The fictional world

With all the schadenfreude I can muster, I enjoy the uncovering of hoaxes and frauds. And the last week has been an exhausting carnival of revelations. A famed college football player's heartwarming story of a girlfriend who died; a prize winning poet; a cycling champion; and baseball Hall of Fame voters rejected the stars of the late 90s and early 00s. It's getting difficult to keep up, but Twitter and Gawker and the like are always there to spread the latest.

Also via the internet come these words of advice on writing from novelist W.G. Sebald:

You should ask other people for information, and steal ruthlessly from what they provide. None of the things you make up will be as hair-raising as the things people tell you.

It's both reassuring and not. You'll never run out of ideas, but those ideas will be rooted in the depressing plenitude of human weakness.

Imagine a story, then, about a protagonist who invents a lover, or mentor, or literary agent, or other close partner or adviser. Someone who is close to them, who provides invaluable support, and who is, for plausible reasons, not available in person -- not now and, as it turns out, not ever. Call the imaginary person Aubrey Daniels, just to use a gender-neutral first name, and name the story "The Fiction of Aubrey Daniels," which makes ironic use of the humble word of. The story is more about the weaving of the fiction, and the uses to which the protagonist puts the fictional Aubrey, though of course the story has to include the uncovering of the hoax and the reaction of all the people who were fooled by it.

(To be fooled is to be made into a fool, an interesting grammatical construction I don't know the name of and can't think of another example of, aside from the newish term to punk someone, which means almost the same thing. Perhaps this usage is related to the joke "Call me a cab." "All right -- you're a cab." I hope a rhetorician can clear this up for me.)

Today's fake: @NBCNews twitter feed hacked

Needless to say, it is a hoax.

Today's fake: The alleged popularity of 'The Crock-Pot Girls'

A Facebook page for three suburban women offering recipes and calling themselves "The Crock-Pot Girls" blew up in popularity so quickly that readers are suspicious. Not sure (and don't care) whether there really are three such women, but their sudden popularity on Facebook is evidently the work of an SEO hacker. It's not even clear whether the SEO hacker in in league with the women or simply selected them as the vehicle for his artistry; I like to think it's the latter, because then a whole range of slapstick-comedy plots are suggested.

Previously:
The Lonely 'Brinks Stockroom man'
The Desert 'Lost-Love Lawyer'

Today's fake: "beautiful people" website wasn't really hacked to allow uglies

A website called beautifulpeople.com sent out a press release claiming that a hacking attack had allowed the pictures of allegedly non-beautiful people to be posted -- horrors! Actually, there was no such attack and it was all a publicity stunt to drive traffic to their site.

Interesting -- you put up a website which is supposed to have pictures of only beautiful people. Then in order to drive traffic to the site, you have to claim that gasp! ugly people have appeared there. By this logic, editors could boost the readership of their newspaper's website by alleging that false stories had been maliciously posted, or ministers could increase church attendance by claiming they were sometimes afflicted by demons that would make them do wrong things during the service. Hmm, maybe I really would pay to see that.

Today's fake: Speculators pursue the Bitcoin, but ... whaaaat?

Last decade's virtual-goods mindfuck was the gold farming industry, in which American entrepreneurs went to China, hired educated but out-of-work tech grads, and put them to work for 12 to 16 hours at a time on repetitive tasks which generated virtual goods in the World of Warcraft game -- goods which could be sold for real money to game players who didn't want to put in the time and effort it took to accumulate those goods within the game. (These goods, such as a "magic sword" object, enable players to play the game at higher levels more successfully.) China made the practice illegal, but that hasn't stopped provincial prison officials from employing prisoners as gold farm slave laborers. So that's still going on.

