The worst April Fool's joke of all time

#1: Hijinks of Hussein and Son
Saddam Hussein and his sons may have been ruthless, power-hungry dictators, but that didn't stop them from trying to give the people of Iraq a good chuckle every April Fool's Day. On April 1, 1998 the Babil newspaper, owned by Hussein's son Uday, informed its readers that President Clinton had decided to lift sanctions against Iraq, only to admit later that it was just joking. One can imagine the knee-slapping guffaws when readers realized how they'd been taken for a ride. The laughs continued in 1999 when Uday mischeviously announced that the monthly food rations would be supplemented to include bananas, Pepsi, and chocolate. Again, just a joke. At this point, the Husseins appear to have run out of material, because in 2000 they recycled the sanction-lifting gag, and in 2001 trotted out the ration-supplement crowd-pleaser one more time. The merciless quality with which the same joke was repeated year after year had an almost surreal quality to it. In fact, it almost makes one sympathize with Saudi Arabia's chief cleric, the Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah Al al-Sheikh, who in 2001 decreed that the celebration of April Fool's Day should be banned altogether. It's not known if the Sheikh had his neighbor's hijinks in mind when he issued the ban.

Penis-Melting Robot Combs

Genital retraction syndrome (GRS), generally considered a culture-specific syndrome, is a condition in which an individual is overcome with the belief that his/her external genitals or also, in females, breasts, are retracting into the body, shrinking, or in some male cases, may be imminently removed or disappear. A penis panic is a mass hysteria event or panic where males in a population suddenly exhibit symptoms of genital retraction syndrome.

Penis panics have occurred around the world, most notably in Africa and Asia. Local beliefs in many instances assert that such syndromes are often fatal. Genital retraction syndrome in Southeast Asia is known as Koro (Malaysian/Indonesian) or Shook yang (suo yang) in Chinese cultures. Psychological diagnosis and treatments are under development. It is becoming increasingly clear that these forms of mass hysteria are more common than previously thought.

The phenomenon is often, but not always, associated with occult belief, such as witchcraft. These panics frequently, but not exclusively, occur in places where access to education—particularly in science and human biology—is limited, or otherwise restricted (for example, when government policies restrict such education). Others have been reported under the influence of drug use.

Sudan

In September 2003, the Middle East Media Research Institute reported an hysteria of "penis-melting robot combs" in Khartoum, capital of Sudan.

Sudanese victims were made to believe by force of suggestion that their penises would melt away after they shared an electronic (or "robot") comb, shook hands, or received a verbal curse. The so-called "penis-melting" has been blamed on Zionists trying to wipe out the Sudanese people by making their men unable to reproduce.

The hysterical reports were spread throughout Sudan by means of cell phone text-messaging.

Local media also contributed to the idea's spread. The Sudanese columnist Ja'far Abbas has warned visitors to avoid shaking hands with "a dark-skinned man". In reference to the electronic comb which was supposed to have caused one man's penis to disappear, Abbas writes, "No doubt, this comb was a laser-controlled surgical robot that penetrates the skull, [passes] to the lower body and emasculates a man!!"

Sudanese police investigated the claims and have found no evidence of anything supernatural, and that it is likely a hoax which victims believed through the power of suggestion. Mr. Abul-Gasim Mohamed Ibrahim, Sudan's Minister of Health, issued official statements to calm the public's fears.

In the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web Today," a daily summary of sensational or humorous news, James Taranto wrote a piece about this phenomenon entitled, "Where's the Rest of Me?" in which he coined the phrase "Penis-melting Zionist robot combs."

