This is a wonderful time for me because I get to celebrate my two favorite holidays, April Fools’ Day and Passover. The former is a national recognition of the art of being an asshole; the latter, a commemoration of the slaying of the Egyptians’ firstborn sons. I can still remember being a little boy and decorating the house with buckets full of lambs’ blood. “No Aaron! Don’t drink that!” Mom would yell—of course in vain. April Fools’ Day is probably the best, though, and I had some GREAT pranks this year. I masturbated while watching “The Passion of the Christ” and loudly announced my second coming. I sprayed mace in the eyes of a seeing-eye dog. I stole the remote control to Steven Hawking’s wheel chair and then raced him in the Special Olympics. Finally, I put a bucket of water on top of my friend’s door, so when he opened it, he got all wet. That one’s just a classic.
I’m sure that you’ve had an April Fool’s joke played on you at some point. Often, finding out that it was just a joke can be great, like when someone tells you that you lost something just to enhance your experience of learning that you really won it. Doing the opposite, of course, is just mean. That moment when you find out that it was just a joke, you want to hug the person and punch him at the same time. You are elated and furious. But you soon get over the anger, savor the relief, and appreciate the good joke.
Sometimes something is so outrageous, so out of proportion, that you just say, “This HAS to be a joke.” Now is one of those times. I want to know when someone is going to say: “Haha! Gotcha! The last four years have been a joke! April Fools!” When is someone going to tell us that we are morons for believing that a gang of liars and murderers really make up our government? “War in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, Enron, Halliburton, 527 groups, the Patriot Act…we were KIDDING! Get it?” Yeah, it’ll be a shock, but we can all appreciate the joke the same way the guy on “America’s Funniest Home Videos” appreciates watching himself on the screen getting hit in the balls when he steps on a rake. Right now, America’s balls are getting knocked around like a George Bush effigy in Baghdad. Wherefore art thou, Saget?
You open the can of nuts, the snakes fly out, you scream, you realize they are fake, you laugh, and the snakes go back in the can. The snakes in the Whitehouse, though, are not fake and there is too much venom to neatly quarantine them in a can. I imagine a comforting figure, say, Alan Thicke from “Growing Pains,” coming up to me one day and saying, “It’s okay Aaron, it’s not real. An illiterate criminal isn’t really our president. A fundamentalist fascist isn’t really our Attorney General. A sexy, long-legged beauty who you pleasure yourself too while watching her testify in front of the 9/11 Commission isn’t really our National Security Advisor.” (Side note: Baby, I also named my “oil tanker” after you…call me).
Of course, the truth is that no one is going to tell us it is a joke, Condi will never call me, and Alan Thicke is dead. We can’t avoid reality and we can’t keep idly waiting for Jason Seaver to pull us out of the plutocratic, militaristic mire that makes our country more scorned than Kid Rock at the Lilith Fair. Or Kid Rock anywhere. Trying to effect change and improve the deplorable conditions of many Americans and of many people who have been afflicted by America is a noble cause, but it is one that can only be waged effectively if one has a clear understanding of the current situation and of what is possible in the near future. When most people hear “revolution,” they think of Dance Dance, not Che.
April 1 is gone and, at least for now, the Bush administration and Corporate America are still realities. No one pinched us to wake us up from this neoconservative nightmare (ya know, the one where you are being enveloped and suffocated by that mound of flesh that hangs like a wet dishrag from Richard Perle’s fat fascist face). For now, we should probably keep our expectations for pranks low; we should probably do what we can to improve things without waiting for that cataclysmic revelation. We should realize that this is the society we are living in and, right now, guns and berets won’t accomplish anymore than hand-buzzers and whoopee cushions.
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