Then there's the Zynga empire, which essentially turns all its games' players into slave laborers for the company's profit. In a way it's much simpler than the gold farming scheme, which is essentially a parasitical practice on a much larger operation (the WoW platform); Zynga simply creates an addictive product ¹ with no raw ingredients and a potentially worldwide customer base. Zynga is equivalent to a tobacco company which claims cigarette smoking isn't addictive, except it doesn't have to go to the trouble of buying raw materials, manufacturing cigarettes, and shipping them to wholesalers. It simply creates a compelling internet experience and collects an almost unlimited profit stream. It's like putting a video slot machine in everyone's home, only it's a slot machine that never pays out but simply provides its user with the mind-numbing experience of playing.

So it's one thing to create something of value out of nothing, or rather, out of electrons and human sweat. How could you go one better? How about creating nothing out of nothing, putting a value on it, and then having the unlimited greed of speculators do all the work for you? Well, it's happened. Behold the Bitcoin, a virtual currency with no meaning, no tie to any governmental or corporate entity, much less a game or virtual world. It is simply a computer algorithm (no doubt copyrighted) which permits licensees to generate units of valuation.

Bitcoins are snippets of code that use encryption to prevent counterfeiting and double-spending. Complex algorithms control the money supply, in theory replacing the need for banks or a central regulator. Right now Bitcoins can be generated -- or "mined" -- by running a program on a powerful computer. This task requires exponentially more time and processing power as the number of Bitcoins grows, and the absolute number of Bitcoins is capped at 21 million, mimicking the scarcity of gold.

Yes, you too can buy the code and generate your own Bitcoin, but notice that caveat about the "exponentially more time and processing power" needed to do so at a meaningful scale. Indeed:

One college student sustained permanent minor brain damage due to heatstroke after he dozed off in his room next to four computers furiously mining Bitcoins. "I wish I was joking," he said in a forum post that was reposted on the website BitcoinMiningAccidents.com.

Yes, there is a website devoted to "Bitcoin mining accidents"!! It's at this point you wonder what the world is coming to.

Certain cynics and libertarian critics of the monetary system -- the kind who yearn for a return to the gold standard -- would say this isn't much different from the current state of affairs in which we endow pieces of paper, some printed with "1" and others printed with "100," with value simply because we agree to. And they would also point out the similarities of limiting the total number of units of exchange and the ability to produce it. (Only the government can print money, and it controls the supply; in the same way only those holding the code for Bitcoin can generate it, and the code contains a self-limiting feature which will prevent more than a certain amount of Bitcoin to be "mined.") To them, our whole monetary system is a similar hoax.

I see this trend continuing. Last week lots of people were transfixed by the "fake lesbian bloggers," and there are still postings and articles being written on its implications for identity politics, online activism, and the whole question of online identity. At root of this issue is the question of whether or not there is substance behind what we value. The fact that Bitcoin exists and that apparently rational people are investing in it calls this into question even further.

Meanwhile, on Gawker just now: A virus that scans computers for Bitcoin and steals it.


¹ The piece on "my Farmville addiction" is not that informative, but notice the article's raison d'etre: the writer is explaining to his readers why he disappeared for two weeks. In other words, he went into a k-hole, or rather an internet hole, and didn't come out for weeks. Because he was playing Farmville. And couldn't stop.

Today's fake: Another 'lesbian' blogger revealed as straight male

Over the weekend a blogger who pretended to be a Syrian lesbian was revealed to be a fiction. Among the bloggers who looked into the hoax was Liz Henry, who in her investigation of "Amina" discovered that the supposedly Syrian woman was first brought to the attention of a wide audience on a blog called Lez Get Real. Digging in to this part of the story, Henry was the first to suggest that Paula Brooks, the author of the Lez Get Real blog, also might not be what she seemed.

A day later: She was right. The author of Lez Get Real, who said "she" was deaf and therefore had to communicate on the phone through her "father," was actually the man pretending to be the "father," 58-year-old Bill Graber.

"Holy CRAP," Henry tweeted. "I'm going to end up writing "Internet Lesbians for Dummies" aren't I? .. Or maybe do a video with Olivia Newton John singing 'Lez Get Fictional.'"

