Belgium based, Captain Boomer Collective, builds installations that border reality with fictional constructs. Their latest stunt is a beached 15-metre sperm whale looks to have managed to swim up the Manzanares River before coming to an abrupt halt by the arches of the Madrid’s oldest bridge. According to The Guardian the Collective says “The beached whale is a gigantic metaphor for the disruption of our ecological system. People feel their bond with nature is disturbed. The game between fiction and reality reinforces this feeling of disturbance.” As part of the installation, “scientists” from the fictional organization, the North Sea Whale Association, take samples of skin, make autopsies and dissections in front of the public and interact with crowds while remaining in character.

The statue was previously showcased in other European locations such as Paris, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium.

‘A riddle from the deep’: hyper-real whale found beached in Madrid
by Sam Jones
The Guardian
September 14, 2018

After sightings in London and Paris, whale is now making waves in Spanish capital

Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Call me Ishmael. Or, better still, Spanish whale.

Madrid awoke on Friday morning to find that a 15-metre sperm whale had managed to swim up the Manzanares River before coming to an abrupt halt by the arches of the city’s oldest bridge.

The intrepid mammal turned out to be the hyper-real model – previously sighted as far afield as London, Paris and Antwerp – that a Belgian art collective is using to shock people into thinking about the environment.

The installation, by the Segovia Bridge, comes complete with a team of actors dressed as rescuers, who hose down the beached creature.

Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Madrid’s city council said the whale, which will remain stranded until Sunday, was intended to act as a catalyst. “It’s meant to get people thinking, through art, about the kind of city they want to live in and what sort of part they can play in looking after the environment,” it said in a statement.

Captain Boomer, the collective behind the work, said it was aiming for something a little more primordial: “A dumb question from the sea to man. A riddle from the deep … The beached whale is a gigantic metaphor for the disruption of our ecological system. People feel their bond with nature is disturbed. The game between fiction and reality reinforces this feeling of disturbance.”

Madrileños appeared to be taking the cetacean incursion as a badge of honour. One tongue-in-cheek Twitter user regarded its arrival as further proof of the capital’s excellent water. “A sperm whale has come to die in the Manzanares,” they wrote. “WHAT MORE DO YOU NEED?”

From Tim Jackson: The artist Clet Abraham has a innovative approach to graffiti – apparently not legal.

Watch the video:

via Travel Junkies

From Tim Jackson: Special effects are creeping into the real world: A beautifully constructed prank used to advertise a new horror film, “Devil’s Due”. Wait ’till one of these causes a real heart attack.

An animatronic “devil baby” in a remote controlled stroller goes on a rampage through the streets of New York City and hidden cameras record people’s reactions.

Watch the video:

From Tim Jackson:

It’s the Million Mustache March in support of the Stache Act – a simple request for a tax deduction stimulus for the cost of maintaining facial hair. Sounds reasonable…

Join the Movement to Seek Tax Equity for People of Facial Hair

From AmericanMustacheInstitute.org website:

On President”™s Day 2012, The American Mustache Institute introduced the Million Mustache March in support of the Stimulus To Allow Critical Hair Expenses, or the STACHE Act. If adopted by Congress, the STACHE Act would provide up to a $250.00 annual tax refund for Mustached Americans. Americans can participate by:

Visiting StacheAct.com where you can add a past presidential mustache to a Facebook photo;

Or, by joining the American Mustache Institute in Washington, D.C., on April 1 for a physical march of one million Mustached Americans from the U.S. Capitol to the White House.

For every Million Mustache March participant, America”™s leading tax authority – H&R Block – will make contributions to Millions From One “” which delivers clean drinking water to those who cannot obtain it themselves.

(more…)

Submitted by Tim Jackson:

Fed false logic, campus eats up a hoax and revolts
by Mary Carmichael
boston.com
October 25, 2011

Northampton – All last week, students at Smith College were buzzing over a rumor that the school was going completely vegetarian and locavore. There were protests and counter-protests, with slogans chalked on walkways. There was a Twitter feed that caught the attention of VegNews, “America”™s premier vegan lifestyle magazine.” At a student government meeting, the dining services manager came under attack: How did she expect students to pass their midterms without coffee?

