Off the Planet

 This morning I loaded up my phone with the stupid dorky Planet 3 portal I have to go through to get to facebook on my mobile and I noticed a news headline that said "Armstrong Denies Moon Landing".  For once it wasn’t about Bec fucking Hewitt and her goddamn ugly ranga tennis-playing husband, or about rugby stars raping teenagers, so I opened it to see what was going on.

I didn’t save the article, but I’ll recapture the spirit of it the best I can:

"Reuters, 1 Apr 09, 4:09am EST:   Neil Armstrong has shocked everybody by releasing a statement in which he denies the 1969 moon landing.

"NASA lacked technology then, and it still still lacks the technology now.  We never went to the moon.    I’ve kept the government’s secret for years but I can’t keep the secret any longer"

The news has rocked the G20 summit.  UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called for an inquiry into Armstrong’s claims.  Russian and Chinese leaders have come out saying they believe the US has been to the moon but would support a full forensic investigation into the 1969 landing.  US President Obama has been been informed of the news and is expected to give a statement later today. 

Armstrong was diagnosed with prostate cancer last month and his family says he can not die without clearing his conscience first. "

It was more detailed and professional than that but you get the idea.    So I was sitting there on the train, half-awake and pretty crook with some random virus thing, my mind reeling with all this.  I thought of how many people I’d ridiculed for doubting the moon landings.  Ha, I’d even laughed at my good friend and former flatmate Mikey about his interest in the conspiracy theories.  I figured that it would be all over ATT & WWGHA forums, so I’d have to go there and apologise to some conspiracytards, while making it clear that I’m still a fencesitter on the 9/11 thing and having them get all high & mighty, thinking this one victory meant all their little paranoid wet dreams were now proven true.   But I was too bewildered to feel pissed off… yet…

Then I saw a little link at the bottom where related stories or other news of the day usually is.  The link read "Something seems not quite right…"

I clicked on it and it loaded up an April Fools Day page.  Yep.   A hoax.  To celebrate April Fools’ Day. The whole thing was a damned dirty lie designed to get gullible fools like me all riled up.   A fake news story.   That’ll teach me for trusting the news…. again…

Can you imagine if I lived up to the Generation Y stereotype and hadn’t read the whole article, then clicked the little link thing at the bottom?  I’d be spending all day going on about the fucking moon landing, wondering why I couldn’t find stuff about it on google news or news.com.au, spreading the word about the moon landings.  I’d be like Chicken Little running around squaking about the sky falling.  I’d hope that I figured it out before noon so I could pretend it that I was in on the joke and yell "April Fools!" to everyone, though I don’t see how that would make me look like less of a douchebag.

 I suppose this is karma for getting the Palex to tell Jones this morning that he’d done a shit in his bed, so that Jones got all huffy, dragged himself out of bed at 6:15am, went in fearing the worst before the Palex blurted out "April’s fuels!"