Fool.com: FCC, Buffett, and Visa -- Oh, My! [Special] April 2, 2004

If you misplaced your calendar or forgot that this is a leap year, you may have been shocked and surprised yesterday at some of the changes to Fool.com. Never fear, gentle Fool, we haven't lost our minds just yet.

Yesterday, of course, was April Fool's Day, our national holiday, and we had a lot of fun with some not-so-legitimate stories. (See sidebar for all the stories.)

While we might think Dick Grasso is always profane, we won't be removing the bells from our jester caps or referring to "assets" as "good thingies." To his or her credit, one astute Fool asked us why "good thingy" is any less profane than "asset" in the first place. We couldn't agree more.

Likewise, there will be no X-Treme Visa cards to subsidize our children's wardrobes or B-Chips to save them from those nasty wardrobe malfunctions.

As unpleasant as we all may find irritable bowel syndrome, we don't suggest sending money to any charity that helps people deal with the nasty side effects of prescription drugs. To find out all about the charities we really do love, please visit our real Foolanthropy pages for some very worthwhile causes to support.

So, did we Fool anyone?
This year's April Fool's fun was a little more outlandish than in previous years, but we still had our fair share of people who fell victim to our shenanigans.

Some people were freaked out to learn that Buffett had purchased Krispy Kreme, especially when they sold Krispy Kreme stock the previous day! And another Fool was about to buy after reading our headline, only to realize that the joke was on him.

In response to Tom Gardner's callout for a new day-trading hottie girlfriend, FoolAmy offered up her services, wanting to know when Tom would be conducting a "dirty-talk" seminar up in Philly. [Editor's Note: Philly's only a few hours from D.C., Amy, so we're pretty sure he'll be on the road in the morning.]

After receiving our weekly Hot Topics mailing where we disclosed that the Fool is "closing its doors on April 1" (only to re-open on April 2!), several Fools emailed us asking if we'd be willing to sell our Fool.com domain name. Sorry, but we intend to Fool around for quite a while.

Perhaps the best was from a school teacher who sent in an email that took us to task for trying to make a buck off the innocent youth of America. She wrote, " I'm really shocked, and frankly disappointed, that Motley Fool, which seems to have a conscience, would do so... and even more aggressively than the others, at that!"

We're so ashamed. NOT!

Happy April Fool's!