Graber: "I didn't start [Lez Get Real] with my name because... I thought people wouldn't take it seriously, me being a straight man." You think?!

But best of all:

In the guise of Paula Brooks, Graber corresponded online with ["Amina" author] Tom MacMaster, thinking he was writing to Amina Arraf. Amina often flirted with Brooks, neither of the men realizing the other was pretending to be a lesbian.

Good times!
 

Today's fake: 'Gay Girl in Damascus' actually a straight American man

This won't be news to anybody -- it's been the focus of a fairly intense internet flap for several days -- and I'm just documenting it here in the interest of logging yet another hoax and making a comment or two. Briefly:

1. A blog entitled "Gay Girl in Damascus" attracted attention for some time ("for years," says the Washington Post) [permalink].
2. Several days ago, the pseudononymous author of the blog, one "Amina," was said to have been detained by security forces in Syria, where of course a rebellion is raging.
3. In attempting to verify the alleged arrest and support its victim, some bloggers began to have what Liz Henry* called "painful doubts" about the real existence of "Amina."
4. Investigation by Henry and by Ali Abunimah of the blog "The Electronic Intifada," as well as by mainstream reporters, revealed a number a clues suggesting that "Amina" was actually an American named Tom MacMaster.
5. Today MacMaster has admitted being the author of "Gay Girl in Damascus".

The Washington Post has the whole story [permalink] and a photo of the bearish MacMaster. Meanwhile, Henry has suggested that another blogger, Paula Brooks, who was interviewed by journalists regarding the case may also be a fake persona, perhaps concocted by the same man.

What the hell, everyone says.

First, everyone should read Henry's initial "painful doubts" post, because she raises several interesting issues about online identity and the degree to which what she calls fictional blogging can be a valid form in some cases. And then you should read a 2008 post of hers in which she uncovers an entire blog in which the blogger and most of the commenters are nothing but sockpuppets. That post is especially valuable if: 1) you want insight into how an online citizen journalist goes about investigating online identity, and 2) you want to understand why it matters.

Now that the facts are coming out, it's hard not to see l'affaire Amina as being very much like the J.T. LeRoy hoax, featuring the same attributes of gender crossing, impersonation of a genderqueer person, appropriation of an oppressed minority identity by someone more privileged, and readers' similar emotional feelings of investment and betrayal. (I've blogged several times about the JT LeRoy hoax and about fakes in general -- see below.)

To repeat what I've said before: words matter. Stories matter. I'm sure this MacMaster fellow is going to say he did this to draw attention to the plight of women and homosexuals in the Middle East, or for some other apparently good reason. But when you pretend to be one of an oppressed minority and make people feel sympathy for you, when the truth comes out those people are going to feel you've manipulated them, no matter how noble your motives were. And they're going to be angry.

Update: A comment from a real LGBT blogger in Syria:

To Mr. MacMaster, I say shame on you!!! There are bloggers in Syria who are trying as hard as they can to report news and stories from the country. We have to deal with too many difficulties than you can imagine. What you have done has harmed many, put us all in danger, and made us worry about our LGBT activism. Add to that, that it might have caused doubts about the authenticity of our blogs, stories, and us. Your apology is not accepted, since I have myself started to investigate Amina's arrest. I could have put myself in a grave danger inquiring about a fictitious figure. Really... Shame on you!!!

Previously:

On JT LeRoy:

People Continue To Take 'JT LeRoy' Writer Seriously
The Fake Patrol
Suckers Line Up to claim they were duped by LeRoy hoax
'Other Writers Latched Onto JT as Career Move'

Other hoaxes and fakes:

Is there a 'larger, better truth' than just the facts?
"Really though, at this point, who's to say what's real anymore?"
Author made up quotes, degree, many other false claims
Crazy people make up the best stories
GOP volunteer charged with making false report
Hoaxers as superheroes

* Disclosure: Liz Henry is a friend of mine.