January Recap

For the sake of posterity, let's take a little peek at what I watched in January:

1. The Shining, Stanley Kubric, USA, 1980
2. 2046, Wong Kar Wai, China, 2004
3. Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, Judy Irving, USA, 2003
4. Criminal Lovers, Francois Ozon, France, 1999
5. Love Me Tonight, Rouben Mamoulian, USA, 1932
6. Yesterday, Today, & Tomorrow, Vittorio de Sica, Italy, 1963
7. l'Enfer, Claude Chabrol, France, 1994
8. Spirits of the Dead, Vadim/Malle/Fellini, France/Italy, 1968
9. Red Light Go, Ben Barraud, USA, 2002
10. Boyfriends & Girlfriends, Eric Rohmer, France, 1987
11. Damage, Louis Malle, UK/France, 1992
12. Bon Voyage, Jean-Paul Rappeneau, France, 2003
13. Head-On, Fatih Akin, Germany/Turkey, 2004
14. Betty Blue, Jean-Jacques Beineix, France, 1986
15. A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick, UK, 1971
16. The Aristocrats, Paul Provenza, USA, 2005
17. Agata and the Storm, Silvio Soldini, Italy, 2004
18. Barry Lyndon, Stanley Kubric, UK, 1975
19. The Five Obstructions, Leth/von Trier, Denmark, 2003
20. Elizabethtown, Cameron Crowe, USA, 2005
21. Etre et Avoir, Nicolas Philibert, France, 2002
22. Eva, Joseph Losey, UK, 1962

January 10,2006 | CINCINNATI -- The mummified body of a woman who didn't want to be buried was found in a chair in front of her television set 2 1/2 years after her death, authorities said.

Johannas Pope had told her live-in caregiver that she didn't want to be buried and planned on returning after she died, Hamilton County Coroner O'Dell Owens said Monday.

Pope died in August 2003 at age 61. Her body was found last week in the upstairs of her home on a quiet street. Some family members continued to live downstairs, authorities said. No one answered the doorbell at Pope's home Monday afternoon.

It could take weeks to determine Pope's cause of death because little organ tissue was available for testing, Owens said.

>An air conditioner had been left running upstairs, and that allowed the body to slowly mummify, he said. The machine apparently stopped working about a month ago, and the body began to smell.

"Standing outside, one could smell death," Owens said.

Police went to the house last Wednesday after receiving a call from a relative who hadn't seen Pope in years. They found a staircase behind a door blocked by a basket and climbed to the second floor, where they found the body.

It was not clear if any crimes were committed, Owens said.

Authorities did not identify the caregiver, a women in her 40s who apparently lived in the home with Pope, Pope's daughter and her 3-year-old granddaughter.

"The caregiver is not someone you'd think was from another planet or really seems off the wall -- (she's) a pretty normal kind of person," he said. "But I think out of loyalty, friendship and love of her friend, (she) decided to keep the body at home."

Who Me? was a top secret sulfurous stench weapon developed by the American Office of Strategic Services during WWII to be used by the French Resistance against German officers. Who Me? smelled strongly of fecal matter, and was issued in pocket atomizers intended to be unobtrusively sprayed on a German officer, humiliating him and, by extension, demoralizing the occupying German forces.

The experiment was very short-lived however. Who me? had a high concentration of extremely volatile sulfur compounds that were extremely difficult to control: more often than not the person who does the spraying ended up smelling as bad as the sprayee. After only two weeks it was concluded that Who Me? was a dismal failure. It remains unclear whether there was ever a successful Who Me? attack.

Pam Dalton, a psychologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia decribes the smell of Who Me? as resembling "the worst garbage dumpster left in the street for a long time in the middle of the hottest summer ever".

A recipe for a kilogram of the same or equivalent substance in circulation on the Internet consists of 919 grams of white mineral oil as inert carrier, and 20g of skatole, 20g of n-butanoic acid, 20g of n-pentanoic acid, 20g of n-hexanoic acid, and 1g of pentanethiol as the active principles.

I was using Google Image to search for "Anouk Aimee" today (because, really, what else would one do in one's spare time?) and I found this photo. Compare with this hot little number I have hanging in my closet -- not a bad likeness! Will someone please host a formal dinner party so I can debut my fabulous outfit? Thank you.