Happy April Fools' Day!

Weird and Weirderer


Julius Caesar invented the Julian Calendar in 45 BC to reform the earlier Roman Calendar, which was based on the moon and found to be inadequate. Caesar’s new calendar introduced the concept of leap years every four years, as we have now. Regular years had 365 days, and leap years had 366, so the average year was 365.25 days. The Julian Calendar started the new year in March.

It worked fine for a while, but the actual solar year is about 11 minutes short of 365.25 days, so after a few centuries people noticed that particular days kept coming later in the year. Pope Gregory XIII fixed this in 1582 by removing leap years that are divisible by 100. This only happens three times every four centuries; we did it in 2000, which, under the Julian Calendar, would have been a leap year, but, under the Gregorian Calendar, was not. (Is everybody following this? There will be a test!) I know you were wondering why there wasn’t a Sadie Hawkins Day in 2000.

Gregory also changed the first of the year to January 1st. Lots of people rejected the new calendar and continued to use the old one. Since their calendar started in March, and since March came later each year, advocates of the new calendar called them foolish. It has been claimed that this is the derivation of the term “April fool.”

Whatever its origin, the world has never had a shortage of fools, in April or any other month. In honor of the holiday, here are some of the latest to claim the title:

Winning. A recent survey by Public Policy Polling found that among independent voters, Charlie Sheen would beat Sarah Palin in a presidential race, 41% to 36%.

What’s in a name? Lindsay Lohan has announced that she will join such luminaries as Cher (whose last name used to be Bono), Bono (whose last name used to be Cher), Madonna, and Sting, and will hereafter be known simply as Lindsay. I wonder how Lindsay would do in a poll with Charlie and Sarah.

Don’t make me LOL. The newest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary has added “LOL” (laughing out loud) and “OMG” (oh my God), favored abbreviations of the text and tweet generation, to its list of words, citing them as “noteworthy” and saying they can now be found “outside of electronic contexts.” The OED also accepted the coinage of the term “muffin top” to describe the roll of fat that collects above the waistband of a pair of tight trousers. How did we ever do without that one?

Look! Short sleeves! Ramzan Kadyrov, the governor of the Russian Federation province of Chechnya (you know, the one bordered by Ingushetia, Stavropol, and Dagestan provinces and the country of Georgia), has imposed a dress code of “modest attire” for female citizens. What’s the penalty for violating this code? “Unknown men dressed like law enforcement officials” drive around in cars and shoot violators with paintball guns. “Ouch! He got me right in the muffin top!”

Teapot Dumb Scandal. Democrats have been singing in unison about how extreme the Tea Party is. Senate Republic[an] Leader Mitch McConnell disagrees. “Anybody who follows national politics knows that when it comes to a lot of the issues Americans care about most, Democrat[ic] leaders in Washington are pretty far outside the mainstream,” Mitch averred. “Despite the Democrat[ic] leadership’s talking points, these folks [the Tea Bags] are not radicals. They're our next-door neighbors and our friends,” he said. Maybe so, but they’re losing popularity. A CNN poll released March 30th shows that 47% of U.S. adults now have an unfavorable view of the Tea Party, while 32% have a favorable view. This is a flip-flop since January, when the percentages were 33% favorable and 26% unfavorable.

States’ wrongs. The Tea Party has pretty much taken over the House of Representatives, but that isn’t enough for some of its supporters. Rep. Ron Paul, R-TX, the father of Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY, and a darling of the Teapot crowd, has taken a page from the 1950s backlash against the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision, which determined that “separate but equal” schools for Whites and Blacks were unconstitutional. Many Southern members of Congress took the position then that states had the right to “nullify” that decision if they didn’t agree with it. Paul, Sr. dug that dead horse up and beat on it at an Iowa home-schoolers’ event. “The chances of us getting things changed around soon through the legislative process is not all that good,” he complained ungrammatically. “And that is why I am a strong endorser of the nullification movement, that states like this should just nullify these laws.” I’m sure the feds are just as prepared to contest the point today as they were in 1956.

Way to go, Bernie! What do Exxon Mobil, Bank of America, General Electric, Chevron, Boeing, Valero Energy, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, ConocoPhillips, and Carnival Cruise Lines have in common? According to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, they are ten of the worst offenders when it comes to avoiding taxes. The Republicans in Congress have been complaining that U.S. corporate tax rates are too high, but they fail to mention the volumes of deductions and incentives and other loopholes in the tax code that allow huge corporations to avoid taxes even when they make large profits. The Center for Responsive Politics added that the ten companies Sanders targeted together spent $117 million on lobbying in 2010 – presumably to keep their tax breaks.

Call 911! An unidentified man pulled into Birdie’s Food and Fuel in LaPlace, LA, last month to fill his gas tank. The cost of regular, he said, was $3.049, but while he was pumping, the price in the little window changed to $3.189. The man complained to a store attendant, who just shrugged his shoulders, so he decided to appeal to a higher authority: he called 911. No charges were filed against the man for tying up the emergency line, and it turned out that he was getting his gas at the lower price anyway. A month later, $3.189 sounds mighty cheap!

Lost and found. A contract security guard found a package outside the federal building where he works in Detroit last February. He brought it in and put it in the “lost and found” area, where it sat unclaimed until March 18th, when someone decided it should be x-rayed. Yes, it was a bomb. The bomb squad recovered and detonated it. The building houses offices of Sen. Carl Levin, D-MI, the Social Security Administration, and, embarrassingly, the FBI. The rent-a-cop was suspended.

He’s back! Finally, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Republican chief executivator of California, is returning. Just three months after he said “Hasta la vista, Baby!” and handed over the reins to Jerry Brown, Ahnold and Marvel Comics icon Stan Lee announced that an animated TV show and a comic book will chronicle the adventures of a former body-builder, actor, and California governor turned crime fighter called, of course, The Governator. No fooling!