We ran a couple of April Fools pranks on the Café yesterday. But I also saw a few good ones on the interwebs that I enjoyed a lot. What I found humorous were the folks who hadn’t caught on that these weren’t actually for real, but were gags and sometimes got a little too serious about something intended to be a joke.
The first April Fools prank that I enjoyed was on the Liturgy blog of my good friend Padre Bosco Peters in New Zealand. His prank was so popular that the server that hosts his blog was overwhelmed much of the day. I tried checking it out throughout what for us was still 31 MAR and I couldn’t get on his site. He sent me an email yesterday around noon Pacific Time and said up until then he had over 21,000 visitors to his blog. Bosco wrote a quasi-serious/quasi-tongue-in-cheek article for his blog about the New Testament archeological find of the 21st Century, papyrus fragments of the actual Matthew/Mark source document of Jesus sayings, Q.
The next one that I found that I enjoyed a lot and I thought was a serious post at first, was an article about a sign company in Mississippi. For some reason it didn’t get hardly any traffic, although a few folks re-posted it. It had received only one comment as of this writing and the person making the comment didn’t realize that it was satirical. In fact, it seems that partway through yesterday the author added a satire alert to the title of the article that I don’t remember being there when I first read the article earlier yesterday morning. We all know that a handful of southern states have been trying to pass new anti-LGBT laws under the guise of protecting religious liberties, one state being Mississippi. The article reported on a sign company making a killing selling signs to ward off potential LGBT customers before they even come through the door. As a side note, sadly I can actually see some business owners wanting to buy such signs.
Sign company enables wedding vendors to avoid awkward refusals
The Illustrated Children’s Ministry is a legitimate website that develops and sells curriculum for ministry to children. They have coloring sheets & posters, illustrated Bible stories and worship activities, all for both the church and at home, in English and Spanish. And yesterday they introduced their brand new summertime curriculum for kids, the Illustrated Leviticus.
This last one is from one of my favorite Latter-day Saint feminist bloggers over at Flunking Sainthood. Jana Reiss put up an article about the Mormon Church and Starbucks Coffee entering a deal to put Starbucks Coffee Shops in 10 LDS Temples around the world on a trial basis. You have to know a bit about the Mormons and the Word of Wisdom to get this April Fools prank. But as quickly as some things move in Salt Lake City of late, I’m sure a few folks might have thought this one was at least a possibility.
Mormons to open Starbucks locations inside LDS temples
UPDATE –
This has got to be the best one yet!
At least I think it’s intended as an April Fools prank.
I stole the main image from liturgy.co.nz.
And I lifted the other image from the Illustrated Children’s Ministry.