This Year's Prank

Ode to Pharyngula

Come hither; a ballad I'll sing-ula
Of a cell-cluster notably singular!
It's quite a remarkable thing-ula:
I speak, of course, of the Pharyngula!

It's like this: when you're just phylotypicous
When you're growing -erectus or -pithecus
With your Hox genes expressing forthwithicus
In pharyngeal arches magnificous--

Ah, come, sing the song of Pharyngula,
When you're neither a bird nor a bing-ula
When you're only a wee tissue ring-ula
Too tiny to bite, nor yet sting-ula--
Give voice to this ode to Pharyngula!

What's all this in aid of, then? Why, this year's April Fool's prank, of course. You didn't think I'd let a bit of death and despair prevent me from celebrating my favourite day of the year, did you? Me and Virge, see, we--

--oh, man. I'm doing it again. I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start afresh, from the beginning, this time. See, it's become a bit of a tradition with us--me and Virge, that is--playing practical jokes on the Internet. Well, it's becoming one, anyway. This is Virge's second year, and my fourth. One can find a brief history of our pranks here*.

This year, we figured we'd better leave the art sites alone. We'd got them three times in a row, so they'd be prepared for us. We needed somebody innocent, somebody untouched--a sitting duck, so to speak. Someone who'd sit there in quiet perplexment, scratching his head and going "What on earth?" It had to be someone we liked, too, because, really, who wants to put in the effort for some twat?

After careful evaluation of our options--

Me: Hey, let's do PZ this year!

Virge: Okay.

--we decided to go after PZ Myers, of Pharyngula.

We couldn't just pull our ordinary sort of bizarre hoax on him, of course. Scientists, see, they tend to be more analytical than artists, more skeptical. We weren't going to have much luck feeding him some Piltdown Man or sasquatch sighting. At best, we'd merit a single disparaging post, before being consigned permanently to the wacko pile.

No. We needed something subtle, this time--something elegant, something absorbing, and amusing, and, above all, completely mystifying. We needed something that'd make Mr. Myers go "What the hell?", and "Who ARE these guys?", and, most of all, "What will they do next?"

There are certain rules, however, which must be followed in the preparation of a practical joke:

1) No-one may be unduly hurt, humiliated, frightened, or otherwise disturbed during the course of the joke.

2) No money must change hands for any reason.

3) No injurious lies must be told about any actual person or organization.

4) The spirit of the joke must not be cruel.

That put paid to our first couple of ideas (which had to do with harassment by insane folks of various stripes), and that other one we had, with George W. Bush and the Homeland Security agents. Thus, after a little more intensive deliberation, we came up with PhaWRONGula.

At first, all we were going to do was write silly doggerel about all his posts, but then he said:

PZ Myers: Really, when I started this site I did not imagine that people would ever write odes to it. I hope that when Pharyngula: The Musical opens on Broadway, that someone will send me tickets.

Can you see where this is going? Oh, yeah. We did. We wrote him a musical, and all. It was too good to pass up. One simply can't ignore that sort of invitation.

So, anyway, we kept on at him all month, from March 4 onwards, posting more than 140 verses, between the two of us. Herculean effort, let me tell you. I'm really quite spent. I think I wrote more poetry in one month than I've written in the whole rest of my life! And we didn't even get caught, either, not till the very last day, when we posted up some clues:

Who Could We Be?

Neener, Neener, Neener!

--and then PZ wrote us:

My guess:

Ratty's Ghost (Socar Myles) and Virge of http://www.virgilanti.com/journal/?

If I'm right, I get all of the credit because none of my readers were any use at all in figuring it out.

--and then we wrote:

Congratulations, PZ, and Happy April 1st!

--and we sent him a horrible mug, and much fun was had by all! (We hope!)

Next year, it could be YOU!

* Link currently offline, due to site restructuring. It will be back soon.