In which DCist helpfully decodes those AFD pranks that have had you stumbling all over the Internet today.
» Matthew Yglesias: “Iraq has chemical and biological weapons arsenals, plus an advanced nuclear weapons program and is likely to use these WMD to stage an attack on the American homeland using al-Qaeda proxies!”
Joke: Stop me if you’ve heard this one before!
» Wonkette: George W. Bush and Tony Blair nominated for Peace Prize — which actually happened backed in 2002.
Joke: Okay, everyone, we get it.
» Jessica Cutler: [Cutler announces a “‘My Face on Her Body’ Photoshop Contest”]: “Email them to me and I’ll post them here. Go ahead, do your worst.”
Joke: That Jessica Cutler thinks people still care about Jessica Cutler.
» Google: I don’t know, something about Google calendar and Mars?
Joke: Isn’t most of the laughter at Google nervous these days? Business Week reported a drop in Google’s stock value last week, albeit one followed by a rebound (an upswing that, it should be noted, resonated more broadly with a general rise in the markets than with any inherent change in confidence about Google). Although Goldman Sachs continues to list Google as a “buy” one wonders whether the trend that is only beginning to emerge — that of the 00s as a “lost decade” from the perspective of the market, in the words of the Wall Street Journal (via Ezra Klein) — will impact even Google rather sooner than later. And if that should happen, if market enthusiasm for Big Search is curbed as hungrier, svelter, and smarter players like Zannel Inc., Ning, and Powerset emerge in the marketplace — which is to say nothing of Facebook, the prominent social networking site that has lured away recently two top Google executives — that is, companies unencumbered by the sort of corporate bloat and 90s–era executive thinking that have so stymied the marketplace as of late: what then, Google? What then?
» Lots of Blogs: As DCist Amanda noted on her personal blog, “The hottest April Fools trend of 08? Announcing that your site has been bought by a big media company. Stuff White People Like, Jezebel (who’ve definitely taken the joke the farthest) and Stereogum (or, BYT on behalf of Stereogum?) are all in on the act.”
Joke: All of these blogs are in fact owned and operated by Kelly Ann Collins. (Now, raise your hand if you had to click on that link to remember who KAC is.)
» Echoditto: The company shifts gears as software programmers take up the art of pantomime.
Joke: There is nothing funny about mimes.
» French Laundry at Home: The famous French Laundry restaurant in San Francisco sends a cease-and-desist to a blogger who is blogging her efforts to re-create each dish on the French Laundry menu.
Joke: The image of literally tens of DC foodies updating their lists of jokes about Michelin-three-star restaurants while the rest of us snarf over the Golden Girls references.
» Penn Quarter Living: There’s a shuttle that gets you from DC to Dulles for $3.
Joke: Yeah, my ass!
» DC Pro Sports Report, Bullets Forever, Kissing Suzy Colbert, respectively: Antawn Jamison knocks out Brendan Haywood in a locker-room fight; Oleksiy Pecherov arrested in Utah for soliciting a prostitute; Sean Taylor not dead after all.
Joke: That the cumulative efforts of bloggers writing about sports in DC is not one iota as funny as anything Gilbert Arenas has to say about anything at all.
» Cleveland Park: A bulletin was sent out on a Cleveland Park listserv alerting residents to the escape of a loof lirpa from the National Zoo. Second-District police commander Andy Solberg responded on the listserv, noting police efforts to capture the animal. (Full report after the jump.)
Joke: All the more clever when you consider that Cleveland Park is the kind of place that people who will tremble in fear over zoo alerts call home.
Full listserv exchange after the jump.
