April Fools Day...

"Resurrection of Christ presented by McDonalds"

Instead of trying to pull off some silly joke about Johnson & Johnson purchasing a large sum of my work for their corporate headquarters (if you know my work, you'd know the joke in that), I've decided to compile real news stories so ludicrous that you would think they are April Fool's jokes. Enjoy.

The venerable 17th-century astronomer Galileo Galilei was honored at a gallery in Florence, Italy, in February to mark the 400th anniversary of his transformative work, which was widely discredited at the time (as contradicting the Bible) and which subjected him to vicious slanders. The exhibit includes Galileo's only preserved body part: one of his middle fingers. [Daily Telegraph (London), 2-27-09]

London's Royal Opera House announced in February that its next biennial original production will be a libretto based on the life of the late Anna Nicole Smith. [Daily Telegraph, 2-12-09]

The Court of Appeal in Brisbane, Australia, rejected in March the challenge of the man convicted last year for having sex with his underage stepdaughter but who had tried to protect himself by having her sign a "contract" of consent. (When arrested, the incredulous stepfather indignantly asked the police, "Did you not see the (expletive) contract?") [Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 3-6-09]

In Lonnell Worthy's lawsuit against Bank of America, filed in November in California, Worthy values his now-ruined iPod playlist at $1 trillion. [Worthy v. Bank of America, CGC-08-482136 (11-20-08)]

Pastor Bob Book of the Church of the Common Ground in Atlanta and his wife scrub the feet of three dozen homeless men every Monday, based on the concept of Jesus washing his disciples' feet, with such pedicures including a soak, pumice-rubbing, nail-trimming and massage, topped off by a clean pair of socks. Book says his crusade makes the down-and-out feel more confident, and the "worst ongoing" threat, according to him, is not Satan in men's minds but fungus in their toes. "It eats away and destroys the toenails and just makes it very hard for people to walk." [The State (Columbia, S.C.)-AP, 1-22-09]

The Giza Zoo (the largest in Cairo, Egypt) is a broken-down version of its former greatness due to poor management, failed international inspections, animal sickness and attrition, and a deteriorating neighborhood, and among the problems now, according to a February Global Post dispatch, is that employees supplement their tiny wages with $2 bribes from visitors who want to fraternize with the animals. "(P)osing with elephants" and "feeding seals" are big attractions, but so are visitors' roaming the cages, "holding lion cubs" and "hugging bears." [GlobalPost.com, 2-6-09]

A coin-operated self-service dog-washing machine ("self" meaning the dog's owner, not the dog) has been introduced in a half-dozen carwashes in the United States recently, at $10 for 10 minutes, according to a January report on one such franchise in Stuart, Fla. The "K9000" is a 3-foot-high, walk-in shower area (or push-in, for reluctant dogs) with an open top, has six separate wash cycles, conditioner and flea-and-tick options, and adjustable water pressure and dryer settings. [TCPalm.com, 1-30-09]

At Mannerspielplatz ("Men's Playground") near Kassel, Germany, testosterone-fueled office workers can get in touch with their "inner ditchdigger" (according to a January Wired magazine report) and frolic all day long on 29-ton backhoes, 32-ton front-end loaders, jackhammers and various other big, loud vehicles for an admission fee of about $280 a day. At the Men's Playground, the owner said, "We fulfill men's dreams." [Wired, January 2009]

In October, the Dallas school district was forced to lay off 375 teachers to ameliorate an $84 million deficit caused by a massive math error in the budget, according to a report by WFAA-TV. [CNN, 10-17-08]

Change We Can Believe In: In December, the city council in Brighton, Mich., passed an ordinance making it illegal for anyone to be "annoying" in public, "by word of mouth, sign or motions." Violators can be ticketed and fined. [Detroit News-AP, 12-19-08]