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List:       humorix
Subject:    [humorix] Panic!  We Have Nothing Planned For April Fool's Day!
From:       James Baughn <humorix () i-want-a-website ! com>
Date:       2001-03-31 3:31:32
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----
Warning:  humorous content ahead.
To prevent overdosage for the sensitive readers, please
take your discussions to humorix-l@nl.linux.org...
----

Panic!  We Have Nothing Planned For April Fool's Day!
March 30, 2001

We now take you live to the Bored Room at Humorix World
Headquarters where a heated discussion is unfolding...

JAMES BAUGHN: Dammit, folks, we're only hours away from the
number one holiday for humor publications, and we've got
nothing!  We blew it last year and I will not tolerate
another April Fool's Day that doesn't feature any fooling.

JON SPLATZ: Oh come on!  April Fool's Day is obviously a
creation of evil, heartless lawyers.  Think about it. Lots
of people play practical jokes on other people on April
1st.  You know what happens when practical jokes go awry? 
Lawsuits!  When it comes to pranks and mischief, the people
who always get the last laugh (and padded bank accounts)
are lawyers.

NOAH MORALS: You know what Splatz, as a lawyer I am getting
so fed up with your Lawyerclysm hysteria that I'm seriously
considering launching a Denial Of Life attack against you
by filing hundreds or thousands of pointless lawsuits
against you.  You'll spend all your time fighting frivolous
libel lawsuits that you won't have a life.  Not that you
have one now, Mr. Pundit and Social Commentator That
Couldn't Even Get Hired At Ziff-Davis.

SPLATZ: Don't mess with me, Noah.  I'm in a horrible mood
after a stray piece of Mir landed on Humorixia last week
and wiped out the bronze statue of me, the Benevolent
Dictator of Humorixia. 

BAUGHN: Whatever.  Will you guys quit flaming each other?
This is serious business.  No humor publication in the
history of humor publishing has ever let April Fool's Day
pass without a good April fool.  We need to do something
fast. Maybe we should look at what other people are
planning. What's the latest scoop from the Vast Spy
Network(tm)?

DOUBLE-OH-ZERO (Spy-In-Chief): Uh, well, to be honest the
boys and I have been so busy constructing our new Vast
Music Distribution Network(R) to take the place of Napster
that we haven't had time to do any spying.  

BAUGHN: Aw, geez.  What kind of outfit is this?  You'd
think Humorix was some kind of pathetic, no-budget
operation based in a dilapidated outhouse in the Ozarks!  

DOUBLE-OH-ZERO: Sheesh!  We all know that the Vast Spy
Network(tm) was invented for the sole reason to put lots of
(tm) and (R) symbols throughout our fake news articles,
while providing lots of golden opportunities for
meta-meta-meta-humor.

DANCES WITH HERRING: Hey, over here! Humorix hired me as an
investigative reporter... and I'm here to report my
investigations if you all would quit ignoring me.  I've
uncovered the details on several upcoming April Fool's Day
gags.

First, Linus Torvalds will announce that he's quitting
kernel development so he can spend more time forking off
child processes -- er, I mean, building a family.  

Second, Slashdot will become assimilated by a certain large
for-profit religious organization that starts with the
letter "S".  

Finally, Microsoft will embrace Open Source.  They will
hold a huge promotional event in which Bill Gates stands on
a street corner and starts handing out CDs "containing the
source code to Windows 2000".  Of course, those CDs will
contain nothing more than the Visual Basic code for
Solitaire.

BAUGHN: Wow, those could be hard to compete with.  Still,
we've gotta come up with something.

DANCES: Why couldn't we pretend that we have to shut down
our site because of a pending lawsuit filed by some large
evil organization?

MORALS: What do you mean by "pretend"?  We _have_ been sued
by a large evil organzitation -- a certain for-profit
religious organization that starts with the letter "S".

BAUGHN: The "Second Church Of Bubba" in Muncie, Indiana. 
Yeah, I know.   They claim that Humorix violates the
trademark of their sacred book, "Limericks & Humoricks",
which apparently is the recorded dialogue of the jokes that
the Great Prophet Bubba told to this Intoxicated
Disciples.  Or something like that.

DANCES: Okay, so maybe that idea won't work.  I have
another plan, though.  Why couldn't we pretend to transform
Humorix into a serious Linux publication that only prints
"real news"?

SPLATZ: That won't work.  We have enough trouble
fabricating fake news.  How the heck are we going to
generate real news? Besides, I still don't understand
what's so great about April Fool's Day anyway.  Not only is
it a conspiracy by lawyers, but it's also the first steps
towards the "Absurdiclysm", a point in time in which
society devolves into a state of silly nonsensical
absurdity.  It's already struck California.  We need to
boycott April Fool's Day before it consumes society.  The
time for action is now!  We must take a stand.  We must
fight absurdity on the beaches...

BAUGHN: Splatz!  You're coredumping again.

SPLATZ: Uh... yeah, sorry about that.

DANCES: I've got it!  We can pretend that Humorix has a
mole buried deep within the bowels of Microsoft, secretly
plotting worldwide Linux acceptance and bringing down the
place from the inside! The leaked Halloweem memos, the
rigged demo in the anti-trust trial, the recent plummet in
MSFT stock price... it's all been orchestrated by our
plant. His name is Steve Ballmer!

BAUGHN: That's not much of an April Fool's Day gag.  Well,
we all know Steve Ballmer _is_ an April Fool.  But
otherwise I don't see this going anywhere because nobody
will believe it.

MORALS: Well, this whole board meeting isn't going anywhere
either. I say we just forget about April Fool's Day and
instead worry about August Fool's Day, a holiday I just
invented.  We could slap a trademark and patent on this new
holiday and then reap the royalty checks every time
somebody plays a prank on August 1st.

BAUGHN: I like it!  The best part is that we don't have to
come up with our own Fool's Day gag until August 1st.  As
I've always said, the best plans are those that involve
procrastination. Let's do it.


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This is a test.
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