It's April Fools Day again. You know what that means, hmmm?

Once more our local rag has their annual pisstake in print, but this year isn't as good as previous ones. This time it involves sheep, not a lot of sheep, but enough.

So here it is for posterity:
"Satellite keeps an eye on Mauao's sheep

01.04.2006
By Rachel Tiffen

Sheep on Mauao are being kept at bay using a $2.3 million GPS tracking system and space satellite - linked back to the park ranger's office.

The hi-tech system has been on trial since last May's devastating floods when significant repair work on the Mount severely disrupted sheep grazing patterns.

Park ranger Glenn Ayo said the 300-strong flock started showing classic signs of "loco-sporadica dementia" - a condition usually suffered by mammals weaned off their mothers too soon.

He said some distressed sheep had attempted to jump or bunt their way through boundary fences and others were unnaturally aggressive.

Mr Ayo received numerous complaints and inquiries from members of the public, as did the Tauranga City Council.

"We were getting four or five calls a week, and that's just here at the park ranger's office. We had to do something about it," he told the Bay of Plenty Times.

So Mr Ayo got in touch with Professor Ewan Lyne from Kansas State University in Manhattan, who had spent three weeks in the Mount in 2003.

The Associate Professor of Animal Husbandry had suggested the hi-tech tracking system back then.

Mr Ayo scoffed at the idea at the time.

"I didn't see the point in pursuing something that at the time seemed quite flawed. We didn't want to waste ratepayers money ."

But after dozens of complaints and one nasty incident involving a jogger being bunted off her feet and suffering a fractured wrist, Mr Ayo decided to take action.

The plan was raised in a confidential city council meeting, unanimously passed, and fast-tracked past the 10 Year Plan process.

It was agreed that the annual project cost of $230,000 was justifiable, when considering the consequential reduction in public anxiety and benefits to the sheep. Tauranga mayor Stuart Crosby was thrilled with the scheme.

"Sheep are an integral part of the Western Bay and must be treated with respect. Our Aussie neighbours make jokes about them and we all like a laugh now and then, but sheep are who we are."

Mr Ayo and council staff set about attaching GPS ear tags to the entire flock. The 10 cent coin-sized devices are worth $26 each and emit a signal to a satellite in space. This bounces back to Mr Ayo's computer screen in his office at the foot of the Mount.

"When a sheep wanders off-track or displays erratic behaviour, an automatic message pops up on my screen and I know to go suss it out," he explained.

At the same time a "remotely calibrating", or calming, vibration is felt by the sheep. This puts the distressed mammal at ease and allows Mr Ayo time to get to the specific location. The radical new scheme has been kept under wraps until now, so the council could gauge its success. The council assured residents the tagging procedure was safe and the sheep were not harmed."

---

In other news, Trade Me, which accounts for 60% of the total NZ internet traffic and which recently sold for a mere 700 million dollars to the Aussies kicked in with a new advertising campaign as the clock rolled over into April 1st. TM prides itself on having a membership of over a million people. In actual fact, it really has nowhere near that number of users, just user accounts because there is a significant number of duplicate, triplicate, quadruplicate accounts (norty people), so their numbers aren't as flash as they might lead you to believe (although I guess Fairfax didn't care too much when the chequebook came out). But even taking that into account, there are still loads of people use the site and a goodly percentage of those use the community message boards. And, just like in all walks of life, some are really smart, some are of average intelligence and lots and lots are really, really dumb. Today the dummies really showed their true intelligence over a little thing like an advertisement for sorted.org.nz featuring a fictional family and their hypothetical financial worries.



It's linked to a blog, theoretically being written by this fictional woman called "Steph". Now, what seems to have really got people's backs up was the inclusion of this graphic on every page of the message board. It's very prominently displayed, and going by the filename only the opening shot of this 8 week quest to get TMers to participate in this fictional life and offer feedback to Steph on how to manage their single income of only $68K.

Well, they certainly did that today with people abusing Steph for her situation, her appearance and her appearance on the message board, both on the message board itself, and on the blog.

Sorted.org and Trade Me have supplied the people with the perfect outlet to show off their utter imbecility and the people have accepted with open arms cos, it seems hardly anyone can come to grips with the fact that "Steph" isn't real and neither is her hubby, her baby or her mortgage or income.

That's what the words "hypothetical" and "fictional" mean, unless you are a screamingly cretinous piece of snails dung. Then, they become real.

And now the whole world can laugh at how stupid upper, middle and lower class NZers really are. It's not just the sheep wot have "loco-sporadica dementia".

Fuck, that's sad.

Thank God we aren't living before 1582, cos back then the foolish time was celebrated for 8 days. Even I couldn't be enthusiastic that long.

PS if only they'd had enough brains to install Firefox and the adblock extension, then they wouldn't have had to see the ad more than once and the whole problem would have just gone away. Of course, then I would have been far more bored than I was with much less to ponder, wonder and throw shit at. I love people-watching so voyeuristically, it almost makes up for not winning the 7 million dollar PowerBall tonight. Sorry Jamie, I think feeding those starving millions might have to wait a bit longer.