It's the end of the world but you don't know it

As everyone knows (but will, no doubt, very swiftly forget), a Bay Area preacher named Harold Camping predicted the rapture would happen on Saturday. When it didn't, he professed to be "flabbergasted," and took a few days to do some thinking. This afternoon he more or less squarely faced a press conference and told the press and his radio audience that something "mystical" had taken place on Saturday and never fear, the end of the world will happen on October 21 "just as we have been predicting."

In fact, he has been preaching that the original May 21 date would be only the beginning of a five-month period of terror and that the real end of the world would come as the earth is consumed by fire on Oct. 21. Now he's saying never mind the terror part -- God is merciful! -- but he was right about everything else.

Play-by-play of the event is here, courtesy of a live-blogging HuffPost writer, but I thought the most interesting and telling part of Camping's spiel was when he was asked about the people who had sold their possessions and quit their jobs to advertise the May 21 date. Even if Camping was right about the Oct. 21 date, what did he advise those followers to do in the meantime? After all, Camping had answered a previous question as to whether he would be giving up his worldly possessions by saying in a mystified voice "But I still have to have a place to live... I still have to have a car to drive. Why would I do that?"

So what advice did he have for his followers who were now bereft of possessions? "Look," he said, his voice hardening. "We just went through a great recession. People lost their jobs, they lost their homes, they had to move in with a cousin, perhaps, or cut back very much on spending. But they survived. People cope."

So, anybody who believed this old nutbag and did something stupid like stopped saving for their kids' college tuition or quit their job -- they're on their own for the next five months. Surely some of them will kick themselves, go out and get a new job, and work at not being bitter for the rest of their lives. But others will double down for the real EOTW in October. Those are the people we should be afraid of.

Today's fake: End of the world. So now what?

Okay, it's Saturday afternoon on the 21st, and since Asia is not yet in ruins I think we can assume that series of Christ-sponsored earthquakes, which was supposed to devastate the earth starting in New Zealand and traveling westward, is not happening. I was talking a couple of weeks ago with a friend about this whole EOTW thing, when publicity about it was just starting to bubble to the mainstream. (I had been aware of the May 21 prediction for a year, because I have a morbid fascination with cult figures and frauds, and I have listened on and off to the Bay Area radio station of the Harold Camping cult for years, if for no other reason than his amazingly weird delivery.) My friend said, "How liberating! Wouldn't it be awesome if you really knew the end of the world was coming on a certain day? You could do anything!"

Because she's a shrink, I'm sure she didn't mean that in the "You could finally go out and murder that person on your list" way. She probably meant it in the self-actualizing way. Or she could have meant it the sort of dark-side way, because she also rolls that way. You should read her fiction. (You really should. She's in my writing group. In fact, she is my writing group.)

Right, then, back to work. Rain fell all day the day Sirenita died, but the next morning it cleared up, and since then it's been gorgeous. This is a splendid springtime Saturday, sunny and windy and cool, just perfect. I haven't yet been able to make myself go to my other writing friend's basement and work on my book. I think I'll do it from this nice cafe for a while.

Today's fake: woman faked her son's cancer to glom donations

An unemployed Detroit-area woman faked a cancer diagnosis for her 12-year-old son so she could solicit donations, including $7500 from a church fundraiser. As part of the scam, she shaved his head and eyebrows and drugged him so he would appear lethargic. She told him he had leukemia. She's facing fraud and child abuse charges.

"Really though, at this point, who's to say what's real anymore?"

Last year the actor Joachin Phoenix famously appeared on David Letterman's show, and in other public events, looking completely fucked up and saying he was quitting acting. Well guess what -- it was all a hoax or, as they're calling it, performance art, in service of a mockumentary called I'm Still Here.

