Some more reports from April 1st: the good (or at least midly amusing), bad, and plain ugly.
The Good
List Universe posted the
Top 10 Bizarre Genetically Modified Organisms. I saw this today, without realizing it was an April Fool's Day joke, and it had me going for a while. My favorite on the list was the paper tree which "grows square leaves that, when dried, are already usable as writing paper." • ThinkGeek wrote about a strange new Nintendo Wii game:
Super Pii Pii Brothers. The point of the game: "A series of toilets are presented on screen and the challenge is to tilt your body to control a never-ending stream of pee." • The Norwegian energy company Statkraft
released a video announcing they had developed a way to generate power from starlight. • WestJet announced that it would be converting overhead compartments on its planes into
sleeper cabins. (Not that bad an idea.)
The Bad
A New Zealand radio station claimed that
the Foo Fighters would be playing at an Auckland venue. Hundreds of people took the day off work. Some even booked plane tickets to make it to the concert. Sorry, no concert! • Two Los Angeles DJs pretended that
a two-year-old was being tattooed in their studio. When the (fake) child began to scream, some listeners called the police. It was not only a stupid joke, it wasn't even
original.
The Ugly
An Australian woman
called emergency services to tell them her baby had fallen off the bed and stopped breathing. When the ambulances arrived, there was no sick baby. It was her idea of a hilarious April Fool. • But the
absolute worst story from April 1st:
"Aswin, 19, a first year student of a private engineering college went for a swim in the Malankara reservoir near here along with friends. Soon after he entered the water, Aswin was seen struggling to stay afloat but his friends who watched him drowning from the banks of the reservoir mistook his cries for help to that of an April fool prank, the police said. By the time they realised their mistake, it was too late for the student. His body was later fished out from the reservoir by Fire Force with the help of local people, the police said."
Comments
Nuts! I'd ordered a copy for myself and one for my nephew.
Apparently everything after the Grapples are fabricated, though. The Dolion, incidentally, appears to be a dog with a bad haircut, like that cat picture that was circulating some time ago.
I don't know of any tree that grows perfectly square (or rectangular) leaves, but there are many trees whose leaves can be used as writing paper. Many ancient and medieval Buddhist texts are written on palm leaves and on the leaves of the Bo tree. I have a souvenir from Cuba which consists of a preserved "sea grape" leaf with poems by Jose Marti (the great poet and national hero of Cuba) written on it. The sample in the picture looks more like a piece of birch bark, which in fact can also be used as writing paper. The inner bark of the tree is used, and the best time to strip it from the tree is early summer.
Michael Arrington is suing FaceBook for $25 million in Statutory Damages.
Michael Arrington is a Troll.