But the Smith administration wasn”™t really planning to ban meat, food from outside New England, or anything else.

The whole thing was a hoax – one in a decade of annual pranks perpetrated by professors Jay Garfield and Jim Henle as part of their introductory class in logic. The point is to teach rhetoric and argument, albeit in an unorthodox way. Logic classes get dry. Typically, students spend a lot of time working through inscrutable proofs on the chalkboard. (more…)

From Tim Jackson: “Putting it all on the line – a fine performance!”

A Bare Market Lasts One Morning
by Melena Ryzik
The New York Times
August 1, 2011

It was an early Monday morning like any other on Wall Street. Before most of the blue-shirted financiers descended, there came an army of helpers: the custodians and coffee fetchers, personal trainers and headsetted assistants who make the money street run smoothly. They marched along the sidewalks, in a hurry to start their workweek.

Zefrey Throwell, who devised the project, speaking with a police officer on Wall Street. Mr. Throwell also participated in “Ocularpation,” playing the part of a hot dog vendor.

Here and there, though, a few people were slowing down, like the trader barking into his cellphone in the calm before the market opened. He paused to loosen his tie. Unbutton his shirt. Take off his pants.

“He”™s buck-naked “” Lord have mercy!” a woman said, stopping to gawk at, loudly judge and then photograph a sudden expanse of flesh. (more…)

Submitted by Tim Jackson: What happens when someone’s reality hacking becomes your doppelganger…

Two Bejars
by Kelefa Sanneh
The New Yorker
March 21, 2011

It was six o”™clock when Daniel Bejar presented himself at the security desk of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The man behind the counter looked up and said, “May I see your I.D.?” Bejar produced his driver”™s license. The man scanned it into the system and then frowned. “Did you lose the pass you already had?”

Bejar smiled and shook his head.

“We gave you a pass and took your picture earlier, right?”

Bejar stopped smiling. A woman appeared and asked a question that was not a question: “Daniel, can you come this way?” They disappeared into an office, from which she made urgent phone calls: “The gentleman that”™s here has the same name as a gentleman that”™s already checked in.”

Bejar had anticipated the confusion. He is an artist with a wide mischievous streak. For one project, “Get Lost!,” he replaced New York City subway maps with versions that had a slightly different coastline and no names or markings””he wanted to evoke the city as it might have looked in 1609, when Henry Hudson sailed past. Four years ago, Bejar received an effusive e-mail from a man in southern Ontario, a self-described “musical enthusiast”; apparently, the man had meant to reach a different Daniel Bejar, a singer and songwriter from Vancouver who leads a band called Destroyer. Bejar studied up on Bejar. “I was, like, all right””we”™re going to share this for the rest of our lives,” Bejar said. “He”™s not going to stop making music, and I”™m not going to stop making art. But it took a while for me to figure out what to do.” (more…)

From Tim Jackson:

This guy stole Paris Hilton’s 30th birthday cake – from her party – and then fed it to the homeless on Skid Row in L.A.. Let them eat cake, indeed!

From Paz’s Facebook:

I woke up this morning with a $2000 birthday cake in my living room. It’s big. It’s red. It says “Paris”. And its fucking delicious.

24 hours ago I got a call from my well-connected buddy Kevin. “Dude, I’m crashing Paris Hilton’s birthday tonight. Pretty sure I can get you in,” he says. “Pretty sure you can’t,” I say. “Pretty sure I will,” he says.

90 minutes later we’re strolling down a red carpet like we belong there.

Read the rest of this hilarious story.

Read more about it here (in case you don’t believe it):

Photos of what happened next: (more…)

Submitted by Tim Jackson:

The Electronic Arts campaign for the video game ‘Dante’s Inferno’, recently reviewed in the Times, had quite a release campaign. It utilized some interesting hoaxes, including a fake Christian protest. Curious, I hunted down the whole list of ad campaign stunts.

