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April Fool's Day and Karma
I played a variation on an old theme today. The restaurant manager at The Gov arrived to find a late booking for 95 people. Special dietary requirements were to be discussed with A.Lyon. The Adelaide Zoo is obviously prepared for such April Fool's pranks (G. Raffe being popular and all) and the call went straight to an answering machine. Five minutes later the chef was throwing pots and pans.
I know one young lady who phoned her ex and told him she was pregnant.
On the way home I passed a swarm of insects. They decided to become my personal plague. I don't know what they were, couldn't see any stingers, but they were in my hair and all over me and four feet above me. It took the frantic blowing of two cigarettes to get the buggers to depart.
I wonder what's going to happen to her?
Are there any Webdiarists with good stories?
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Not happening to me
Or, is it the fact that so far it's only happening to other people, Richard Tonkin?
Another step towards the world portrayed in Ben Elton's "Blind Faith".
Know anyone on the inside?
Having utter trust in these processes and their overseers, as I do, Richard Tonkin, I feel absolutely confident that there will be no possibility of a market for images of, say, Laura Bingle or Jennifer Hawkins. Do you agree?
Airline full-body searches, Webdiarists don't even blink!!!
What I can't understand, F Kendall, is that that the airlines have managed to slide past the public consciousness the fact that they can conduct fulll-body searches on their patrons by electronic means, without the slightest civil libertarian whimper. I completely fail to understand how people who fight for rights are not complaining bitterly about undergoing the electronic equivalent of a strip-search before they board a plane. Maybe they haven't travelled lately.
It's such a major loss of privacy, and you seem to be the only person on this site that's noticed. There are more important thing to consider, I guess.
It's such a small step to on-the-street scans. Words fail me. We must be turning into a pedantic, blase community if we can't notice such things happenng to us.
Scans
I wonder if the Pope's flying Qantas?
Or even Kevin?
Keep Calm
I want to know, given everone's different sizes and shapes, what, um, software processes come into play to determine what part of the scan blurred. Personally I'd prefer what I carry in my underpants to not be scanned and processed at all.
F Kendall , in mind's eye I can see the headline POPE EXCITED TO BE IN AUSTRALIA. Can you guess the picture?
The scan from behind will always be faulty. Other lines spring to mind that I'll keep to myself.
Re: Fool's or Fools'
There's always more than one, Richard, so I bargs the latter.
Relatedly... er, 'hasslibg'? That would be 'hassling' (missed the 'n' key, sorry folks).
Apostrophes
I've been writing it without an apostrophe. It would be similar to mum's day for, though there are many mothers, I would still write that particular Sunday as Mothers Day.
Then again, there is always All Saints' Day which would seem to support Jacob's take on apostrophied days.
Pedantry
In the mood
While I'm being a busy little pedant, the apostrophe for both Days should come after the "s" plural i.e., All Fools' Day, and All Saints' Day.
Dr Ron Smith explained it with far more wit than I can evince on last night's Perspective (Radio National). I commend the transcript to all Webdiarists who are uncertain about the apostrophe's proper use.
Meanwhile, attack all those butchers who advertise "Special: Wiener Schnitzel's"...
Find me a chef who can spell "Schnitzel"
... and I'll show you one who can't cook. Never mind the apostrophes, Fiona. They're so hated by most who cook them (schnitzels, that is) that there is generally a psychological block on the correct spelling.
Speaking of chefs, we need a new one. It wasn't the joke, though, at least I don't think. What are you like at Parmigianas? Fancy a "holiday"?
Fat fingers
'Speakinf of chefs," Coupla days? I don't think so.
Fiona: Oops, sorry I missed that when I was copychecking earlier. Richard has a new laptop, Scott, and is still coming to terms with the keyboard.
Bewdiful
Coupla days. I do think so. It was a well-known catchphrase on commercial telly, a coupla years ago.
I've just worked out next year's April Fools' for the pub. A pub crawl from Port Adelaide to here. All the pubs, bar one, were built on the other side of the road.
Coupla days
Only once, Scott
The last being to the home port, probably the only place that would have us by then. Should I superglue a $100 note to the bitumen in the second lane?
I'm having trouble
Richard, do you plan on crashing where you drop? Twenty should be enough.
You'll have to ask Kathy.
100,000 prank calls to Dublin Zoo
Okay, I promise never to do it again!
[Newsltd extract]
Airport Security, Privates and Privacy-NOT April Fool's
This wasn't an April Fool's joke, but had the story come out a day earlier... Qantas are trialing a new security system called ProVision at Melbourne airport. Yes it's real, the technology being owned by L-3, the same mob being given the job of launching the MUOS military communications satellites.
The version of the story in The Age contains this beauty:
The piece says the equipment has been in use this week. I wonder what some of the comments QANTAS received on Tuesday were..
Never mind tin-hats, it's time for tin-foil suits.
Capers
Richard, my boss in my first job (aged 16) left me a note to ring a certain number and ask to speak to a Mr Lyon about such-and-such. The number was, of course, for the Melbourne Zoo.
It wasn't even April Fools' Day, of course, just Terr being himself.
These days I have a mate at our office who delights in hatching even more outlandish pranks. I walk by his office sometimes and hear him on the phone impersonating some officious harpy hasslibg the unfortunate victim about unpaid parking permits, or worse.
My sister to this day complains of when, as a young girl, our Dutch-immigrant mother sent her to the local deli for t'in sliced hemm. The local trader, of course, didn't stock tins of sliced ham.
Fool's or Fools' ?
A long time ago
I guess I was about 8 and my brother 10 when father sent us on a mission to ask the neighbour over the next hill if he could lend him a can of striped paint. We dutifully went and got the proverbial flea in our ear for our trouble. Father thought it funny, but mother did not. A long time ago now, but I have never forgotten how silly we felt.
They sounded like April Fool's Hoaxes But Weren't
I seem to recall that the prank Jenny was subject to was often used as an initiation rite for young apprentices
Favourite online story so far is the UK Telegraph's They sounded like April Fool's hoaxes but weren't linking to stories of Facebook turning your mobile phone into a spy and a chainsmoking tortoise. The only trouble with this April 1 piece is that it links to other April 1 pieces ... except the one about the tortoise, which was published yesterday, by the Sun. Nice touch, that.
Virgin and Google launch Mars expedition website
On an April-first-published Google.com webpage, you can take the qualification test to become a Virgle.
Confuse the donkey?
Dylan, I ran a Google-translation of the French Wiki you linked to and therein found this line;
Pouvez-vous le retraduire, s'il vous plait? Anyway from this it looks like the whole thing stemmed from the French calendar change in 1564. That's a very interesting piece of triv.
Sorry, for some reason the site's filters won't let me publish the translation link.
Explanation
Pas Tant Pis
So then Dylan, if you can't monkey around with the fish, use the fish to, um, take the poisson out of a man?
In France
The French don't go for the Aussie-style April Fools Day pranks and hoaxes but they do have a tradition of pinning paper fish on the backs of others each April 1st. It's sort of a fish-themed version of a 'Kick Me' sign - some background on it here (in French).
The time difference worked for me in checking out pranks in Oz. The one I liked the most was Andrew Bolt's announcement on his blog of an imminent run for Federal Politics in Peter Costello's probably-soon-to-be-vacated seat. From the updates to his original post it seems even The Canberra Times might have even been caught out along with a few bloggers, too.