Remember how embarrassing it was in the 80′s when you mispronounced Sade or INXS? Or the time when you were a kid and someone told you Ricky really liked you, so you went over to talk to him only to find out he really hated your guts? (Still not funny, Marcia.) Or maybe you were just the last person to forward a really funny joke only to find that absolutely everyone had heard it before you? Like, nearly a year ago?

Okay, maybe the first two only happened to us, but the third one? @MotherLondon is looking the fool for, not passing along a joke, but not getting the joke to begin with.

The link goes to the Android app: Google Translate for Animals – one of Google’s April Fools jokes from 2010. In case you didn’t see it last year, or forgot how funny it is, take the tour and watch the videos. Google Gold.

Technology April Fool’s jokes are nothing new. Here’s one of our favorites:
Drunk Driving on the Internet
In 1994, an article in PC Computing magazine said it was going to be illegal to use the internet while drunk. The phone line of anyone who “uses or abuses alcohol” while accessing the internet was going to be tapped by FBI. The contact person was Lirpa Sloof (April Fools backwards). The Congress got so many phone calls that Senator Edward Kennedy’s office had to deny officially that he wasn’t the sponsor of the bill.

April Fools Day is less than 30 days away. Mark it on your calendar, and stay on your toes. You don’t want to look like @MotherLondon.

We get pitches from people all the time to review their products on our blog, or add their affiliate link. What’s consistently obvious in all of them is that the person doing the pitch has never actually read our blog.

Still, they keep pouring in. We used to just delete them unanswered. But, where’s the fun in that? We decided it was high time we repaid the courtesy. If they take the time to scrape our email address and send a form letter, we ought to take a moment to reply.

Jeremy Kates, from Web2Carz.com, wrote:

Hi Blog Owner,

I was looking over your blog, and I think you would greatly benefit from our FREE used car search sidebar widget for WordPress. The search results are embedded inline on your sidebar (AJAX) without sending the user away. In addition, you can become an affiliate and earn extra money for any auto loan referrals.

Obviously they’ve read all the comments on our blog where people are saying, “Hey, I like your blog, but where are the used car ads? Every blog is better with used car ads! Bring them on!”

His email goes on about how they pay a whopping $4 per lead, which is awesome, since cars cost thousands of dollars, so naturally, $4 is a huge commission. He even says, If nothing else, it offers another way to siphon some revenue from visitors on their way out. That’s the ticket. “As long as you’re leaving anyway, wanna buy a car?” Here’s Jeremy’s email

Here’s our reply.

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks again for thinking of me!
Fail Bird Handler
Twitter-Fail.com

We believe the main reason celebrities don’t follow real people, or read the @replies to them, is because they really don’t care what the “little” people have to say. Another reason has to be because they get too much of this:

Why would anyone turn down an offer of friendship like this?

It’s important to know right from the start what a new friend wants out of the relationship. Since our net worth is about .000000001% of @Oprah’s, we’ve never encountered such a ballsy grab at our pocketbook. Just in case this works, we’re going to stand in line behind @MizzBubiDee, so we can ask her for half.

And then there are all the people who want advice. Like celebs have all kinds of time on their hands and are waiting around for people to ask for advice so they can dole it out like candy.

@VisionaryChick has taken harassing celebs for advice to a new level. After being turned down by @hughhefner,

she went on a campaign to get advice from an even bigger target.

Not that we’re saying she went overboard, but she tweeted @SnoopDogg 52 times in one day. Poor thing probably  doesn’t have any real friends, or an agent, or anyone she can trust. Much better to hit up total strangers to help her with what is obviously a life-altering decision.

No surprise, @SnoopDogg’s calendar was full. Undeterred, she’s moved on to her next target:

We wonder whether the “Major BB Star” is going to get wind of this. If so, how would he feel about having this person flapping her gums about the “close to working with” relationship? If we had someone who might work with us, who had to publicly hound total strangers for advice on the internet, we’d probably re-think that contract.

In case you think we inadvertently said something in defense of celebrities, we apologize for your confusion. It will never happen again.

WTH, twitter?

Are you trolling our #notfollowing list, just to mess with us?

