I love watching the jokes roll out on April Fool’s. Here’s a few that caught my eye:

GalleyCat lists some of this year’s literary April Fool’s, but my favorite one was this:

HarperStudio announced a Twitter review policy, granting readers who tweet fifty times about a HarperStudio book lunch with Seth Godin or Chris Anderson.

Whole Foods Market, a grocer that sells natural and organic food, changed their website today. In case they take it down before you look at it, here’s what they did:

Google had a great April Fool’s today. They announced the development of CADIE, Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity. This program, when used in conjuction with Gmail, allows you to “adjust tone, typo propensity, and preferred punctuation from the Autopilot tab under Settings.” The best part was their sample responses:

I had some other ones open as tabs in my browser, but my browser crashed before I had a chance to save the urls.

Did you have fun this April Fool’s, either playing a joke, having one played on you, or watching a joke play out?

I don’t normally read books like The Middle Place. Memoirs are something I don’t just shy away from, but run screaming in the other direction. What sold me on The Middle Place was the video I’ve posted below. Kelly Corrigan does a reading of an essay she did about women and friendships, and when tears were rolling down my cheeks by the end of the video, I knew I would read her book.

The middle place, according to the author, is “that sliver of time when parenthood and childhood overlap.” “And that’s what this whole thing is about. Calling home. Instinctively. Even when all the paperwork — a marriage license, a notarized deed, two birth certificates, and seven years of tax returns — clearly indicates you’re an adult, but all the same, there you are, clutching the phone and thanking God that you’re still somebody’s daughter.”

The Middle Place is about Kelly Corrigan growing up with the coolest dad ever (nicknamed Greenie, for reasons that are explained in the book and are laugh out loud funny), and finding out in her mid-30s that she has breast cancer. Seven months into her chemotherapy treatments, her family finds out that her dad has bladder cancer. The chapters alternate between stories Kelly has about growing up and her documenting her time with cancer.

Here’s the problem with memoirs: I can’t tell you anymore of the story! Or I will have retold the memoir, only less funny. So I’ll stop talking about the story and talk about other stuff.

Like Kelly’s honesty! Okay, maybe it’s because I haven’t had cancer, but I really focused on Kelly’s relationship with her husband and her dad, as opposed to her cancer and chemotherapy (though that was very touching, it just wasn’t the part that resonated with me). And there’s times that I would blush, thinking, “OMG, Kelly, NO! Don’t say that! You’re putting yourself in a very bad light! Which is to say, you’re coming across as human.” Like the time she got in a fight with her husband about how he would call his parents once a week on Saturdays. She comes off as rather bitchy, but the lovely part is she doesn’t defend herself, she doesn’t try to make it right. It’s just there, out on display.

So the whole reason I wanted to read this book RIGHT NOW was because the author was making an appearance at a local bookstore, and I totally wanted to see her, hoping she’d read the Transcending thing that is in the video above. (She didn’t.) When I got there, the place was absolutely buzzing. More so than bookstores do for other authors, and I think it was the memoir thing, because people felt a connection to her. Kelly was FABULOUS! She has a really cute voice and she’s really cute herself with this spikey haircut and glasses that have a dark frame (just like mine!). She read two chapters from her book, and her tone and inflection really added to the story. The audience was in love, as was I. After a Q&A, people went up to have their book signed, but I didn’t have a book because I’d checked mine out from the library, and as good as the memoir was, I knew I wouldn’t want to re-read it. So I waited around until the crowd dispersed and went up to say hi while she was signing books for the store. Here’s how it went:

Me: Hi!

Kelly Corrigan (KC): Hi!

Me: I don’t have a book for you to sign.

*crickets*

KC: (says nothing, just looks at me)

Me: (thinking to myself, GAH! WHY DID I SAY THAT! DO OVER! DO OVER!) Uh, *nervous laugh* I think I need to start over.

Author and bookstore workers are just staring at me.

Me: Umm, I just wanted to say that I don’t normally read memoirs…BUT I READ YOURS! because of that essay you wrote that’s now a video?

KC: Transcending?

Me: Yeah, that one. And I loved it and decided to read your book after watching that.

KC: (Smiles but says nothing).

Me: And I have a blog! And I’ll be posting about your appearance here! Here’s my card…

KC: Great! You can just set it down there.

Me: Okay, there ya go. Well, that’s all. I just wanted to tell you I really liked your book.

KC : Thank you.

Me: (I walk away, kicking myself and telling myself that those were the LAMEST THINGS I’VE EVER SAID)

Seriously. HOW LAME AM I?! I was really stoked to talk to her, but when I got up there, I just drew a blank. I’d normally email the author and gush some more and let her know my post is up, but I think I’ll be quiet and just try to forget that ever happened. And hope that she forgets me. And also hope that she forgot about me before she was able to relive my lameness with her husband and friends.

Is there medication for people like me? Because there should be.

Rating: 88 out of 100

Author’s website | Powell’s | Amazon

Other reviews:

The Written Word

Book Addiction

A Patchwork of Books

Well, do you? Do you crack yourself up?

I do. I find myself highly entertaining. I go back and read what I’ve written on some posts, and I get myself giggling so much that I can’t even tell Dave what I’m laughing about.

And don’t even get me started if I record myself doing anything. I will watch that over and over and laugh and laugh.

I crack myself up.

Do you?

A friend forwarded this to me, and I couldn’t help but share it with you. If the pictures are burned into my brain, then it’s only fair that they should be burned into your brain as well.

Did you know you can cook with semen?

::blink::

::blink::

Yup. True story.

This cookbook, pictured above, is called Natural Harvest: A collection of semen-based recipes.

I wonder if the book calls cooks who cook with semen as come cooks. Because really, isn’t that what they are?

Excuse me for my ignorance, but the picture on the cover of the book looks like flan. Whether it is or it isn’t, there is something so wrong about picturing a jiggly, custardy dessert in a cookbook featuring semen. They couldn’t show a frothy milkshake or a healthy salad? I mean, I don’t think I’ll get into cooking with semen, but anything other than flan would have made the book just that much more appealing.

All the jokes I should be making about using semen in cooking just aren’t coming to me.

Ba-dum-dum.

The original article that was forwarded to me can be found here.

I have a tiny toy poodle named Samson that has taken to eating his own poop. Dave says he takes a dump, turns around and eats it immediately. He doesn’t even wait for it to stop steaming.

The other day Dave was sitting on the couch and saw Samson go outside, poop, and turn right around and eat it. Samson came back inside, jumped on Dave’s lap, and burped.

I’m STILL giggling about this.