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Most humorless April Fools' Day, but it's not all bad.
Yesterday:
I'd say it's been my worst April Fools' Day ever, but that makes it sound a lot more dramatic than it is. It is the worst, though. The others have been at least mildly amusing. This one has been almost devoid of any fun at all. The easter egg explosion is nice. It doesn't go with the joke-ish avatar I'm using today, but I think it will be fun to use. I'm going to use it for a bit anyway. It's cheered me up.
Offline, I haven't been nearly so lucky. I forgot about today until it was nearly here. I was even in a magic tricks and joke shop a couple of weeks ago, and I didn't think to buy anything. I had birthday money, and I didn't buy any jokes online. I was completely unprepared. So, I stayed up all night looking up easy, harmless pranks I could set up with what I could find. By morning, I had some ideas. I waited until everyone else left so I wouldn't make anyone late.
I unplugged the Gamecube controllers from the Wii. I unplugged the audio and video cable from the Xbox 360. I placed an unsolvable word search and a piece of candy I had personally covered in soap on the coffee table in front of the television. I also put a soapless piece of the same candy in my pocket for after the joke. I set up a little toy that makes burping noises under a chair cover like a whoopee cushion. I wrapped tape around the sprayer in the kitchen sink. I put soap, and when the soap kind of dried out, lotion, on the handle of my mother's bedroom door. I put clear tape over the holes on the phone.
On the floor of her bathroom, by the toilet paper roll, I placed a handmade spider. I used two different kinds of twist ties, some fluff the cats tore out of the cushion on the recumbent bike, and aluminium foil. I balled up the fluff and wrapped the twist ties around it so they looked like four legs and held it in shape. The fluff was gray, but one twist tie was silver and the other was white. While looking for the twist ties, I had noticed some paints. I wrapped the aluminium foil around the middle of my spider to make it larger, paintable, and give it a better shape. I then painted the whole thing black. Middle, legs, all of it. It was a bit messy, but I thought it was going to be so worth it.
I've used plastic roaches many times in the past. My mom and brother hate insects, especially roaches and spiders, but they laugh when they realize it's fake. At least, they have in the past. They're both nearsighted, like me, but Mom won't wear any kind of vision correction and my brother tends to forget his glasses. This allows them to sometimes mistake even spots on the floor for insects. I remember there were some twist ties sort of twisted together and balled up a little in a way that was kind of spiderlike in the bathroom of one of our previous homes. Mom screamed for me to come kill it. When I saw what it was, I laughed so much I could hardly breathe.
I don't remember if her ex-husband made it on purpose to look like a spider, if it had been put together as a temporary cat toy, or if the ties had been balled up like that to keep them together and had been batted into the bathroom by the cats. Mom thought it was funny when she found out it wasn't a spider. I kept it and managed to trick her a few more times. That's where I got the idea for today's spider.
For a finishing touch, I dabbled some yellow on the back to make it look kind of like a garden spider. They seem to have four large legs and four smaller legs pulled up near the large legs. I figured my black four-legged spider and its messy yellow pattern had a chance of looking like a garden spider in Mom's eyes if I put it in a dim area. The spot beside the toilet paper roll was perfect. It was dim, and it would be a few feet away when she looked there to grab the roll. I set it up in a sort of natural position and left to wash the paint off of my hands. Everything was ready.
I pranked myself a few times before they got home. I grabbed the soapy door handle twice, and I sprayed myself and part of the kitchen about five times. I just kept forgetting about the soap and taped sprayer. Not only did I have to remove my jacket and wipe off my arms, I had to wipe the water off the counters, oven, and floor. Water everywhere might have given away the joke.
