April Fools Day 2011

We arrived at Naval Air Station Jacksonville this morning, only to discover the airfield was closed from 10 to 11 a.m. Our scheduled departure? 10 a.m.

April fools? Nope. Change of command ceremony on the flight line. Bastards.

 

Sorry for all April Fools Day lovers about to be offended by this rant, but:

I hate April Fools Day because 99.9 percent of the "pranks" out there are just shit people made up for the sake of making something up.

Oh, random Facebook friend, you're engaged? Ok. Fine. Congrats, I guess.
Wait, you're not? It was a joke? Great. I barely cared in the first place.

Hey, you quit your job? Yippy.
Oh, you were lying and you're now telling me I'm an idiot? Freaking forgive for believing something you said. What a dumbass I am.

OK, you made up a story about a coach leaving? Awesome. Thanks. Silly me for believing you when you did something that was a part of your job description.

There have been stories of great pranks on here, and I can appreciate those. If you have a great prank, by all means, fool the fuck out of all of us. But making something up for no apparent reason isn't a great prank. It's stupid. It was stupid the first time someone did. It was stupid the 100,000th time someone did it and it was stupid every time anyone did it today. I'm sorry, but I've seen 1,000 variations of "I'm single!" "I'm engaged!" "I lost my job!" "Insert mildly eyebrow raising life event here" in the last couple of years. Facebook isn't a "very good tool" for April Fools Day. It's a lazy tool for April Fools Day. It's the death of a holiday that's only ever been kept alive by the 1 percent among us who are truly imaginative, dedicated souls. Everyone else is just wasting their time and my time.

 

I actually did one on my daughter-in-law today, first one I've done in ages.

My DIL is a huge, diehard New York Rangers fan. Her family is from Long Island, and that's the only sports team she cares about. So I sent her a message on Facebook (yeah, I know) that I'd seen on the wire that the Rangers had hired Jacques Heimlich as their new coach.

I'll leave it to the puckheads to figure out why I'm kinda proud of this one.

 

A co-worker of mine tonight pulled off a real good one on one of the writers (they're both in sports).

Background: There's a female distance runner from the area who got a lot of national attention in high school. This writer covered her quite a bit and, well, seemed like a big fan. Nothing creepy or anything, but he was a track fan and always wanted to cover her races, and would talk about her in the newsroom like he was bragging about his daughter or something. Anyway, the girl's been running for the University of Oregon for a year or two now and has had some success, as our writer likes to point out quite a bit.

The co-worker, with the help of a photo tech, was able to place an Oregon logo on a page and proceeded to write a "press release" that said this runner suffered a high ankle sprain and could possibly be out for the rest of the school year. Then he somehow sent it to our fax machine to make it look legit, and put the fax on the writer's desk. The writer started reading it out loud to the rest of the staff, and the co-worker quickly let him in on the joke because in his words "He sounded like he was about to cry." I saw the document right after, it was a great copy. It had the "SID" style down flat.

 

One more thing from our paper today: The "Jumble," which we put on our A-section jump page, had a message saying that day's jumble would be the last one as it was being discontinued. Of course the answer to the puzzle was "April Fools," which I got about 10 seconds after I saw the thing.

That wasn't quite the case with our intelligent readers. Our poor receptionist said she got about 18 calls railing against the paper for discontinuing the Jumble.

 

Us too.

 

Every year, I think of the San Diego space shuttle landing: http://articles.latimes.com/1993-04-02/news/mn-18176_1_april-fools-joke

 

On your second one, that would have been fantastic if you're boss or co-workers saw it. Not so much of an April Fool's then.

 

There's a reason why I am not friends with my bosses and my profile is private. Facebook statuses are often my way to vent/rant. A lot of times that will be work related so I don't befriend co-workers outside of my roommate.

 

That'a boy!

 

On deadline last night, I checked the AP Stylebook and saw it: April Fools' Day. Wrote it that way. Woke up this morning, still worried I'd imagined the style. Saw it in an AP story as April Fools Day. Saw it online as April Fool's Day. Wondered if someone were playing a prank on me. Is it possible someone printed a rogue copy of the AP Stylebook just to fool ol' JD? No way, right?

This is the power April 1 can have over you when you've been pranked too many times.

(And yes, someone got me again, with a doozy, this year. And no, I'm not sharing.)

 

My son had a rather cruel April Fool's joke played on him and the class by their teacher.

The teacher said that they were going to dismiss for the day at 10 a.m. The kids got all excited, then at 10:01 ... "April Fools!"

I'm surprised that teacher didn't have a few chairs thrown at him.