Tag: April Fools Day

April 1, 2022 – Marking Another April Fool’s Day

April 1, 2022 /

Along with Festivus, this might be in the AltF4 collection of recognized holidays. In tradition, I am supposed to play a prank on you guys. However, I have never been into playing practical jokes. I suppose it is my one areas of empathy.

I like jokes but not so much pranks. I think the difference is the physicality. When I was in college, some of the guys thought it was funny to pretend to trip and dump an entire 32oz drink all over you. It only happened to me a time or two, so no big deal but it wasn’t so fun for the person getting drenched with soda. About ten years ago, one of my coworkers bought donuts and injected them with horseradish (or something). I was out of town that day so I missed that one.

A few years ago, my wife played several tricks on my sons. She froze the milk in the cereal bowl (and a couple of things I cant remember). That triggered one of my sons to go whole hog on April Fools. Two years ago, he setoff some kind of stink bomb in our room in the middle of the night and then tried to saran wrap the door. It didn’t fully work but the prank was definitely not appreciated.

I could probably go for some kind of hidden camera ‘What Would You Do?’ type prank. Not a prank, but some kind of skit, sketch or otherwise unusual public behavior would be funny by me. Alternatively the video below has very harmless pranks. We have tons of videos of pranks and examples. It was one of the premises of America’s Funniest Videos.

End Your Programming Routine: The thing for me is that both parties should be able to laugh. Waking up to a house of burning sulfur for hours is not my idea of a good prank. In the end, you know your friends and family and yourself. So, maybe they like getting a 32oz soda dumped on them but I doubt it. Have fun and let me know what you come up with.

April 1, 2020 – April Fools Day or Census Day?

April 1, 2020 /

I was going to write about something completely different today. I didn’t even realize that it was going to be April Fools Day or Census Day yesterday. After my son kept me up half the night with pranks, I figure it is best to take the one day in ten years to discuss it’s significance. So today I will compare and contrast the Census vs. April Fools Day.

The Census is one of the few activities that our federal government activates that is actually prescribed in the Constitution. I am not sure what exactly the data is used for with the exception of counting for distribution of Representatives in the US House. History of the Census execution can be read from this link.

From Wikipedia: April Fools’ Day or April Fool’s Day (sometimes called All Fools’ Day) is an annual custom on April 1 consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting “April fools” at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may be revealed as such the following day. The day is not a public holiday in any country except Odessa in Ukraine, where the first of April is an official city holiday.[1] The custom of setting aside a day for playing harmless pranks upon one’s neighbor has been relatively common in the world historically.[2]

And now, back to the Census. Several years ago there was some controversy. There was to be a question about whether you were a citizen or not. I just filled out the form today and I can say that particular question was not present. There were very few questions… who lived at my address, what was their names and birthdates and what was the ethnic background.

The first race question was whether you identified as ‘Latino’ or not. Which I do not, but my wife and kids yes. Then the follow-up question is what particular country/tribe/etc do you identify. I chose French because that is my largest contributor. But for my wife and kids, they also needed to answer that question before I move on. I really don’t understand… the previous question identified as a Latin American Latino (Not Puerto Rican, not Spanish, not South American).

Back to April Fools day. There is a lot of pranking going on at my house. Waking up to ‘Fart Bombs’, my wife is waiting to pull a bathroom prank on the kids right now. I like a good laugh, but I really am not into pranks of this nature. I think that it is just kind of wasteful energy.

Back to the Census. Speaking of wasteful energy, how many ways do we need to count people? Isn’t everyone supposed to fill out a tax return? Names and birthdays are included. I am relatively sure that the very few people that do not fill out a return or are claimed on a return are really on the margin, are these the people that are going to fill out a census form?

Back to April Fools Day. Still waiting for the prank to happen. I have been enlisted to act surprised.

Back to the Census. The way I read the instructions, I was to claim that my exchange student lived at this house, as of April 1. He is defined as non-related resident. Why is this counted?

The Census hired a bunch of people that can no longer do what they were supposed to do, because of quarantine. What were they supposed to do anyway? The form is online. I was mailed multiple notifications that it was required that I participate. The only option I saw was to login to a website. I get that not everyone has online access. But, now what?

Happy April Fools Day or is it Census Day?