Oh, those wacky rocket scientists.
(From Astronomy Picture of the Day)
It’s April Fool’s Day, and that means websites all around the, uh… web… are pulling pranks on their readers. I’ve seen some pretty good ones so far, like Eric Burns over on Websnark, and Kris Straub at Checkerboard Nightmare, and the Brothers Chaps on Homestar Runner. But the one that made me laugh the absolute hardest was NASA at Astronomy Picture of the Day.
NASA. NASA made me laugh the hardest.
April Fool’s is a very weird thing. I’d be inclined to say that you can’t make a scheduled day to prank, because everyone expects it. And expecting the prank can simply ruin the prank itself (unless you managed to prank someone by not pranking them, which works well on the freakishly paranoid). Although, It does weed out the truly foolish on this day; The real fools are anyone who forgets what day it is, allowing themselves to be fooled. Short of that it becomes a day simply to annoy your friends, or in the case of the internet, to delve into absurdity for a larf.
But how does a website efficiently do this? I’d say the ones who do it best are the ones who are least inclined to be silly at all. This isn’t to say Straub fails due to the fact that he is known for his April Fool’s Day site makeovers. They’re excellently done every year, but the problem is we can expect them from him. So even though we’re delighted, we aren’t really fooled.
NASA takes the prize this year for me, because of all the material I read, I can honestly say I would never have guessed that NASA would participate in the festivities. So if it were up to me, I’d say the best April Fool’s Day “prank” award of 2005 goes to them. Or maybe I just really, really like bad puns. In any case, no other site made me laugh nearly this hard.
17 Awesome Points™ for NASA.
Heh… Water on Mars…
April 2nd, 2005 at 10:59 pm
Delicious.