April 1st 2022 - Fooled Me

 

I was trying out more of those Flexifly transformations on my photos.  And got a very strange result on one of theme - It made me think of the expression "You could have fooled me - I would never guess these two pictures are related".   The first picture is a triple in-camera exposure of a power chord against the wall which has shadows of the window blinds.  The second is the transformation in Flexifly - it looks like some ancient cave drawing.  This may be a lame version of April Fool's Day.  And maybe that's a good thing this year.  There are famous April Fool's Day Jokes that have been recorded.  To me the highlight is the spaghetti harvest done by the BBC in 1957 as a news hoax.  Swiss farmers harvested the strands of spaghetti from trees.  The call-ins for how to grow spaghetti got the response:  "Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.  Here are the rest from Readers Digest. In France: According to Le Parisien, in 1986, the Eiffel Tower was going to be dismantled and rebuilt inside the new Euro Disney park. In Denmark: In 1965, a Copenhagen newspaper reported that Parliament had passed a law that all dogs be painted white to improve road safety because they could then be seen clearly at night. In Norway: In 1987, after reading that the government was planning to distribute 10,000 litres of wine confiscated from smugglers, hundreds of citizens turned up carrying empty bottles and buckets. In China: Claiming that it would reduce the need for foreign experts, the China Youth Daily joked in 1993 that the government had decided to exempt PhDs from the nation’s one-child-per-family policy. After foreign press picked up the hoax, the government condemned April Fools’ Day as a Western tradition. In Great Britain: In 1980, those serial pranksters at the BBC announced that Big Ben, London’s historic clock tower, would undergo a face-lift and become digital to keep up with the times. Enraged callers flooded the station with complaints. In Canada: In 2008, WestJet airlines advertised its overhead cabin bins as “among the most spacious of any airline” and said it would charge passengers an extra $12 to use these “sleeper cabins.” In Taiwan: In 2009, the Taipei Times claimed that “Taiwan-China relations were dealt a severe setback yesterday when it was found that the Taipei Zoo’s pandas are not what they seem.” The paper reported that the pandas, a gift from the Chinese government, were brown forest bears dyed to resemble pandas. Among the complaints sent to the paper was one from the zoo’s director. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

April 2 2020 - April Fool's Round Up at the Hidden Bench Barn

The online gammers put out a lot of effort on April Fool's, creating pranks within their games.  Lots of them participated, but NPR, National Geographic, and others announced no April Fool's Jokes from them.  Snoopes gave a round-up of April Fool's news from yesterday.  It is their specialty, so they must have fine doing this. 1. RoboForm, the password manager software, on the contrary, introduced a "Barkpass".   2. Shiny Leaf shampoo released a Ketchup Smapoo:  picture of red glop on soapy hair.  It is a "Colour-boost ketchup shampoo".   "Our favorite bit from this April Fools’ Day prank comes when you click the purchase button on Shiny Leaf’s website. That opens up a list of related products which seem, at first, to be believable (especially if you just bought ketchup shampoo). But after listings for a “Hair Bun” and a “Mayo Leave-In” product, the “related items” section basically turns into a restaurant menu. If you try to complete your order, you’ll be greeted with a “WE GOT YOU! HAPPY APRIL FOOLS” message.  3. Virgin Australia announced it is giving away toilet paper.  Snoopes says that this one isn’t a joke.  "With many flights cancelled, and with fears rising about a potential toilet paper shortage, Virgin Australia announced that it would be flipping April Fools’ Day on its head, and “turning the airline’s annual prank into a reality.” The company announced that it would be taking all of the unused toilet paper from its grounded planes and donating it to those in need." "Each year our passengers use enough toilet paper to stretch from Sydney to Los Angeles, so we’re thrilled that in true Virgin spirit, we’re going to help the elderly, the vulnerable, medical staff, and our charity partners, by giving them the supply of toilet paper that’s currently locked-up in our grounded aircraft and storage facilities throughout Australia." I imagine that toilet paper will be with us permanently.  Don't you look at that roll differently? Our picture today is taken at the Hidden Bench barn in front of the vineyards on McLeod Street on what's known as "The Bench".  I always think of this as Locust Lane, but the winery is around the corner and it is on Locust Lane.  I went searching for the street name, and the second picture that showed up was my own picture of the Hidden Bench barn, December, 2013, a snow scene.   Today's picture has the addition of a Skylum sky.  Lots of fun adding these with California town names. I think this one is Anaheim Sunset.  The second picture, in front of the barn, has a more realistic sky, although this one is from Skylum too. And there's that wonderful barn.