In this post on Mediaite, about how Phoenix went back on Letterman's show and got a "scolding" from the host, a despairing blogger asks (emphasis mine):

Letterman took Phoenix to task for tricking him (he made the actor admit that he [Letterman] hadn’t been in on the joke or scripted) as well as using most of the footage in the film without paying The Late Show a licensing fee. He even (jokingly?) told Phoenix that he owed him $1 million. When Phoenix, playing along, asked if they could discuss it in private, Letterman took a hard swipe saying they could go to one of I'm Still Here's screenings.

Really though, at this point, who's to say what's real anymore? Maybe Letterman wasn't mad and this was all a hoax.

Such are the dangers of piling air quotes upon sarcasm upon satire upon irony. We're now approaching Andy Kaufmann territory, where a performer constantly spoofs and tricks his friends and family along with his fans so many times that even those closest to him don't know what to believe. You know, if I were going to venture into those rarified levels of hoax, I think I'd set up a secret website for my closest friends and family, where I'd promise to post the real truth, at pain of amputation of my privates. (Of course, if you're actually dying, like Kaufmann was, I guess at some point you might actually go so far as to risk that penalty.)

King of Hawaii (the verb)

In researching my latest novel, I hit upon a gold mine of material just published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit whose main mission is to monitor and report on hate groups. Among the articles they published in the September issue of their publication Intelligence Report is a list of leaders of the "sovereign citizen" movement, which is a loose group of people with a magical belief in an alternate legal system. The most amusing profile contains this information:

A former tool-and-die maker, the man who writes his name as ":David-Wynn: Miller" — or, as he amusingly says it verbally, "David hyphen Wynn full colon Miller" — came up with his "truth language" scheme as a result of a frustrating court experience in 1988, when he was going through a divorce. In short, all truth language sentences used in court filings must begin with the preposition "for," contain at least 13 words, and use more nouns than verbs to be effective (he has claimed that only nouns have legal authority). David Wynn Miller considers himself a "Plenipotentiary Judge" in the Unity States of the World, and has named himself as the King of Hawaii, a feat he claims he accomplished when he converted Hawaii into a verb.

That is awesome! And this guy is not even a performance artist. God, I love this country.

Today's fake: author made up quotes, degree, many other false claims

A recently released book, Last Train from Hiroshima, is so filled with inaccuracies and apparently made-up quotations, sources and facts that publisher Henry Holt is recalling the book, thousands of which are already in book stores.

There are many versions of this story around the web today, but the most complete and damning is the one on MobyLives, the website of publisher Melville House. In addition to the accusations against the Hiroshima book -- including a complete fabrication about how the pilot of the Enola Gay regretted his actions, which he never did -- the entry includes doubts about the author that arose in previous projects. The author, Charles Pellegrino, falsely (and transparently so) claimed to have invented the submersible robot that discovered the Titanic (he didn't), to have thought up the idea behind Jurrasic Park (not) and to have discovered the tomb of Jesus (no experts believe those claims, which are "nonsense" according to the Israeli Antiquities Authority). Finally, he gave himself a PhD from a New Zealand university which says it never granted him a degree.

A week ago Pellegrino had admitted to some of the errors in the Hiroshima book, but said he had been duped. The publisher at that time planned to correct later editions.

The MobyLives entry quotes a 2000 NYT review of the Titanic book which demands, "He shouldn't get away with it." Apparently he rather has, getting book contract after contract, until now.

technorati: books, hoaxes

Narcissism and literature

The new New Yorker has a review of a book titled "Memoir, a History," in which author Ben Yagoda looks at the history of memoirs starting with St. Augustine and coming down to our present era, in which a a desperate search by readers and the entertainment industry for authenticity and stories of redemption and triumph led to a spate of faked memoirs. (A couple years ago the NYT took notice of this phenomenon.) The writer of the review, Daniel Mendelsohn, names most of the recent flaming scandals except for the J.T. LeRoy hoax, but the LeRoy books weren't actually supposed to be memoirs. That particular flim-flam was more elaborate than a single (or series of) fabricated memoir.

