they claim. The 'webcam image' appears simply to be an animated gif that cycles between a blurry and an in-focus image to simulate how a real webcam might behave. Plus, they have rather odd sponsors for a project of this kind... sponsors offering 'live sexy girl cams'. I suppose the logic is that once you get tired of watching the dead girl (they say it's a woman in the picture), you can head over and watch some live sexy girls. The site is registered to someone at 7985 Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood. No suite number is given, so it's impossible to tell which business there registered it, but most of the stores in that area are in the 'adult entertainment' business. I suspect that SeeMeRot.com is a weird promotional gimmick dreamed up by someone selling porn. In other words, it's fake.
(By the way, the idea of a decomposition cam isn't unique to seemerot.com. Joey Skaggs included this concept in his FinalCurtain.com cemetery hoax. Skaggs's fantastical cemetery theme park was going to include a grave constructed by an artist named Joseph Sullivan that would show Sullivan's decomposing body on an above-ground monitor.)

The Girl With X-Ray Eyes — Natasha Demkina, a young girl living in Saransk, Russia, began to receive a lot of media attention around the middle of last month. It started with an article in Pravda, which hailed her as the 'Girl with X-ray vision'. You see, Natasha possesses the unusual ability to peer through human flesh and spot diseases and injuries that are lurking unseen within people's bodies. Or, at least, this is what Pravda claimed. It didn't take long for more newspapers to catch onto the story. The British Sun has been the most relentless about pursuing it. They've actually flown Natasha to London and are now parading her around like some kind of weird curiosity. Does Natasha really have x-ray eyes? Well, I doubt it. But I'm sure The Sun is going to milk this for all it's worth.

Imaginary eBay Girlfriends — Buying imaginary girlfriends (and, less frequently, boyfriends) is the latest fad on eBay. What happens is that if you're the winning bidder, the person you bid for will pretend to be going out with you for a set period of time, such as a month. This imaginary relationship will be limited to emails and letters... you won't ever meet your eBay lover in person. But by showing off the communications from your new girlfriend, you might be able to convince your friends that you aren't quite the antisocial loser they thought you were. That is, until they find out that you paid for an imaginary friend, at which point they'll think you're an even bigger loser than they thought before.

Get a text message from Jesus — Here's a news story from a couple of weeks ago that I missed. This Finnish company promised that if you sent their service a text message prayer, you would receive a response from Jesus Christ himself. And Jesus would only charge the very reasonable price of $1.52 per prayer.

Rewind Your DVDs — Digital Velocity wants to rewind your DVDs for you. Just enter your credit card information on their website (Just $1 per DVD), then insert the DVD into the CD tray of your computer, and fifty-nine seconds later your DVD will be rewound. (Thanks to Tracey for the link).

Cannabis Window — This UK website offers you the chance to buy cannabis online. No seeds. No hydroponics. Just cannabis itself, delivered to you by a special courier. Sounds like a stoner's dream. But if you actually try to place an order, it's all revealed to be a joke. (Thanks to Paul Farrington for the link).

Superbowl Overexposure — Half of America saw Justin Timberlake 'accidentally' expose part of Janet Jackson's breast on live tv during the Superbowl halftime show. But now a great controversy is sweeping over the internet. Was the exposure really an accident? Or was it planned and staged? Matt Drudge is reporting that it was planned and even approved by high-level CBS officials beforehand. Plus, the accidental exposure fit in remarkably well with the lyrics of the song, which made references to getting naked before the end of the song. Finally, how exactly does one 'accidentally' rip away part of a costume? I mean, it wasn't like something got snagged. He quite purposefully reached over and grabbed her costume.

Shards O’ Glass — Sitting here watching the Superbowl, and out of the blue a hoax website is featured in one of the ads: ShardsO'Glass.com. This company supposedly sells freeze pops embedded with shards of glass. It's a satire of how cigarette companies sell products that they also know are bad for people's health.

Tall-Tale Aviation Photo — Richard has written in with a question about the photograph (to the right) that's being sold as a print by The New York Times. It shows the sky above Portland, Oregon filled with biplanes. It was taken in 1920 by the photographer C.S. Woodruff. Richard questions whether the picture can possibly be real, and I think he's right to do so. First of all, the biplanes seem dangerously close to each other, all clustered together in a swarm. Second, by 1920 there were hundreds of biplanes and trained pilots in the U.S. But what would they have been doing all gathered together in Portland? Could one city have produced that many pilots and planes in 1920? Probably not. Finally, if you look at a larger version of the picture, it's pretty obvious that it's the same biplane pasted into the photo numerous times. In other words, this is a tall-tale photo. Such photos were all the rage in the early twentieth century. A sky filled with planes must have seemed like a fairly farfetched concept to people in 1920.

Hot Noodz — Hold onto your hats for this one. Hot Noodz offers you uncensored noodle porn. That's right. Noodles strut their stuff in all kinds of provocative poses. Is it safe for work? That depends entirely on if your boss would be offended by the sight of naked noodles. (Thanks again to Phil Carmody for the link. Phil reports that he was the 'purveyor of background tiles' for this site).
WARNING: pop-up ads. (I didn't notice these until someone pointed them out to me... my browser automatically blocks pop-up ads).

The Jesus Pizza Project — Around the world hungry hackers and coders are about to eat pizza. But the question that vexes them is this: what if there is an image of Jesus hidden in that pizza? Now the JesusPizza Project will harness the power of thousands of computer users, via the miracle of distributed computing, to search images of those pizzas that are about to be eaten, to find out if one of them contains the image of Jesus. Just like the Seti-at-Home project, you download some software. When your computer is in screensaver mode this software goes to work, scanning downloaded images of pizzas. (Thanks to Phil Carmody for the link)

Upgrading the Weblog — I've finally taken the plunge and upgraded this weblog to a 'real' weblog, complete with permalinks, categories, and the ability to add comments. I'm using pMachine to achieve all this. I'm a little wary of letting people add comments, having encountered huge amounts of comment spam when I previously had a guestbook (especially, as I noted somewhere else, from 'cruddy german hotels'... I still can't figure out why they, in particular, turned out to be such a plague). But I'll see how it goes. If it becomes too time consuming for me to delete the spam, I may have to convert to allowing comments by registered members only. But for now I want to keep it open to all. I should give a nod to John Walkenbach's J-Walk Blog, from which I got the idea to use pMachine.

Headvertising — Need to make a little extra money? Would you be willing to slap an advertisement on your forehead and parade around all day displaying it? The management team at Headvertise.com is hoping that you would, especially if you're a college student. Headvertise seems to be the creation of some students at Johnson & Wales University, and I'm betting it's either a joke, or some kind of bizarre class project. But who knows! I have seen stupider business plans in my day. (Link via J-Walk).

Buy Land on the Sun — There's a scam business that's been in operation for years that offers to sell land on the moon. But a new group is raising the ante by offering to sell you land on the sun! Thankfully, all money they collect goes to aid the American Cancer Society.