Well, I'm A Fool, There's No Doubt

I'm no casual Rick Astley fan. I have known all the words to "Never Gonna Give You Up" for most of my karaoke career. I can distinguish the instrumentals from "Together Forever," "Never Gonna Give You Up" and "Whenever You Need Somebody," as most of my car CDs have had at least one of those songs on them. Most telling, I think, are the notebooks from first grade on which I wrote "I (heart) Rick Astley."

I can handle the man's cheese.

But I'm OK if I don't get "Rickrolled" again for a while.

A lot of jokesters out there have redirected links such that if you click on something, rather than go to your desired Web site, you instead get taken to the YouTube video of "Never Gonna Give You Up." Sometimes there's a note that says, "You've been Rickrolled." It confuses me, and thus any sense of being amused is replaced by my irritation and annoyance at having been distracted. I'm OK for randomness in movies, but for some reason, a link that appears broken and leads me to a wrong site annoys me.

And I guess that's the point of an April Fool's Joke.

No fewer than three times yesterday, I was relinked to that fucking video. YouTube was Rickrolling everyone who clicked on the featured videos. If you're not in the know, you might think the links were wrong. I can only imagine the cursing from offices of men like my father, for whom Internet humor is as foreign as Rick Astley. Actually, I can more than imagine it, because I was kinda pissy every time I clicked on something that turned out to be a gag or some such shit.

I don't remember feeling this grumpy during April Fool's Days of long ago. I don't remember there being as many gimmicks, but that surely can't be right. There had to have been tricks and jokes before this year. Maybe I'm just a prick.