I am going to take a queue from George Carlin this week by ranting about people who simply need to go away.
1. Stupid people. I love April Fools' Day. If things are handled correctly, it can be a day for humorous and harmless fun.
That is, until the stupid people come along and ruin things.
The newspaper that provides me with my livelihood, Las Vegas CityLife, does a yearly April Fools' Issue in which all the stories in the cover story space are completely made up. This year was no exception. The main story, which was featured on the cover, featured a story "reporting" that a eccentric casino developer, Bob Stupak, was planning a Yucca Mountain-themed megaresort. Other headlines in the April Fools' Package included: "[Las Vegas Mayor Oscar] Goodman and his city marshals loot and burn downtown homeless camp" and "MGM Mirage to launch mobile casinos program."
While the cover itself did not let on that this was the April Fools' issue, the stories were all ridiculous. Also, across all of the pages with the fake articles was the header, "April Fools' issue." And all the stories featured the same quote from a casino executive in which he expressed extreme displeasure with CityLife.
In other words, readers would have to have the intelligence of bean dip to think the stories were real. Well, there is an alarming number people out there whose brains would go well with corn chips.
We received so many letters and phone calls from people (as did poor Bon Stupak) that we ran a clarification in the following week's issue.
This episode makes me recall one of my favorite sayings, one of which reeks of truthfulness: Stupid people shouldn't breed.
2. People who say we gain an hour of daylight after the time change. I would normally group people who say this in the "stupid" category, but I have heard so many people say it that I have concluded some smart people must be saying it without thinking.
Yes, because of the stupid freaking artificial moronic contrived piece-of-crap time change two weekends ago, the sun is going down one hour "later."
But the sun is RISING one hour "later," too.
In other words, there is no daylight being saved or gained in this maneuver. The only thing that's increased is snooze button abuse because people are waking up at a time that their bodies say is an hour too early. NO DAYLIGHT IS BEING GAINED HERE, AND ANYBODY WHO SAYS THERE IS SHOULD BE POKED WITH A SHARP STICK.
3. People who are attacked by bunnies. This is a tough one for me, because I have great respect for Jimmy Carter, one of the best people to hold the presidency in the 20th century (and one of the worst presidents, proving a sad lesson that integrity and morality do not necessarily lead to being a good politician). But Carter famously once claimed to have been attacked by a jack rabbit, making him into something of a dweeb.
Well, it's happened again. According to an account out of Santa Rosa, Calif. from The Associated Press, a musician named Doug Bowes was walking near his home on recent a weekday morning when "a small, gray jack rabbit bounded toward him from a nearby fence."
Bowes is quoted as saying: "I thought, 'Gosh, this is somebody's pet.'"
OH MY LORD. STOP RIGHT THERE.
There are some major things wrong with this picture. First, to my knowledge, people don't keep jack rabbits as pets, and if they do, they don't let them roam wild. Second, if any potentially wild animal approaches you that normally wouldn't, you should leave the damn thing alone -- or run like hell.
OK, now let's continue the story.
"He put his hand down in a friendly gesture and the bunny lunged and bit him."
Yep. That's about right. And to make this poor man's dweebhood even more pronounced, the story says that he walked home "nursing a sore hand with broken skin, but the rabbit followed him."
Now, Bowes is undergoing a six-part series of rabies shots, just in case the rabbit is rabid (TONGUE TWISTER ALERT!), even though no rabbits have tested positive for rabies in the area for at least 16 years.
And no, this is not an April Fools' joke. My guess is the rabbit was peeved that he was going to have to change all his damn clocks again.
Jimmy Boegle is a fifth-generation Nevadan who has never been chased by a bunny, although he was once chased by a steer that scared the heck out of him. Jimmy's column appears here Tuesdays, and a column archive may be viewed at www.jimmyboegle.com.