Gotcha!
Who says Canadians don’t have a sense of humour? It’s now after noon — the generally agreed-to expiry date for all April Fool’s pranks — in all of Canada. In honour of protecting our right to call ourselves a funny nation, J-Source presents a round-up of this year’s Canuck media pranks.
Who says Canadians don’t have a sense of humour? It’s now after noon — the generally agreed-to expiry date for all April Fool’s pranks — in all of Canada. In honour of protecting our right to call ourselves a funny nation, J-Source presents a round-up of this year’s Canuck media pranks (OK, and a few by our equally funny friends in the Commonwealth). Let us know if we missed anything that made you go “ha!”
The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix reported the city was planning to offer its citizens flavoured tap water on special occasions. According to the prank story, the non-existent Water Enhancement Team (WET) got the idea from “the search engine Google’s initiative to re-imagine its logo on special occasions such as Harry Houdini’s birthday and Sonny and Cher’s wedding anniversary.”
The story continued: “’A vibrant city needs an edge to attract young, hip residents’ the report states. ‘Affordable housing and world-class recreation facilities are a start, but the citizens of tomorrow will demand a wider range of amenities.’”
Meanwhile, readers of the Canadian news aggregator website National Newswatch were greeted by a can-you-believe-it post about Don Cherry this morning (taken down since noon). The site wrote the brash hockey commentator “ha[d] agreed to represent Canada at this month’s royal wedding.” Yeah, right!
On a similarly light note, an Ottawa radio station announced there would be a new tax on, get this, overweight pets. Plenty of listeners reportedly called in to the show, including one man who objected to the tax because both he and his pet gained weight in the winter, but lost pounds in the summer.
Finally, J-Source also has a special place in its heart for Quill & Quire. The magazine pulled a bunch of pranks on its website, including one story reporting Margaret Atwood had released an app for the iPhone dubbed “Appwood” — a spin on the LongPen, natch. The app, according to Q&Q, was designed “to convert humdrum text messages, tweets, e-mails and Facebook updates into something that sounds as though they have come from the keyboard of the literary master herself.”
And, as promised, a few jokes from our colleagues across the pond:
The Daily Mail hired a Kate Middleton look-a-like to lend cred to its story that the Royal bride-to-be had been out shopping for baby clothes, only to later be caught smoking a cigarette and drinking booze.
Not to be topped, The Indepent ran its own out-there story claiming football (soccer, to us) star Cristiano Ronaldo had agreed to “act like a patriot” and be sold to Spain for 160-million Euro. “Weighed down by debt, and reeling from the latest downgrading of their country’s credit status,” wrote Glenn Moore, “Portugal’s finance ministry has secured the co-operation of football’s highest-paid player in an audacious bid to draw the nation back from the brink of economic collapse.”
And, in Australia, the Brisbane Times provoked a spirited discussion on the possible addition of amphibious busses to the city’s public transportation fleet. The article included such tongue-in-cheek sources as representatives from the Travel Research Institute of Queensland (TRIQ) and the Pedestrian and Rider Action Network Queensland (PRANQ).
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