Well, another April 1st beckons. I have to stay sober tonight to be on top form tomorrow. I have the morning shift at work and they will try to get revenge for the rest of the year. Naturally, I will be totally serious and well behaved.
Totally serious as I explain to Cafe Girl my concern that the new uniform she is expected to wear is going to be far too revealing. I think the management decision to dress cafe staff as mediaeval buxom serving wenches is a terrible idea and she should register a protest at once.
Boss is on holiday so I won’t get told off until next week. She’ll have forgotten individual incidents by then. It’ll just be the general-purpose deep sigh and the ‘Behave’ talk. Even though it has no effect whatsoever. I am ‘behaving’. This is how I behave.
I’ll be well behaved as I stomp on the plague of tiny plastic spiders in the staffroom (Poundland bumper pack from last Halloween. I knew it would be useful one day). Then sweep them away before anyone realises they are plastic.
Almost heroic as I crouch down and poke around under the shelves where ‘I saw something move’. Then whack a balled up piece of brown paper so it shoots out and disappears under another shelf. Paper makes a lovely skittering sound on hard floors. Sounds a bit like a chittering rat.
Naturally this will end with ‘Oh, it’s okay, it was just a bit of paper’ before they get on the phone to Rentokil. I’m not daft enough to take it too far.
So I won’t be doing anything special for April Fool’s day. Just another normal day for the Local Shop janitor. I also have the evening shift tomorrow, assuming I survive the morning shift unscathed.
One big challenge will be finding the April Fool story in the news. They all look like April Fool stories now. It will be a talented journalist indeed who can come up with something more bizarre than the real news.
The story about replacing probation officers with machines that don’t work is no joke (tipped by SB via email). Criminals will scan their fingerprint on the machine. The machine asks a set of standard questions to which they give standard replies. Then they get a receipt. Yes, really. Just like in ‘Brazil’. Try topping that for an April Fool story.
Finding tomorrow’s joke story is the only real challenge left for April Fool’s Day.
It’ll probably be the only story that makes sense.
underdogs bite upwards 
“One big challenge will be finding the April Fool story in the news. They all look like April Fool stories now.”
That’s very true!!! Maybe some more crazy e-cig stories as they seem to be all the rage at the moment, some idiot at the BMA even went as far to say that e-cigs contain tar, these morons are off the fikkin scale.
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Leg, back in 2003 some “research” made headlines with the claim that a new study had just shown that secondhand smoke caused 60% of all heart attacks.
I read the story, then looked at the date, saw April 1st, laughed, and reassured my email friends that it was all just an April Fool’s joke and that somehow even the major media had totally fallen for it.
As part of my reasoning I pointed out that it was supposed to be a heart attack study, right? And WHO did the article claim as the study’s funders? Why the American CANCER Society of course. Heh, I mean, really, how much more ridiculous could it get?
From the press release: “The study’s authors attribute much of the sharp decline in acute myocardial infarctions (AMI) to a near-elimination of the rapid and harmful effects of secondhand smoke on blood platelets and the arteries that supply blood to the heart.” And also this detail: The subject pool was a little town in the middle of Kansas or Montana or Nebraska that no one had ever heard of with a total population of (and note the exact number please!): 65,913! And who gathered the numbers on all these matinee entrants through the heavenly gates? Why St. Peter himself! Or, actually in the story, a hospital named after him! LOL! Could it get any better? Then I noticed where it came from: A *UNIVERSITY* newspaper! The students had pulled off a good one: even had the author’s name be a takeoff on “The Bird Of Bad Luck” : it was written by a Wallace RAVVEN !
Finally, guess who they picked to play the role of the lead researcher? Who else would really ice the cake? Stanton Glantz of course! LOL! I read the farce a second time and wondered just who among us had managed to pull off such an amazing coup AND managed to get the media to take it seriously!
See: http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2003/04/4763/six-month-public-smoking-ban-slashes-heart-attack-rate-community
It was the original press-release for the Helena study by Glantz et al.
– MJM
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Here’s an April Fool story for you, or at least it is for the time being … in the future it will be an urgent measure and government policy 😉
http://www.conveniencestore.co.uk/news/government-to-introduce-plain-packaging-for-cheese/516431.article
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How about ‘April’s Fools’ Month.
April has been declared “Earth Month” and we supposed to do our part to save ‘Mother Earth’.
Since there are about 125 million pounds of Earth for each pound of human flesh,, I doubt that ‘Mother Earth’ knows the we exist.
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Hmmm… I forget what story it is, and whether it’s one or two, but there’s some sci-fi out there where the stars (and, separately I think, some planets) are conscious and aware and their bare registration of the existence of human/animal/plant life is that it’s just sort of a thin layer of totally unimportant scum coating some of the important things in the universe.
And then at some point, humanity figures out how to start to communicate with the big fellas and it gets interesting.
– MJM
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