April Foolish

My older brother Angus poured custard down my neck on April 1, nineteen ninety something. If the custard had been in my shoes it would have made sense. April Fool's is a strict genre and it requires some element of faintly cruel misdirection, eg: when the BBC made people believe that spaghetti grew on trees to show that they'd never been to Italy.

I've heard of around 5 satisfying April Fool's jokes and they are

1. A group of people went to the Tower of London, the famous jail in England, on 1 April 1698 "to see the Lions washed"
2. In Scotland, the old name for April Fool's was "Huntigowk Day," from "hunt the gowk," with "gowk" meaning an idiot in Scots. It calls for a traditional prank. The prankster presses a sealed message into another person's hands, telling them it's a request for help to deliver to a third party. In fact, the message reads: Dinna laugh, dinna smile. Hunt the gowk another mile. When the third party reads the message, the idea is that they tell the messenger, deadpan, that yes, of course they'll help—just send this message to fourth person for me. It's the same message, rinse and repeat.
3. Signetics advertised write-only memory (WOM) integrated circuits in their databooks for most of the 1970s.
4. Kyle, an artist I met years ago through work, every year makes a painfully credible job announcement on instagram, like going to work for Monster energy drinks or Raytheon, and without fail the algorithm deluges him in congratulations on this exciting new chapter. This year he's NYFD
5. The 2017 PornHub prank remains funny