Dorkopalooza 2009

April Fools Day is a total rip-off.

I've carped on this topic before, but here it is April 1 all over (again) and (again) I see the same tired half-hearted stabs at irony and wit and high-larity, and (again) my kids are asking me such questions as "what's your favorite practical joke, dad?" and (again) I find The Wife giving me the same withering disapproving glare when I (again) respond with something like "oh, I dunno... I always think the classic 'beat someone with a baseball bat while they are asleep in the beds at 4:15 am' gag is always a knee-slapper -- why do you ask, children?".

And (again) I tense from a white-knuckled sphincter.



Where did this idiot tradition of April Fool's Day come from, and (more importantly) when did we as a group of hairless monkeys all subscribing to the dubious notion that the tradition was at all worthwhile or amusing in the first damned place THEN decide to collectively shrug and re-task this date on the calendar as "that date upon which any manner of lame unoriginal prank is encouraged"? People who on any other day of the year happily accept their pranking deficiencies now feel morally compelled and honor-bound to try some sort of tomfoolery on April 1, very often after Googling "April Fools pranks". I mean, seriously -- if you are having to Google for practical jokes, that's big blinking sign from the Universe that you're probably not one of the folks Nature chose to be a practical joker.

"A man's got to know his limitations," a great philosopher once explained.

Except on April 1, it seems. When all the normal buffers and safeguards are turned off, and any damned fool idiot is given the green light to swing away and annoy friends, strangers, and livestock with frivolous stabs at malicious fun.

Bah, humbug, says I. On April Fools I wish I could crawl down that burrow and spend the day with Punxsatawney Phil, and come out on April 2 to see if we'll be suffering another six weeks of dumbth.
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no more fun of any kind B