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March 29 2020 - Google's no Pagan Fool

Here's a question?  Is April 1st a pagan holiday?  Every holiday seems to have 'pagan roots'. The 'pagan' term comes from Christians describing the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism. Equivalent terms were hellen, gentile, and heathen.  So it is a label that Christianity applied to others. "Anyone not Christian" is how it started out.  So was April Fool's Day a pagan tradition? The first written reference to April 1st as a day of tricks comes from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.  This reference is disputed.  What is confirmed is the French poet Eloy d'Amerval refer to a poisson d'avail in 1508, considered the first reference to the celebration in France.  Wikipedia says this: "Although no Biblical scholar or historian is known to have mentioned a relationship, some have expressed the belief that the origins of April Fool's Day may go back to the Genesis flood narrative." Reader's Digest claims that the likely origins are the Roman Festival of Hilaria.  It took place around March 25 in honour of the first day of the year longer than the night (equinox).   Because the origins are unknown, there are lots of articles and sites who weigh in on their version. And so it goes.   However, with this year's Covid-19 concerns, there is April Fools' news!  Google has officially canceled its April Fools' joke. Here's the list since year 2000.  We'll have to revisit them instead of getting a new one.  This turns out quite fun. Google's first April Fools' Day hoax, the MentalPlex hoax, invited users to project a mental image of what they wanted to find whilst staring at an animated GIF. Several humorous error messages were then displayed on the search results page, all listed below: Error 005: KUT Weak or no signal detected. Upgrade transmitter and retry. Error 466: Multiple transmitters detected. Silence voices in your head and try again. Error 05: Brainwaves received in analog. Please re-think in digital. Error 4P: Unclear on whether your search is about money or monkeys. Please try again. Error 445: Searching on this topic is prohibited under international law. Error CK8: That information is protected under the National Security Act. Error 104: That information was lost with the Martian Lander. Please try again. Error 007: Query is unclear. Try again after removing hat, glasses and shoes. Error 008: Interference detected. Remove aluminum foil and remote control devices. Error: Insufficient conviction. Please clap hands 3 times, while chanting "I believe" and try again. Error: MentalPlex™ has determined that this is not your final answer. Please try again. And our image today is the flower 'Statice' - this came from the greenhouse tour last year (on this weekend).  This was the Prins greenhouse.

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April Fool's 2019 Round up

At 12:01 BST, the roundup coverage of April Fool's Day was posted on the Guardian website.        The top story was that Britain may face a permanent exit from the Eurovision song contest in The Daily Express. “It is unfortunate for British music fans, but we have a duty to protect the performers and music fans from other member states.” The Times reports that dog owners can now get drones to do walkies for them. The devices would also be able to pick up and bin any dog mess. There had, apparently, been some mishaps with the prototypes, and reports that an excited Yorkshire Terrier was seen hovering over Gatwick before Christmas were left unconfirmed.   The stories are HERE.  The 2019 fake ads are HERE. Niagara's story is the construction underway at the Port Dalhousie piers. Rehabilitation work will restore both the east and west piers.  This is excellent news for sunset watchers in the summer.  The pier is spectacular for viewing and draws crowds every night. This means the lighthouse will be accessible again.

The Spaghetti Harvest Celebration Day!

Before we find out if there are any amazing April Fool's Jokes today, let us revel in the past. Here is the link at CNN telling us their top ten April Fool's jokes of all times.  Number 1 on the list is pasta growing on trees.  It is a BBC joke from 1957 showing the Swiss spaghetti harvest.  This has been ranked Number 1 by the Museum of Hoaxes.  The Museum's listing is HERE. This is the pinnacle of the year for this website and its day to shine.  At this site you can read the top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of all time, or find out the early modern hoaxes from 1500 - 1700, Hoaxes of the 1990s, Television hoaxes, Journalists hoaxed, and so on. They are listed by decade - all kinds of listings and stories. After the Swiss spaghetti harvest, the Instant Colour TV of 1962 is the second joke - tv viewers in Sweden were advised to pull a nylon stocking over their tv screen and the images would appear in colour. I liked the Taco Liberty Bell hoax of 1996, in which the Taco Bell Corporation took out a full-page ad that they had bought the Liberty Bell and was renaming it to the Taco Liberty Bell.  "The best line of the day came when White House press secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale. Thinking on his feet, he responded that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold. It would now be known, he said, as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial". Look out for our hoaxes today - and all completes by noon.