WHO NOSE? THE TRUTH...

Now we are safely past the mid-day meridian in the UK (and almost mid-morning on the US West Coast) may I just point out that when I asked, in my earlier - Pinocchio nose - posting, "What I want to know today is whether it's really appropriate for Disney to be involved in marketing Viagra?" the emphasis was on TODAY...

April 1st
ALL FOOL'S DAY!

Congratulations to Jen who (as her comment revealed) spotted what was going on, though I suspect one or two others may have had a sneaking suspicion. As for the advertisement: it is, in fact, a genuine item of spam (if there can be such a thing) and is currently in circulation - though evidently not amongst the kind of people who read this blog!

Here's a couple of great April Fool's Day hoaxes...

Read the shock announcement in The Guardian that the paper is about to switch from ink and paper to Twitter. Brilliant!

The introduction of revolutionary new software from Opera...

And an unbelievable new piece of technology from Palm - the PomeGranate phone...

MOVIE-GO-ROUND

Apropos of the fact that yesterday was Friday 13th, Irascian - ever the diligent cineast - sent me a movie poster from a film that looks vaguely familiar...


It is, in fact, one of a number of posters advertising films with titles are "one letter off" from the original. Here are a few of my favourites...








And you can view the whole glorious collection of would-be forthcoming attractions at the gloriously hilarious Worth 1000.

Can you think of any film titles that are just One Letter Off and yet might have succeeded if only someone had had the courage to make them...?

So far I've come up with...

The Lord of the Rinks

Singin' in the Ruin

The Jungle Boot

The Truman Shop

Revolutionary Read

The Pound of Music

Lard of the Flies

The Lavender Hill Mop

The Third Can

Any other suggestions?

HOAXING THE PARTRIDGE

Apropos of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' (new readers start here), you may have already received the following, intriguing seasonal e-mail (circulating for the last 10 years) that purports to explain the origins of this curious old song that were so familiar with with that we scarcely pause to consider what it actually means...

There are various versions of this e-mail, here's one of the shorter ones...

There is one Christmas Carol that has always baffled me. What in the world do leaping lords, French hens, swimming swans, and especially the partridge who won't come out of the pear tree have to do with Christmas? This week, I found out.

From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics in England were not permitted to practice their faith openly. Someone during that era wrote this carol as a catechism song for young Catholics.

It has two levels of meaning: the surface meaning plus a hidden meaning known only to members of their church. Each element in the carol has a code word for a religious reality which the children could remember.

* The partridge in a pear tree was Jesus Christ.

* Two turtle doves were the Old and New Testaments.

* Three French hens stood for Faith, Hope and Love [Charity].

* The four calling birds were the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

* The five gold rings recalled the Torah or Law, the first five books of the Old Testament.

* The six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation.

* Seven swans a-swimming represented the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit - Prophesy, Serving, Teaching, Exhortation, Contribution, Leadership and Mercy. [Or the seven Sacraments]

* The eight maids a-milking were the eight Beatitudes. [Matthew 5:3-12]

* Nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit - Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self Control.

* The ten lords a-leaping were the ten commandments.

* The eleven pipers piping stood for the eleven faithful disciples.

* The twelve drummers drumming symbolized the twelve points of belief in the Apostles' Creed.

So there is your history for today. This knowledge was shared with me and I found it interesting and enlightening and now I know how that strange song became a Christmas Carol... So pass it on if you wish...

But before you do, you should be aware that just because it's landed in your In-Box rather than Junk, does not mean it's necessarily TRUE!

Check out the invariably reliable hoax-busters, Snopes.com to read what they say have to say about it; although the faithful may care to note that The Voice ('Biblical and Theological Resources for Growing Christians') does not agree!

And, if you've still got a spare few seconds, you'll find more about the history of the song - and several fascinating variations - noted on Wikipedia.

MR SIBLEY GOES TO WASHINGTON

Now that Hilary Clinton has finally bowed out of the race for the Democratic candidacy in this year's US Presidential Election, I can reveal that America does still have a choice other than Barack Obama or John McCain.

This recent telecast will explain...



Thanks to my Campaign Manager, Mandy Davis, aka Diva of Deception.

PICK A CARD

It was Sibley-blog-regular, Jen, who sent me details of a video card trick performed by one of my favourite magical people, Professor Richard Wiseman...

As a member of The Magic Circle, I am most certainly not in favour of the exposure of magic tricks because the moment we know how they are done, the 'magic' really does evaporate and that delicious sense of wonder is replaced by disappointment - even annoyance at having been so gullible.

Richard began his career as a magician, but many of his experiments, nowadays, are concerned with the psychology of perception; our ability - or inability - to see and understand things as they really are - not as people tell us they are.

The Professor's lesson can be applied not merely to the world of magic but to politics, religion, media, advertising and any other sphere of life where people seek to influence our view of the ourselves, each other or the world...

So, watch and be vigilant!