Everyone knows we don’t follow celebrities. Not even @Oprah. Especially @Oprah. Not that we care, but @wilw is blocking us. Was the first celebrity to do so, as far as we know. You probably know that, right?

You’re being all, “Hey loser, follow @wilw, he’s just this guy, you know?” Well, he’s just this guy who blocked us. And we never even said a word to or about him, as far as we recall. But then, we’ve #notfollowed nearly 1000 celebrities so far, so we’ve kind of lost track. But he didn’t. Not that we blame him. Celebrities are a pretty sensitive lot.

Okay, we’ll play your little game. We’ll click the “view all” and see who you think we may want to follow. Ha! You got us!

Really funny. We’ll just refresh.

How long can you keep this up, twitter? Refreshing again.

Touché.

You’ve won this round, twitter. But, seriously? This feature totally blows. We can find our own friends.

Send in the Twitter Fail Bird! Tell @wilw you saw him on TwitterFail

It seems like everyone has their own army these days. @thebloggess has an army. They formed after @WilliamShatner blocked her (the nerve!) and continue to do good works in her name. @craigyferg has his own Robot Skeleton Army, which may or may not really do anything, but have given him his lovely sidekick Geoff Peterson. Even @JustinBieber has an army. Heck, he even has his own Navy. Clearly a navy where no one has to ask or tell.

We don’t have any army. But we want one. We aren’t delusional enough to believe we’d get a spit and polish, precision-team of highly trained militia. Ours would be more like the Confederate army. They didn’t have the training or the pretty uniforms, had to provide their own weapons, and as we recall, actually lost the war, but those guys had heart.

What we do have are followers with whom we get to interact on occasion. Every now and then, they send us fails they found in the nooks and crannies of twitter. So, instead of an army, we have our own little band of spies. Now that we think about it, a covert group of spies is way cooler than an army.

When one of our undercover pals sends us something worth sharing, we bestow upon them the coveted, fleeting honor of Honorary Fail Bird Handler.

In the category of “Worst twitter spammer,” Honorary Fail Bird Handler (anonymous) shared this gem this week:

We’re guessing @mlmsexmoney678 heard that if you use the right keywords (and what is more popular than mlm bussiness sexyspot money?) people will flock to your stream to buy what you have to sell. We suppose anyone can buy a free iphone, but, would they? If so, @mlmsexmoney678 is onto something good.

In an email titled, “You’ll never know who is reading,” @codem sent us this lovely conversation, which starts out with an average, ho-hum, made it all the way around the twitterverse and back, retweeted retweet:

Followed, not surprisingly, by a snarky reply

Lo and behold, somebody at GFI was sitting with bated breath at his keyboard, repeatedly hitting F5 on their twitter search so they could jump in with their hand extended like a used-car salesman trying to hit his quota.

We can’t hold it against @GFISoftware for living up to their potential. Geeks are expected to be socially awkward.

Now we’d like to introduce you to @EJWalle, today’s queen of cluelessness. Alert Honorary Fail Bird Handler @SmurfGalak brought her to our attention. It’s a long story. Let us sum up.

Here’s the skinny: @EJWalle followed @SmurfGalak. @SmurfGalak followed back, even though @EJWalle had some spammy tweets. She should have known better.

In other words, “I don’t care one whit* who I follow, I’m not looking to make actual friends or anything.”

Things don’t go quite the way @EJWalle planned:

So, @SmurfGalak offers an explanation

and is promptly unfollowed. Goes to show some people just don’t appreciate good help.

Ever the slow-learner, @EJWalle complains again about the monster she created.

But the poor thing just can’t stop. Hooked on the bot bug, she continues her death spiral:

There’s clearly no hope for @EJWalle or @mlmsexmoney678, and there’s plenty where they came from. If you’d like to become an Honorary Fail Bird Handler and learn the secret handshake, send screenshots and/or urls of the funny, silly, really bad, or awesome fails you find to tweetfail@gmail.com or DM us on twitter.

This post will self-destruct in 30 seconds….

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*4 whits = 1 iota.
8 iotas = a rat’s ass.
16 rats asses = a damn.