Confessions of an April Fooler

I had to title it something.

I wasn't born in April. Nothing of major significance, far as I can recall, has happened to me in the first 53 Aprils of my life, other than the IRS in my adulthood, and they try to screw everyone about this time.

I just thought that, instead of running my almost-annual column Where Have All The Jackalopes Gone?, I'd discuss pranks. Reader's Digest highlighted four merry pranksters in their April 2010 edition, and I'll admit that I laughed at their antics, including those that I wouldn't stoop to doing.

But then, I laugh at peeping tom ducks at 30,000 feet. I've had three concussions, and I'm easily amused.

Of course, any reader here knows that I prank. Any of the games I've played with online email scammers can be viewed as scambaiting, OR practical joking. One side is going to laugh (99.9% of the time it's me), and the other, won't. I reckon there's more than a few voodoo dolls out there, filled with pins, that the scammers hope are having ill effects on me. Of course, it's not easy, when they don't know exactly who to do the voodoo to that they do so...eh.

A current scammer, for example -- playing the role as a banker, Mr. Graham Zest, for National West Bank, allegedly in the UK, with an internet cafe suppository somewhere in Nigeria -- has been patiently awaiting my character, Mr. Jack N. Ewehoff, to send a transfer fee via Western Union, so that millions in ill-gotten gains can be transferred to my designated bank account (the First River City Billiards & Bank, Central City, CO, with branches pruned whenever the tree shorts out the nearby transformer, but I digress). And my character has been coming up with excuses as to why the transfer has yet to be made. The best one to date: Jack had emergency surgery more than a week ago, to have his thesaurus removed, and his appendix abridged.

That got a "get well soonest so we can complete this transaction" email from Zest. As of this column being written -- March 23 -- the game is still on (but no longer, as of March 27; they no "find me credble any more" LOL).

I've had my share of fun pranks: an actual April Fools prank was the aforementioned column that I first published in a paper I wrote for back in 1996: a moving tribute to rare and distinctly Colorado western wildlife. Critters like jackalopes, sandpackers, barking spiders and snowsnakes.

More than a week after that column first ran, the editor of the paper contacted me to tell me he'd had more than a half-dozen calls from readers, who were angry about my column. Because I didn't tell them in the column how to keep snowsnakes from wrapping themselves around a home's waterpipes, freezing them solid. He thought the callers were pranking him; I thought he was pranking me.

Subsequently, I had to write a 'snowsnake proofing the home' addendum (and somewhere in my closet, in a plastic tub filled with editions of that paper, are those two columns).

*rimshot*

Of course, I'm not looking to be sophisticated on April Fools: I've planted a remote-controlled fart machine, and stood just out of sight, wreaking havoc at work. My inner kid remains easily entertained.

The lightbar episode (posted on this blog a year or so ago) was a personal favorite; so were a couple of birthday ambushes I managed over the years. And I continue to wreak havoc with telemarketers on the phone, as well as some email solicitors -- like Madison's Who's Who, when they actually believed that I was a research analyst for the International Crustacean Obedience Training Institute, located in Vaduz, Liechtenstein; or when I wrote several "put down the application and back slowly away" letters to the Scottsdale Culinary Institute, before they finally actually read them, and quit trying to recruit me as the next Chef Boy-R-Deestructive.

I probably should be denied computer and telephone access, along with kitchen privileges.

But let it not be said that I have done all the prankin' h'yar: as a kid, I got talked into peeing on an electric fence; to this day, the sensation was/is best explained as "whoa, DUDE!" to the 22nd power or something like it. I was a generation ahead of "don't taze me, bro!".

And in high school gym class, I almost fell victim to the "mystic sit-up": one person laughing, a couple seconds before I was to try to overcome the 'gravitational pull' of a towel over my face to perform a sit-up as fast as I could, kept me from moving when the towel was whisked away...and 12" above me, was an exposed 'moon'. I was highly amused when a class rival -- not hearing of my near-miss -- got similarly suckered, and went nose-first, three weeks later.

But I reckon my greatest 'prank' to date, was in running a parody campaign for President in 2000 and 2004, as the candidate of the National Barking Spider Resurgence Party (and getting myself listed as a candidate on Vote-Smart.org). Some of the emails I got were priceless: one woman insultingly demanding that I give her back the 10 minutes she wasted reading my campaign website, for example. Or the dude from Minnesota, who demanded to know what the Republican Party was paying me to pull votes away from Democrats...not only was he serious, but when I wrote back and asked him where I could sign up for such a program, he got downright nasty about it!

Eh...Minnesotans (with ACORN help) elected Al Franken; 'nuff said there.

And there was the media attention: a mention in Newsweek in 2000, along with interview requests from NPR and the BBC, among others (I did the BBC interview; couldn't work out the NPR one due to my real work schedule); and in 2004, perhaps the biggest 'honor' of my life: to be mentioned on a Paul Harvey News & Comment segment, which both I, and my vice-presidential candidate heard at the same time (he was a bookstore owner and a humor blogger living in Germany at the time; we were political opposites, which made it that much more amusing to run the campaign). Despite the time difference, our delighted "did you hear Paul Harvey?" emails crossed in the transmission.

It just didn't get better than that. ;-)

So whatever you have in mind to do, or get done to you this April Fools, know that I wasn't behind it. Probably. Possibly. Maybe. That I'll admit to.

I'll just say my Texas-bound pet rock did it.

"Did NOT!"