Image: Brian Fischbacher

DISASTER SITE

I'm not sure how many of you have noticed but, as well as keeping the old blog on the go, I've recently been busily tinkering around on another blog-spot where I've revamped my old website, www.briansibley.com.

It's not (as several of you who've already visited have told me) as elegant or easily negotiated as my old site, but it does make it a lot easier to keep up to date and to be able to post breaking news - should I be lucky enough to have any!

When the new site first went live, my good friend Irascible Ian who had built the original, took good-natured revenge by sending me a message to say that my website was under attack! And, following the link to my site, I saw all my hard work seemingly crumbling beneath a barrage of crashing zeppelins and the music of - yes - Led Zeppelin...



Total paranoia!

Being a bear of very little brain, it took me several hours to discover that it was a just a hoax perpetrated through the evil geniuses at...


For the feeble-minded, such as myself, Netdisaster's disasters are alarming and panic-inducing... As a piece of technological wizardry - playing havoc with the imagery on your website without any lasting damage - they are utterly and maliciously brilliant!

Now and again, whenever time needs wasting, I'll amuse myself by having www.briansibley.com zapped by Martians...


Bombarded by meteorites...


And nuked by warheads...


Sometimes I throw coffee over it...


Pelt it with custard pies...


Chuck tomatoes at it...


Or fry a few eggs on it...


My website has been flooded...


Overgrown by bouquets of flower-power...


Marched over by militant protesters...


And stomped on by dinosaurs...


To amuse yourself - or to terrorize friends and foes - with these and other animated disasters go to Netdisaster and do your worst!!

And don't forget to visit the disaster-free www.briansibley.com and let me know what you think...

THEY'D DO ANYTHING...

Knowing how many of you enjoyed the Grand Central Station Freeze staged by Improv Everywhere. Here's another of their missions: sixteen 'agents' infiltrate the food court in Baldwin Hills Mall, Los Angeles, California, and improvise a musical!

The patrons' ability to ignore something they don't understand must, I guess, be one of those traits that separate the human being from other animals!



But the real question, after seeing this, is who needs Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh in order to make a star out of a waitress and a sucker out of everyone else?

NO FOOLING

Pointless trying to pull the wool over your eyes! Yes, yesterday was April 1st and - as you obviously all guessed - my story about seeing that 'falling boy' was nothing more than an All Fools Day hoax...

The photograph was, in fact, an odd angled snap of part of the sculpture known as 'Boy with a Dolphin' by the artist David Wynne, which - as Gill said - can be seen, just north of Albert Bridge, on Chelsea Embankment.

Here's what it looks like from a couple of different viewpoints...



Hopefully, you weren't taken in by any April Foolery yesterday, but if you were, then take comfort from - and enjoy some of - the wittiest and cheekiest pranks to be perpetrated on the 1st of April as selected by one of my favourite web-sites...

Here you will find no fewer than 100 All Fool's Day pranks and hoaxes, including such gems as whistling carrots that let you know when they are cooked, the Sydney Harbour Iceberg, Instant Colour Television, the Islands of San Serriffe, and plans for the M25 to become a one-way street, Big Ben to have a digital read-out and the relocation of the Eiffel Tower in what was then called EuroDisneyland.

But the Number 1, top-ranking April Fool Hoax was, apparently, BBC TV's celebrated Panorama programme report on The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest of 1957...



Read the full story of this brilliant, legendary spoof in this Museum of Hoaxes' article.

And view the other 99 fooleries on the Museum's collection of The Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time.

There's more here about The Museum and its curator Alex Boese.

And here are some of Alex's best-selling books on Hoaxes, Scams and Cons...

Mark Twain on All Fool's Day...

"This is the day upon which we are reminded of what
we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four."

- Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

WAXING PATHETICAL

THE ROYAL SCANDAL YOU NEVER READ ABOUT...

A few years ago, my good friend, Donald, achieved a moment of unexpected - nay, unprecedented - intimacy with Her Majesty the Queen, while the late Queen Mother looked on with evident amusement, possibly even delight...


Yes, well, as you probably guessed this photo was actually taken during a royal audience at that London emporium run by Madame Tussaud.

Now, I'm aware that Vincent Price knew all about the horror of the wax museum, but I doubt even he would have credited some of the horrors I recently ran across on a site devoted to the inhabitants of Josephine Tussaud's Royal London Wax Museum in Victoria, British Columbia.

This remarkable attraction - not to be miussed next time you're in Victoria, BC - offers several fascinating revelations: such as the fact that attendees at The Last Supper had place names...


...that Churchill told FDR exactly what he thought of him...


...that the cast of Bonanaza were actually aliens...


...and that Walt Disney wore a 'Walt Disney' tie - presumably in case you didn't recognise him by the stuffed mice on his shoulders!

TRUE or FALSE?

It's always hard to know with the Internet, isn't? Fascinating fact of foolish fallacy?

