Posts Tagged ‘April Fools’

George P. Bush Bans Comic Sans

Wednesday, April 1st, 2015

This is one of those rare April Fools jokes that works as both a joke as sound policy:

In tandem with his plan to foster technological innovation at the Texas General Land Office, Commissioner George P. Bush today announced an agencywide ban on the use of the font Comic Sans in all agency documents and correspondence:

“As land commissioner, I am committed to making the GLO a technological leader in state government. While this unrefined font is appropriate for early childhood instruction in our Texas schools, the use of Comic Sans is not befitting when conducting business on key matters concerning the state of Texas. Comic Sans has no place at an agency positioning itself as a technological pioneer.”

And the tell a bit further down:

“Current agencywide substitute font recommendations are Helvetica, Times New Roman, or even Arial,” Elam said. “Any of the standard ones really. Except Papyrus. It’s terribad.”

Comic Sans+

WisCon’s Feminist Failfandom Brigade Gets My Locus April Fool’s Piece Taken Down

Monday, April 1st, 2013

In an effort to prove that they’re not dour, humorless, thin-skinned avatars of political correctness with authoritarian tendencies, Wiscon’s Feminist failfandom brigade had my contribution to Locus Online’s April Fools Day festivities taken down. (Note that, under the transparent pseudonym of L. Ron Creepweans, I’ve participated in every Locus online April Fools Day since 2002.)

Locus forced Locus Online editor Mark Kelly to pull the piece only a few hours after it went up.

Thanks to the magic of Internet caches, you can still read it in its entirety:

And the text:

WisCon Makes Burqas Mandatory for All Attendees

Today the SF3 ruling committee for the Madison, Wisconsin-based feminist SF convention WisCon announced that starting this year, all attendees would be required to wear burqas.

“We were trying to think of what we could do to make Wiscon more inclusive,” said con chair Belle Gunness. “Suddenly, we realized that devout Muslims could easily be offended by the amount of sinful and wanton flesh on display at Wiscon. Therefore, starting with this year’s Wiscon, we’ve made burqas mandatory for all attendees. Allah Akbar!”

Both male and female members will be required to don the traditional black, face-covering, head-to-toe Islamic garb for all convention events. Gunness indicated that the convention would have substantial quantities of Burqas for rental to congoers, from Small to 5XL sizes. As an added benefit, she said that the new regulations would help eliminate “rampant lookism.”

Gunness said that guests would be required to wear the garb as well, “in the spirit of egalitarianism.”

Wiscon also announced that next year’s guest lineup would consist of J. K. Rowling, Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, Joss Whedon and Suzanne Collins. “At least as far as you know.”

For those tuning in for the first time, this was a direct jab (in humorous form) at WisCon’s previous decision to yank their Guest-of-Honor invitation to Elizabeth Moon for daring to voice (in the mildest possible form) politically incorrect thoughts about certain aspects of modern Islam.

How radical Islam became so sacred to radical feminists is a topic for another time, and I have hamburgers to cook. But it’s sad to think how a tiny, unimportant, radical fringe of disgruntled feminists (so aptly dubbed “Failfandom” by Steven Francis Murphy) have not only come to believe that their right not to be offended trumps the free speech of others, but that other people in the SF community have come to cave into their petulant demands. (Whatever happened to “The solution to free speech is more free speech?” It seems that fewer and fewer people on the left side of the political aisle believe that any more.)

But if there objective was to get this piece to disappear down the memory hole, I think they shall find that they are sadly mistaken…