Fooled in April

Reality being what it is, April Fool jokes generally fail. But, to feed your appetite, here and here are some largely unfunny gags, though I did like the Vilcus Plug Dactyloadapter. The problem is, of course, knowing what is or isn't a gag. This hunt for condom testers, for example, seems wildly implausible, but it is datelined March 29th and it seems unlikely the BBC have taken to running phony stories on any day they feel like it. Bulgaria buying a fleet of 32 Porsche Cayennes to use as ambulances feels improbable, but this is dated March 30th and this is, let's face it, Bulgaria. And what of the Plagiarism Museum? Who can say? But, in spite of the March 31st deadline, I'm sure the news that Sir Alex Ferguson blames reality TV for the attacks on Steve McLaren is a gag. 'We have a mocking situation in this country now,' is a bit of a dead giveaway. But what of this epistemological nightmare from Amanda Marcotte's sensational and sporadically intelligible Pandagon blog? A gag or not? It brought to mind Freud's question - 'What do women want?' And it provided an answer - 'There is no way we - or they - can ever know.'