For several years I've taken great pleasure in blogging about these cases, collected on my blog with the labels hoaxes and fakes (applied somewhat inconsistently, but do I look like a librarian?).

technorati: hoaxes, literary hoaxes, memoirs

The lonely Brinks 'stockroom' man

It's one of those days when you read things in your spam inbox for entertainment. Usually I just peruse the subject lines, but I happened to open one of the typical Nigerian spam messages and realized just how quaint some of the assumptions are.

Dear/Madam,

I am happy to write to you this mail. I am glad that i have you as a friend and i hope that this mail gets to you with all happiness in your mind to help me out in this crucial matter.

First and foremost i want to tell you that i am the chief accountant with the Brinks Hellas Security Company Athens Greece with head quarters in Athens. i want to tell you that this matter all started last year 2004 when i was rounding up accounts for the year ended and also taking into stock what was in store.

Here we have a scenario worthy of the opening chapter of a Graham Greene novel. The formal, overly polite clerk of the Athens office of Brinks, somewhat marooned in his dusty backroom with God knows whatall. At the end of the year it's time to "round up" accounts, and he takes stock of "what was in store." Did I say Greene? It's almost Biblical.

Actually, I was taking into stock all the treasuries we have left, both the ones claimed and the ones not claimed, when i realized that there was this consignment that has been in the store room for about a year and a half now and no one has come to claim it. Really, i have been with this organization for about five years and know exactly when the consignments came in.

The actual destination of the consignments is from Malaysia belonging to one Mr. Hang Chen. All this stocks have been in my books and it is only me that knows whose goods have been claimed and whose goods are still in the store. ...

The letter then goes into the usual details designed to make the story more plausible -- the length of time (four months) Mr. Chen's goods were supposed to remain in the storeroom, a subplot about Mr. Chen flying to Dublin (of all places), and finally the literal money shot:

Now when i checked out the consignment late last year i decided to Scan it and found out that the consignments actually contains money and to my knowledge it contains 3 million dollars which are wrapped up. Honestly, this consignments has passed out the time lapse and i have already written it off the books.

Und so weiter. What impressed me was the opening: the figure of the lonely stockroom clerk, undoubtedly middle-aged; he's over-educated for a stockroom clerk, which raises the question of how he wound up there in the first place -- no doubt a sad tale of frustrated ambition, a sabotaged career, and bad luck. He passes the time by opening up unclaimed packages, really just out of curiosity. Imagine his surprise when he finds the three million dollars (dollars, not drachmas, yuan, Euros or whatever they use in Malaysia).

If it were a Greene book, the ensuing chapters might deal with shadowy agents seeking the true provenance of the three million dollars. It would turn out there was no such person as a Mr. Hang Chen. Inevitably, a lovely woman in her mid-30s with a classical name such as Helen or Daphne would appear mixed up in the thing, probably trying to protect someone, and the storeroom man would have to choose between his secret love for her and his moral duty.

But they don't write them that way anymore, except in spam emails.

technorati: hoaxes

Today's fake: a troubled pregnancy

A Chicago area blogger who kept readers spellbound with reports on her "pregnancy with a terminally ill baby" was faking the whole thing, local media reported yesterday. Faced with the problem of finally coming up with a baby, the 26-year-old woman, Beccah Beushausen of Oak Park, furnished a picture of herself cradling a swaddled doll. Readers quickly noticed the deception:

"I have that exact doll in my house," said Elizabeth Russell, a dollmaker from Buffalo who had been following the blog. "As soon as I saw that picture, I knew it was a scam."

By Monday, outraged followers on dozens of Christian parenting Web sites unmasked "April's Mom" as a hoaxer, and hundreds more vented their anger.

Notice who got upset. The only problem with this was that it was not intentionally designed to punk the anti-abortionists, but was merely a symptom of a sick mind.