To hell and back: EA’s guerrilla marketing campaign for ‘Dante’s Inferno’
by David Griner
Adworks Blog

Introduction
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Take, for example, the marketing of Electronic Arts’s blockbuster new video game, Dante’s Inferno. Last year, the company set about trying to educate the public not only about the game but about a 14th-century literary classic and the very nature of human morality. What ensued was one of the most complex campaigns in video-game history, one that got EA burned for fakery and sexism, and then””thanks to a bold change of direction””lauded for intellect and creativity. (more…)

Submitted by Tim Jackson:

A great prank? As it was 208 years ago, I thought I’d mention it…

I’ve often thought of Swift’s “A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public” as a great early satire as prank.

Not dissimilar to the Joey Skaggs dog food restaurant hoax/satire.

I just heard about Daniel Defoe’s “The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church” written on July 31, in 1701. His satire called for the savage elimination of dissenters. When the church found out it was parody, he was (allegedly) pilloried. The crowd threw flowers instead of fruit.

images: astroblogos.wordpress.com & Indiana.edu

Submitted by Tim Jackson:

It’s not too late to send your mother that perfect message for Mother’s Day!

Mom-Sourcing

Submitted by Tim Jackson, as seen on LandOverBaptist.org:

Are Your Children Playing With Lucifer’s Testicles?

Are Your Children Playing With Lucifer’s Testicles? (The Truth About Easter Eggs) is a wonderfully informative and well-researched Christian book which consolidates a 2-month Adult Remedial Sunday School series into two-hundred exciting and easy to read pages along with memorable illustrations. Are Your Children Playing With Lucifer’s Testicles? or “PWLT” as the book is now referred to in the Southern Baptist Sunday School Teachers catalogue takes the reader on an unforgettable journey that traces the pagan (Satanic) origins of secular (Satanic) Easter, with a specific focus on the origin of “Easter Eggs.”, Hardcover 1st Edition (April 2009)

Ordering is easy. Click here for more info.

Happy April Fools’ Day from Tim Jackson:

Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink
by Rio Palof
The Guardian
1 April 2009

Consolidating its position at the cutting edge of new media technology, the Guardian today announces that it will become the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via Twitter, the sensationally popular social networking service that has transformed online communication.

The move, described as “epochal” by media commentators, will see all Guardian content tailored to fit the format of Twitter’s brief text messages, known as “tweets”, which are limited to 140 characters each. Boosted by the involvement of celebrity “twitterers”, such as Madonna, Britney Spears and Stephen Fry, Twitter’s profile has surged in recent months, attracting more than 5m users who send, read and reply to tweets via the web or their mobile phones.

As a Twitter-only publication, the Guardian will be able to harness the unprecedented newsgathering power of the service, demonstrated recently when a passenger on a plane that crashed outside Denver was able to send real-time updates on the story as it developed, as did those witnessing an emergency landing on New York’s Hudson River. It has also radically democratised news publishing, enabling anyone with an internet connection to tell the world when they are feeling sad, or thinking about having a cup of tea. (more…)

Submitted by Tim Jackson:

Czech court to rule on fairy-tale kingdom
by Rob Cameron
BBC News, Czech Republic
October 6, 2008

A court in the Czech city of Olomouc is to deliver its verdict in one of the oddest legal disputes in the country’s history.

Comic actor Bolek Polivka is suing former business partner Tomas Harabis over the rights to the fictitious Wallachian Kingdom.

The court must decide whether Mr Polivka is the true “king” of the fairy-tale realm.
“Wallachia is a real place with real people and real history,” says Tomas Harabis, creator and “foreign minister” of the Wallachian Kingdom.

“But a lot of the attributes of the Wallachian Kingdom are not real,” he adds.

We are standing on the top of a mountain, watching the sun cast its long evening shadow over a forest of maple and spruce. Tomas is trying to explain to me where the real Wallachia ends and the fictitious Wallachia begins. (more…)