April Fools pranks

From the Museum of Hoaxes’ list of Top 100 April Fools’ Day Hoaxes of All Time:

1957: The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest.

A BBC news show announced that a mild winter and the elimination of the spaghetti weevil caused a bumper spaghetti crop in Switzerland. The show ran footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti from trees. Many viewers called the station to learn how they could grow their own spaghetti trees.

1979: Operation Parallax.

A British radio station announced that the government planned to resynchronize the calendar. The reason? Britain had gradually become 48 hours ahead of the rest of the world because of switching back and forth from British Summer Time, so the government decided to cancel April 5 and 12 that year. The station received numerous calls. One woman asked if she had to pay her employees for the missing days.

1998: A Whopper of a Whopper.

Burger King published a full-page ad in USA Today announcing the introduction of a Left-Handed Whopper, specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the ad, the new Whopper included the same ingredients as the original, but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees. The following day, Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to ask for the burger.

What's the best April Fool's Day prank you've pulled? Or even heard of.

They love me, they really love me

I thought the folks at LucasFilms must really love me since they'd hired a PR firm to send me a release inviting me to the 17-hour marathon of all six Star Wars films in LA. (I was hoping for the Cinerama Dome, but it's at the Convention Center - booo!)

Then I looked at the top of the e-mail:

"Hi @First Name@,"

Hi, First Name?!?!? What's up with that? (It's on par with job applicants who send me cover letters addressed to editors at other newspapers. Attention to detail, people.) The PR flak does, however, offer to hook me up with a LucasFilm exec. I just may take 'em up on that one.

To kick it all off: The Chocolate Jesus

We've been talking about this blog awhile. A sort of flotsam and jetsam of life, if you will. A place to share things in that "No freaking way" sort of vein. Why call it "Ask Porkchop"? Cuz Porkchop is a local pug and he's as apt as any living thing to know why life is the way it is.

We welcome yoir comments and submissions.

What better place to start than the chocolate Jesus. No freaking way! Yep, we got a press release today from the Catholic League For Religious and Civil Rights notifying us artist Cosimo Cavallaro is exhibiting a lifesize chocolate Jesus in New York.

What is up with that? And it is, the Catholic League points out, anatomically correct.

The president of the Catholic League says, “All those involved are lucky that angry Christians don’t react the way extremist Muslims do when they’re offended – otherwise they may have more than their heads cut off.”

We couldn't make that up.