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Best April Fools Jokes

April Fools joke virgin volcanicI refuse to use the internet on April Fools day. Everyone wants to pull a prank to garner a little buzz, and frankly it’s annoying. It’s not that I don’t find it funny, because I do, it’s just that I hate having to second guess everything I read all day. So my tradition is to avoid the internet until that night, and search for some “best-of” april fools jokes lists. This year, there were three that made me laugh.

The first one was a press release about a new venture by Richard Branson called Virgin Volcanic. It’s a volcano ship that will run tours to the center of the Earth, which is kind of funny in its own right. But what cracked me up is that only Richard Branson would be crazy enough to attempt something like that, and if it were scientifically possible, I would fully expect him to try it.

The second is actually several April Fools jokes in one. In my opinion, ThinkGeek would take the cake for best April Fools joke every year, if it weren’t for one thing… the joke part. What I mean by that, is that they always launch a line of products that are hilarious, but fake. I would actually buy this and this, and out of sheer curiosity, this. Why don’t they actually make these things and sell them to me?

The third and best April Fools joke of the year is from Google. I wasn’t a huge fan of their Nascar prank, but the 8-bit maps one is amazing. You’ve probably already tried it out, but if you haven’t, experience the 8-bit Google Maps here. Don’t forget to zoom in to street view.

If there are other good April Fools jokes that I missed, let me know in the comments.

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Why Do Girls’ Shirts Button Backwards

Men vs Women Shirt buttonsIt is easier to button a shirt while holding the button in your dominant hand. And since most people are right handed, it makes sense that men’s shirts are designed with the buttons on the right. But why aren’t women’s? I drew a few hypotheses before I did the search. Here were my guesses:

  • To warn fashion-oblivious men – as they button up – that something isn’t quite right with their shirt selection.
  • To make it easier for men and women to undress each other.
  • To oppress women by making their shirts harder to button.

The real reason is unknown, but there are several common theories here and here. The one that is most widely held across the Internet is that wealthy women used to be dressed by their servants, so the buttons were arranged to make it easier for them. Seems legit to me, but I still think it’s oppressive. You deserve the right to easy shirt-buttoning, too, ladies. That way, you can spend less time getting dressed, and more time cooking food. Win-win.

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Has Anybody Won The Lottery From A Fortune Cookie

Fortune Cookie LotteryFortune Cookies are probably my second favorite Chinese food, right after Egg Rolls. They are a fun way to finish a meal, and hey, free dessert. I had some Chinese this week, and after pondering my happy-happy fortune, I found myself staring at the numbers on the back, wondering if they could be winners.

I found that at least one set of fortune cookie numbers has won in the past. But something I hadn’t thought of is that the numbers on the fortunes aren’t unique. If you were to actually win the jackpot, you’d have to share it with all the other cookie players out there. Powerball officials were forced to launch an investigation back in 2005 after a whopping 110 people all won big bucks playing the same numbers. The reason? You guessed it. LOST. Just kidding. Fortune cookies. But seriously, the same thing happened with the LOST numbers.

On a fun personal note, when I was a kid I used to eat the fortunes after I’d read them. I told people that eating them made them come true, but really it was just an excuse to eat paper. Yep. I was one of those.

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Best Cinemagrams

Jamie Beck & Kevin Burg cinemagraph
I absolutely love these things. For starters, they’re pretty creepy, which is almost always a good thing… unless it’s the combover / shirt-pocket full of lollipops type of creepy. I think what really enchants me about them though, is how they break some sort of reality barrier in my mind. I get the feeling like these are real people trapped in photos… and I can’t stop staring.

I found out this art-form is actually called a cinemagraph, but there’s an iphone app called cinemagram, which is why I was searching to begin with. I was tipped off to the app by a tweet from Zadi Diaz, who used to be the host of my favorite web show, Epic Fu, before they just mysteriously stopped creating new content without offering any warning or explanation. I’m not bitter.

There are plenty of people making cinemagraphs, but not many doing it well. When I did this search I found dozens of best-of lists, but they all had the same pictures… almost all ripped from the same website. The site belongs to Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg. They were actually the ones to coin the term cinemagraph when they started trapping people’s souls inside photographs in 2011.

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Your Mom Joke History

“Your mom.”

Though it has probably been several years for you, I hear it at least twice a day at work. It became the go to joke around the office about six months ago with the arrival of our traffic manager Eliza. Ever since, I’ve learned things about my mom I’d never thought possible, such as: she’s what’s wrong with the printer; and she’s what got caught in my spam filter.

I was curious where this joke originated, so I did some research. I found that the official term for a “your mom joke” is a “maternal insult,” and that Shakespeare is often credited with the first zing. I would contest though, that “son of a bitch” is the first mom joke, and Wikipedia says that phrase dates back to 1330. The joke as we know it however, was popularized in the 90’s by the show “In Living Color,” and today lives on through a small office in Midtown Atlanta.

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