You know, I didn’t hear a single peep about april fool’s day this year. Its like our entire culture forgot the custom this year – or conversely, it’s like I just had my head so far down that I managed to miss the entire thing. I don’t know which it was. I remember years back, […]
You know, I didn’t hear a single peep about april fool’s day this year. Its like our entire culture forgot the custom this year – or conversely, it’s like I just had my head so far down that I managed to miss the entire thing.
I don’t know which it was.
I remember years back, working for Sun Micro, when April First was the high point of our corporate year. Each year a bizarre prank would be played on Sun’s top execs, from car-in-pond to pond-in-office to office-in-pond. Brilliant, elaborate pranks, like getting Bill Joy’s new fararri onto a platform in the middle of a pond, or wiring a full, working office in the middle of that same pond for Eric Schmidt – he had to be ferried out in a row-boat, but once there was able to answer email and make phone calls. They’d strung power and ethernet under the water so it came up through the floor of the platform.
There was many of these over the years, and it’s one of the reasons I loved working at sun, though eventually, as always happens with big corporations, the fun got sucked out of the culture and the pranks stopped.
So what happened? Were they brilliant pranks I just missed? Or am I right in my assessment that the pranksters seemed to have taken a holiday this year?
I got the “here sign this card for so-and-so’s promotion.” ZAP! electric shocker pen gives me a jolt. Not elaborate but I feel fortunate since I never look at a calendar and rarely know what date it is. I’m ripe for the pickin’s when it comes to pranks.
I just noticed that tomorrow is a personal milestone day – – good thing I looked.
Heck, I came out of the closet, and almost no one blinked. Makes me wonder what folks really think about me…Hmmm…
But at least I got TWO folks–Whirly included…MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Alas, nothing so insidious as I’d done in the past…I did manage to fool a good portion of my coworkers at my old support desk job at Entex that Microsoft had purchased Simon and Schuster (one of our major clients) and even drafted a very convincing and timely article that I lifted from CNN about Viacom wanting to sell their educational publishing division with a line or two modified to make it look like Billy G was shelling out big bucks for S&S’s textbooks.
And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids and their dog…
Damn, that coming out entry – brilliant! God, I should have thought of something like that.
The only one I heard was on the radio in N.O., and it might be lost on you if you’re not from there. I was driving around listening to Tom Fitzmorris’ food show on the radio, and some caller called in to say that the reliable rumor mill says that Camellia Grill, the world-famous Uptown breakfast institution which will not re-open after the storm, is going to move to…Lakeview (scene of the second-worst levee break in the storm, if you remember). And they’re changing its name. And they are having a contest to determine the new name.
Tom is like, “You have got to be kidding me. How can this be?” The very idea of a restaurant opening in Lakeview, right now, is preposterous. The very idea of Camellia Grill not staying in its current location on the streetcar line uptown is equally preposterous.
Then the caller says, “I swear it’s true. You can vote on the name. And they’ve been flooded with calls!”
Ba-dum-bum.
Once he said they were flooded with calls, nobody could stop giggling.
Gallows humor prevails in that city.
You didn’t get the memo? There was a memo. It came in a fishtank inside a 911, floating on a platform in a pond submerged in a shark tank.