It got funnier every time I did it. I could hardly believe I'd forgotten about the sprayer again. I expected it to be the second best prank, with the spider being the main event. I was really looking forward to that spider. After all, who really minds being sprayed with harmless water when they've just gotten home and are about to change anyway? Hell, I had done it to myself five times and not even changed. I just took off my jacket the second time because part of the sleeve was too wet. I expected one of them to go to the sink after coming in, get sprayed, be surprised, and laugh like I had been doing ever since I set up the silly thing. It was big enough that they might not expect anything else, and it seemed like a fun way to start off my small series of jokes.
I was wrong, of course. I should have learned not to be hopeful by now. Normally, I try to stay neutral, or even keep my expectations negative. I think I usually succeed. I had just had such fun setting up everything, and I was so proud of my little spider, that I dared to expect at least a few giggles. No. My nine-year-old brother came used the sink first. Nine.
At that age, I was playing on a splintery deck, running around the woods by a dirt road mostly used by large trucks, and picking blackberries in shorts and sandals. When I stepped on a bee with my bare foot, I calmly went inside and asked where the tweezers were so I could remove the stinger. I might have actually been seven or eight at that time.
Point is, though I can accept that crying is fine for some people in medium to extreme amounts of pain and extreme amounts of emotion, there's something wrong with someone who cries whenever something less than 100% pleasurable happens. It certainly isn't a normal reaction for a nine-year-old, assumed to be of at least average intelligence, to being sprayed with water. Especially when he was just about to change out of his school clothes anyway. So, he got sprayed, he cried for the next thirty minutes, and Mom said he was right to cry and I was wrong to tape up the sprayer. On April Fools' Day.
So, I apologized, then cleaned up and threw away all my pranks. Except the normal candy, which I kept, and the burping toy, which is my brother's. Cords replaced; all tape removed; handle cleaned; word search, soap candy, and spider thrown in the trash. I suppose it was a shitty spider anyway.
I forgot to move the burping toy, but I'll just say I was using it to play a trick on the cats. There's a joke. I forgot about the stupid thing because the cats have been silently walking, sitting, and sleeping on that chair all day. I normally sit there when I'm eating and watching tv in the living room, but I sat on the edge of the couch instead so I wouldn't have to move sleeping cats.
I was disappointed that my all night research and all day work had been for a bit worse than nothing, but I realize I should have expected to screw it all up somehow. At least the egg opened. I thought it might open today, and the result was pretty much what I expected, but I was sort of looking forward to the little egg explosion today. Even better, it's a really nice explosion. It's made up for most of the disappointment of the day.
There's the computer to look forward to, too, but not too hopefully. I've got the processor, and the keyboard should arrive today or tomorrow. I think we're moving again, so I have to wait before I order more parts. By the time I can get the rest, I'm sure there will be better, faster processors available for what I paid for my E6750, and there will probably be a Das Keyboard III that's even blanker and more responsive.
I was going to buy a video card before March 31, but I couldn't decide between three. They'll either be cheaper or have different discounts by the time I'm sure of where I'm living and the main money for the computer is in, so I decided to wait. I'm trying to expect them to be more expensive.
Oh, and I rented Mass Effect a couple of days ago. I customized a female character and named her Tamsin. She's really nice looking. I gave her short red hair, very dark brown or black eyes, and the palest skin. The scar on her eyebrow is right where I actually have a small scar from an old piercing. I chose colonist, survivor, and soldier. I tend to start with fighters the first time I play an RPG, then use a more mage-type character the next time I start a file.
Today:
I lost my connection and couldn't get back online again until today. My keyboard arrived! I plugged it in to try it out for a while. Just to make sure everything works, you know. It's so clicky. I'm not having any problems with it. I'll put it back in the box after a while so it stays nice for my new computer. It's really huge compared to the keyboard I've been using. I'm really happy with it. Oh, and the shop update. That's great. I probably won't wear any completely Japanese outfits, but the items are really nice. I at least need some fried squid on a stick. And then I need to be able to pull it out of the monitor. I haven't tasted fried squid I didn't love. Oh, except at Red Lobster. They cover their calamari with this cheese mixture I don't really like. I'd better post this before I get disconnected again.
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