Every day, in addition to our regular diet of spam, we receive funny stories, touching messages, and incredible photographs many of which, we are told, are absolutely genuine and, what's more, carry with them special bonuses in the way of unspecified luck or unidentified miracles --- providing we forward them to at least 10 of our friends within the next five seconds in order to similarly clutter up their mail boxes!

Two recent - equally dubious - images have come my way...

The first, which came as part of a Microsoft PowerPoint slideshow, depicted a lakeside rock formation that - with the mirror reflection in the water - looked like a mother and child at prayer....


According to the accompanying text...

This picture shows a rock on a sea in Birmania, it is only possible to see this once a year with a special angle of the sun and special light conditions. Bend you head to the left to see how spectacular it is.

Hmmm, I thought, even before I started receiving e-mails with variant texts that either question or endorsed the picture's authenticity.

So, the truth?

Well, not too surprisingly, it turns out to be a piece of art: the work of the Korean illustrator, Kim Jae-hong...



So, next time you get a copy of this image, you can only send it on to ten or more other people if you also promise to tell them the truth about it! Otherwise, something terrible will happen to you! I won't say what, but just remember Pinocchio...

Now, here's another photograph that, this time, at least looked like a photograph...


However, it also looked like a photograph that had undergone a serious amount of Adobe Photoshoping. Allegedly taken in Montana, the supposition is that the eagle swoops in, grabs the fox in middle of its having a snack and carries him off for a real dinner!

The truth?

The picture was snapped in South Finland by Finnish photographer, Pekka Komi, as part of a genuinely amazing series of shots in which the fox and the eagle haggle over who's getting lunch...


And - as the final shot reveals - the fox actually lived to feast another day.


Pekka Komi's pictures can be viewed here.

Interestingly, on one blog-site, Field Notes, where the photo was being discussed, many people continued to maintain that it had been 'doctored' even after the sequence shown above had been referenced. Here's a typical response...

Looks fake as hell to me... and any old web sight cant conferm [sic x 3] it either... The position of the fox... the eagle... size relation... it seems pretty sketchy to me...

"WHAT is Truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer," wrote Francis Bacon in his essay On Truth...

Nowadays, of course, one would simple tell Pilate that the first thing he should do is check out Hoax Slayer: my source for the verifications above and a regular and invaluable port of call when surfing the dangerous waters of the www...

"WHAT IS TRUTH?"

Will Rogers famously used to say: “All I know is what I read in the papers!” Were he around today, twirling his lasso and sharing his homespun philosophies, would he have modified this statement to: “All I know is what I read on the INTERNET!”?

Probably not, because - despite his 'Common Man' persona - Will Rogers was a pretty savvy fella…

But many of us read whatever Google, Yahoo and the other genies of cyberspace conjure up on our computer screens and take it for Gospel.

For example, a friend recently sent me one of those e-mail stories that seem to circulate more often than a goldfish in a whiskey glass.

This mailing claimed to give the origins of popular sayings such as “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” and “Raining cats and dogs”, all of which were said to have resulted from various social conditions of ‘Life in the 1500s’.

My friend prefaced his forwarding, with the comment: “I don’t know how much of this is true, but it makes interesting reading…” And he was right. It WAS interesting - fascinating, actually. After reading it, you felt as if you’d gained a lot of intriguing information and, at the same time, had been entertained.

But my friend’s question nagged away… Was it also TRUE?

I summoned the Google genie and he quickly located a reference to the story on a very useful site called The Phrase Finder which revealed that not only has this particular story been in circulation since April 1999, but also that its claimed derivations are “unproven, lacking evidence or credibility” and, say Phrase Finder, were “almost certainly made up by whoever posted that message.”

In reproducing the original mailing (with its beguiling explanations for such expressions as ‘upper crust’, ‘bringing home the bacon’ and ‘dead ringer’) Phrase Finder begs:

“Please don't mail us saying that these aren't correct - WE KNOW. They are included here merely as examples of the types of folk etymological myths that can so easily spread, and in the hope that this may in a small way help to dispel those myths.”

Which is why, in turn, I’m passing this on as a blog.

The Internet is, without doubt, the single most incredible invention of our time. It's an amazing research tool: instantly accessible newspapers, magazines, dictionaries, encyclopaedias and a zillion other publications on every facet of life we’ve ever wanted to know anything about --- and a great many others that we haven’t!

But we should never forget that it can also be fallible and may contain as many untruths as it does truths.

To revise an old adage: we live in an age of lies, damn lies, statistics and search-engine results! So we need to keep our minds open and keep asking questions - but not, necessarily, accept the first answers we’re given.

Which is why I commend a couple of useful sites which every sceptic should instantly ‘bookmark’: Hoax-Slayer and The Museum of Hoaxes.

Oh, and by the way, if any Will Rogers devotees happen to be reading this and STILL believe anything of what they read in their newspapers, then take time to check out everything2 ‘If it is in the newspaper, it must be wrong.

Remember, as Mulder and Scully used to say: “THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE!”

[Image: Will Rogers on stage at The Coleman Theatre Beautiful in Miami, Oklahoma.]