April’s Fool

So–the three of you who read my blog yesterday may have thought I was the author of yesterday’s post. Why wouldn’t you? That would be a reasonable assumption, since after all, this is my blog, and you have not had any past experience to suggest that anyone other than me would be writing it. But your reasonable assumption, founded on sound rational principles, would be wrong!

The actual author of the previous post is one Ed “Ed-man” Humphries, my esteemed cousin and owner of The Ed Zone. We sure pulled the wool over their eyes, didn’t we, Ed!

In point of fact (an excellent way of writing “in fact,” except that it gets you an additional two words, which matters when one gets paid by the word, which I don’t for this blog, but do in other areas on my professional career), not only did Ed write my blog entry, but I wrote one for Ed, informing his trusting readership that, with my aid, he had sold a screenplay to the Lords of Hollywood.

Now, for the record, my fake post did not fool one single person, nor did it, as of 12:30 the following day, inspire a single comment. Judging from the ratio of comments to Ed’s second April Fool’s post, it’s apparent his close friends and family are more willing to believe he would abandon them for Iowa at the drop of a hat than the notion that he could make a mint selling a screenplay. If I sound bitter, it’s only because I am.

Speaking of commenting, I’ve now altered my comment system so that TypeKey registration is no longer necessary. This means I’ll have to monitor for spam comments, but it also means you’ll be able to leave comments without any annoying registration process, so please, give me feedback, for good or ill. If you have any problems with commenting, please email me and let me know.

  1. Ed left a comment on April 2, 2006 at 10:39 pm

    I offer another theory.

    Perhaps – my friends and family are (now, let’s put this delicately) a bit feeble-minded and have not mastered the scroll down feature now standard on all computer mice (mousies?).

    To that end, I apologize if the screenplay idea got lost in the shuffle – but that Iowa one was on the burner for weeks and I had to run with it.

    For the record, I just got in from a showing of V for Vendetta and Andi informed me that despite the fact I have spelled out that the move was all a big sham, she received frantic calls from my Mom and Dad this evening wondering why we hadn’t told them the news in person. Hey if my Blog is good enough to alert them to the birth of their first grandchild – it is certainly good enough to blast my relocation notice.

  2. Ed left a comment on April 2, 2006 at 10:45 pm

    You wrote:
    “It’s apparent his close friends and family are more willing to believe he would abandon them for Iowa at the drop of a hat than the notion that he could make a mint selling a screenplay.”

    You mistake blind faith for wishful thinking.

  3. Fair enough! For the record, your blog post also took in Karen, who assumed, like many of your other readers no doubt, that my post (which she knew about) was the fake, and that yours might have been real.

    Personally I don’t believe any news article I read on April 1. What’s that, you say? We declared war on Iran? I won’t believe it until I see it in print on April 2.

  4. I’m with you Jason, I don’t believe a thing I read on 4/1. That said, some people forget that it is the Fool’s day and read all as true. Not for anything, but your post on Ed’s blog was a good one in the sense that I believed it was Ed that wrote it, but I vaguely recalled reading something similar in the past. I quickly dismissed it as a post from April Fool’s past that he had written as a resident of Biggerboat or PulpLit. Then I was disgruntled and disappointed that this was the case, but then thought, how clever. I’m rambling, but the point is, it was a great idea and I look forward to your next bit of trickery.

    In fact, may I suggest you two follow thru on the original plan. I think that will be worth a laugh. If you don’t know my meaning, let me know.

  5. Hmmm…I’m not sure what you’re referring to…

    As for the screenplay gag, did we do it before? Because that was an entirely new post I wrote just last week–I didn’t pull it from the BBn archives. But we may have repeated the joke–it’s an obvious one.

  6. Ed left a comment on April 3, 2006 at 10:21 pm

    Sean’s right. I did pull a prior screenplay gag (actually it was a fake submission to a real contest Sam Adams and Project Greenlight were running.) That ran on the old Biggerboat on April Fools 2003. I remember I caught Joe in that web.

  7. Joe gets caught by a lot of these, doesn’t he?

  8. Yes, Joe is gullible. It would seem that we have quite a few friends – and you, family – that are as well.

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