Almost every monster has an origin story, and for the monster known as April Fools’ Day – a day where it’s acceptable to place a Whoopee cushion on an unsuspecting boss’ chair, for example, or to wrap their entire office in tinfoil (down to every single pen and paper clip, individually wrapped, in tinfoil, not that I have time to engage in such antics) that story varies depending on the source.
From The History Channel: Some historians speculate that April Fools’ Day dates back to 1582, when France (those kooky pranksters) switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, as called for by the Council of Trent in 1563. In the Julian calendar, as in the Hindu calendar, the new year began at the spring equinox, around April 1. But people who were slow to get the news, or who failed to recognize the start of the year had moved to Jan. 1 and continued to celebrate it during late March to April 1 became the butt of jokes, and were called April fools.
A few centuries later, and we have Volkswagen, which on March 29 announced it was rebranding in the U.S. to “Voltswagen” in what many believed was an early April Fools’ joke. And while it might have been, the company has since posted a statement that it’s indeed transitioning to Voltswagen to better reflect its mission to go all-in on electric vehicles. We have Tinder, which last year added a height verification service to their dating platform (which caused some men – probably those who lie about their height on the dating app – to accuse Tinder of “height shaming.”) We have Burger King, which in 1998 advertised it would make a left-handed Whopper at its United Kingdom restaurants.
And to the lexicon of good-to-great pranks, we now have the Monterey College of Law, which on April 1 announced its intent to open a third branch campus – this one in outer space. The Lunar College of Law will offer a hybrid online JD degree that can be completed terrestrially, or extra-terrestrially.
“As the first accredited law school authorized on the lunar surface, the program will be subject to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty of the United Nations,” the release states. And yeah, that’s an actual thing – the treaty, that is.
Students of the LCL can avail themselves of four practice areas: private industry, such as satellite manufacturers; policymaking and regulation; national security, where space law experts are employed by the U.S. Space Force (if only that agency were a joke); and developing treaties with extraterrestrials.
What prompted it? Dean Mitch Winick says he was getting inundated with Groupon offers to buy property on the moon.
It’s a good prank, especially considering there’s nothing funny about lawyers. April Fools!
Expert prankster and Salinas Mayor Kimbley Craig has a long-standing tradition with her father, retired insurance salesman Jeff Craig, of seeing who can outdo who come April 1. One year, she purchased a giant rabbit costume, stuffed it with paper, put it in a tree at her parents’ house and dumped 1,000 plastic eggs on their lawn, calling it the world’s easiest Easter egg hunt. Another year, she opened the front door of her apartment to find her father had duct-taped the entryway shut. Once, she stole all of her father’s underwear and left shoes, then had them FedEx’d to his office.
“It’s been happening since I was a toddler. I remember going to elementary school and having a raw egg in my lunch. When I first ran for office, he turned his office on Fremont and Abrego into the Kimbley Craig for Salinas City Council World Headquarters – in Monterey.”
Another year, she put “for sale” signs all over her parents’ front yard, listed the house as for-sale-by-owner on Craigslist and included the proviso that bitcoin is accepted.
“He’s now 75 and I have to be a little more gentle with my approach,” she says. As for this year’s prank? Let’s just say if you live in a certain Carmel Valley senior community, you’ll know it when you see it. And it will be impossible to not see it, because it’s huge.
Now where did I leave that tinfoil.