Subject: Re: [FanFic] What is April Fools?
From: Salomon Farin
Date: 4/2/1996, 1:07 AM
To: fanfic@tendo-dojo.ranma.net

On Mon, 1 Apr 1996, Hitomi Ichinohei wrote:

I don't know what the joke is or seems to be with all the fake messages, the
pranks and so on that has gone on today, but I have found it annoying.
White Wolf, for what you did, you can add A Son's Duty to the remailer
yourself.  As for the rest of you who had me contacting various companies to
find out about NON-EXISTANT scripts, NON-EXISTANT stories and story lines,
etc. I hope that you find out what it's like to call long distance and try
to trace something down.  Four hours of long distance calling is not cheap.

Are you talking about the reposting of A Son's Duty? I recieved those.

>From Compton's Living Encyclopedia...

April Fool's Day, the first day of April; traditional day for playing 
pranks on unsuspecting people; origin uncertain but may be related to 
arrival of spring in late March, when nature is said to "fool" humanity 
with changes in weather; another explanation has to do with the change to 
the Gregorian calendar in 1582, which moved New Year's Day to Jan. 1; 
those who were unaware of the change or too conservative to break 
tradition celebrated on April 1, the last day of the old 8-day New Year's 
festival; tradition in France (where victim is called "April fish") and 
Great Britain; introduced into America in colonial times; favorite gags 
include sending someone on impossible errand and running harmless fibs in 
the media; when person grows confused or realizes he is being tricked, 
the joker calls out "April Fool!"; in France, people stick cutout paper 
fish on another's back or send them anonymously in the mail.


For what it's worth, I don't particularly care for this holiday either.  
Besides the Taco bell "Taco Liberty Bell" ad (which only ######## ##### 
would fall for; c'mon remember the whole flap over Disney trying to buy some 
land a major battle of the Civil War occured (to build an american 
history theme park? And failing?), and WW's shutting down the fanfic ML, the 
only other pranks I was exposed to were:

1) The post on R.A.A. on Viz dubbing Kanketsuen (spelling is wrong ;; - and 
no one on this ML should have fallen for that one!)
2) My Public Speaking professor announcing, after the group I was in gave 
an 18 minute presentation on Tampa's "No Rave" ordenance, that the next
presentations would be limited to 5 minutes.  Boy, did that scare the class.

Heck, you probably know it's a prank, but because it's being played by 
a person or an institution you trust or look up to, you walk 
right into it away.  What are you going to do? Insult/Ignore/Challenge them?

Anyway, sorry to hear about the trouble you went through Hitomi, those 
people should have known better.


 
Salomon Farin                                              sfarin@netcom.com