04/01/2003 Entry: "I'm With Stupid. (Points At Self.)"

April Fish! As Jon Sullivan points out, the holiday has French origins, so I guess all those good Americans will be celebrating April Freedom Day.

To commemorate St. Stupid's Day 2003, I am dressed in my usual black. I have a dour expression on my face. And a bright yellow cheesy smiley-face button from 1985. The hardest part is not grinning like a fool when, for example, that man on the train this morning did a classic double-take. It's such a small prank, but it still makes me smirk whenever I see it in the bathroom mirror. (Side note: Jeez, the subway at 8:45 AM is so serious! The 9:30 train with all of us waltz-into-work types is too bleary-eyed to be that serious.)

Google, who normally has some sort of joke posted on their homepage, has nothing of the sort. In fact I've seen very few April Fools sites posted on the Web, presumably because either the poor economy has left site managers humorless (or staffless,) or as a nation at War we must be serious and support our troops and that sort of levity isn't appropriate at this juncture, harrumph. I haven't even seen many Weblog pranks yet besides Brad and Geno. Which is too bad; personally I think it takes great strength and mental health to find humor wherever you can, even and especially about the most serious of subjects.

Wonder if I should wear my clown nose on the train home tonight.