"I've always liked writing. It was addictive to find out I had a voice that people wanted to hear," Beushausen said.

"Soon I was getting 100,000 hits a week, and it just got out of hand," she said. "I didn't know how to stop. ... One lie led to another."

There goes the book deal!

technorati: Beushausen, April's mom, abortion

Today's fake: Crazy people make up the best stories

There's this insane person-slash-scam artist on the East Coast who portrayed himself as a Rockefeller family member. He has been exposed, captured like a moth, and is now on trial for various weirdnesses. This paragraph from a Boston Globe story today contains awesomeness:

Clark Rockefeller's meticulous scheme to kidnap his 7-year-old daughter required months of painstaking planning. He bought a home in Baltimore under the fake identity of a Peruvian ship captain, hid his $800,000 divorce settlement in gold coins, lined up three getaway vehicles, and told tall tales to get unwitting accomplices involved in the effort, one of whom thought he was driving Rockefeller that Sunday to Newport, R.I., to go sailing with the son of Senator Chafee.

I love that on the one hand he is capable of forming a "meticulous scheme" and of carrying on his deceptions for years, while at the same time being absolutely fucking nuts. But even better is the creativity and insane imagination. Eight hundred thousand dollars in gold coins! That's like the fantasy of every right-wing paranoid these days, because they all think there is going to by hyperinflation in a few years and the value of their gold -- they all have some -- will go up geometrically.

Best of all -- it had to be a Peruvian ship captain. God, I wish I had an imagination like that.

technorati: THIS, THAT, TOTHER

Today's fake: man fakes his death, but really badly

If you're going to fake your own death on Monday, don't rent a storage locker in your own name, leave your getaway vehicle there, and let the manager know "I'll be back for it Monday night." So that when you bail out of your private plane and it crashes, obviously with no one in it, and the motorcycle disappears on schedule, people won't totally know what happened.

Actually even before people knew about the getaway motorcycle:

"When I heard there was a plane crash, my first reaction was, this had to be staged," Tom Britt, a friend in Indiana, told CNN affiliate WRTV in Indianapolis. "[My] initial reaction was, 'I bet he wasn't in it.' That turned out to be correct. My second reaction was, he's trying to escape the pressure that was compounding on him."

Could the guy have been any more transparent? Ow, compounding pressure!

Prosecutors in the guy's home state of Indiana promptly issued a felony arrest warrant for the bungler.

It's Bad Behavior Tuesday™! -- holiday feeling edition

A guy who was on the plane that crashed in Denver on Saturday sent Twitter messages about the experience, beginning with "Holy fucking shit I wasbjust in a plane crash!" (sic) After being taken back to the airport terminal, he wrote that passengers were being held in the airline's lounge but weren't given drinks. "You have your wits scared out of you, drag your butt out of a flaming ball of wreckage and you can't even get a vodka-tonic," he complained: "boo." His username? 2drinksbehind.

The CEO of Fry's, a West Coast electronics retailer, is being accused of scamming $65 million from the company in kickbacks from suppliers.

Today's fake: The New York Times apologized yesterday after publishing a fake letter to the editor purporting to be from the mayor of Paris.

Today's hoax: Publisher Jane Daniel is now speaking openly about having published a years-long hoax in which author Mischa Defonseca claimed to have survived the Holocaust as a child by living with wolves in a forest. Daniel is speaking openly, that is, because she has just published her own book about her role in the hoax. See my previous entry on the hoax.

In Colorado Springs, this headline says it all: Man Found Outside With Pants Down May Lose Legs.

Today in politics: fearing hoax, Florida congresswoman twice hangs up on Obama

The hoaxing of Sarah Palin no doubt still fresh in her mind, a Florida congresswoman twice hung up on President-Elect Barack Obama when he called to ask her help on coming legislation.

technorati: hoaxes, fakes