In 2008, Julio Diaz retrieved his wallet from a mugger by taking the man to lunch. Meanwhile, a cat in the Amazon rainforest lures its prey by crying like a baby monkey.

Coincidence?

“Have a seat!” I’d say on April Fool’s Day, offering a classmate a little wooden chair. If she were foolish enough to accept my kindness, I’d jerk it back and she’d fall on her butt. Or I’d point to a friend’s shirt: “Oh my God! There’s a spider on your pocket!” He’d look, and everyone would laugh.

I’m sorry to say I delighted in these pranks, even occasionally when played on me.

There’s a certain jocular joy to April Fool’s Day that children and immature people love. And you can’t celebrate it alone. Jokes and pranks require others. Could even April Fool’s Day have a crazy spiritual aspect?

HOLY FOOLS

Every spiritual tradition has a wise fool. The Jewish tradition offers Badchan, the wedding jester, who warns the bride of the groom’s faults (We have to recognize the wisdom in that, no?) and whose quips can be quite off-color.

The delightfully wacky HCR (Health Care Reform) circus caravan rolls on.

As of March 11, 41 Senators had either signed or issued statements of support for a letter to Harry Reid initiated by Alan Grayson and the PCCC urging passage of the Public Option through reconciliation. For the first time, the Public Option is looking like a very real possibility.

Only three Dems have come out absolutely opposed (not including Liebermenace who, perhaps as a ploy to reinvigorate his flagging attentometrics, is playing coy). The Dems can lose up to six fence-nesters and still pass the Public Option. “And how,” you might be tempted to ask, “has Alan (The-GOP-healthcare-plan-is-die-soon) Grayson, an outspoken House Freshman, managed to get 41 Senators to support his letter despite White House efforts to back-burner the entire endeavor?”

Simple! The PCCC conducted a series of statewide polls demonstrating tremendous support for “socialized Medicine” among Democratic and Indie voters!

Gotta luv that guy! Maybe Rahm should try to twist his arm in the shower. Or at least poke him in the chest.

ConnecticutMan1 emailed me an unlikely and highly entertaining article posted by Warranted Wiretaps. They have obtained an exclusive mp3 file of a conference call put together by “the national liberty movement” to improve the quality of right wing blogs.

Unfortunately for them, their call was crashed by a group of twittering humorists.

[WARNING! DO NOT TRY TO LINK TO CONSERVAPEDIA FROM DAILY KOS, HUFFINGTON POST OR THIS DIARY...A BLOCK MIGHT GO UP...maybe its a coincidence, maybe not, but I can't access the site from this computer anymore after linking. I will type out the address so you can cut and paste into the toolbar...]

Remember Phyllis Schlafly, the Queen of conservative religious “feminism” from the late 60s through the 80s? Well she’s got a son (Andy, BSE, JD, ABCDEFG), who is funnier than David Letterman. Except the poor guy is trying to be serious.

In 2006, Andy burst onto the scene with Conservapedia, a right wing version of wikipedia minus its “liberal, anti-Christian bias,” (not to mention all structural defects that encourage “liberal” biases such as fact-checking, offering proof, etc.).

About six months ago, Andy drew international attention to Conservapedia, when he challenged Dr. Richard Lenski’s groundbreaking study of the evolution of e coli bacteria.

Lenski found, after 20 years of painstaking research, that one descendent generation of his original e coli colony mutated, enabling it to feed off of a citrate solution, where as other descendant strains did not. Shlafly did not like the assumption that e coli evolves. He fired off a letter, artfully combining breathtaking arrogance with ignorance to Lenski demanding that the scientist produce his data.

Lenski responded to Schlafly by politely suggesting he actually read the article as it included the data. Undeterred, Schlafly actually posted a second equally idiotic letter and was decimated by a decidedly less polite, but extremely funny Lenski response. The entire dialogue can be found here.

This week’s spiritual wisdom has been circulating for years as an internet meme, but it’s actually from David M. Bader‘s humorous book Zen Judaism: For You, a Little Enlightenment (Harmony Books, 2002):

Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?

To find the Buddha, look within. Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers. Each flower blossoms ten thousand times. Each blossom has ten thousand petals. You might want to see a specialist.

Accept misfortune as a blessing. Do not wish for perfect health or a life without problems. What would you talk about?