It is our opinion that a good practical joke shows ingenuity
and the victim suffers nothing more than mild embarassment.
It is also our opinion that a well executed prank doesn't
have to wait for April First to roll around.
The following is a list of practical jokes folks on the Internet
have admitted to. Yuks'R'Us! takes no responsibility for any pinhead
who tries to execute some of the more cruel pranks listed here.
This list is for reading entertainment only. If you are a pinhead
please leave this site at once for the good of humans everywhere.
Everyone else...Enjoy!
One joke that we did in residence was the Chinese Fire Drill,
I don't quite know why it is called that. Anyway..
The victim is on the pot in the dorm washroom. Everyone grabs a
bucket (we used the waste baskets from our rooms) and fills the
buckets with water. Take a paper bag and set it on fire, toss it
under the door into the stall. Yell fire as everyone tosses the
water into the stall. Needless to say the fire as well as the
victim get very wet.
This one fellow in the house was hit a number of times and took
to relieving himself in other locals. We followed him a couple of
times and nailed him in many parts of the residence.
Later of course we conspired with our victim to get back at the
original instigator of the drill. The guy in the stall had a bucket
of water, and when the the instigator tossed the bag in we all hit
him.
*********
It is common for draftsmen to sprinkle SCUMEX (powdered rubber
eraser) on tracings prior to doing any drawing on it. This reduces
smearing of the pencil marks and such and results in a cleaner
tracing.
At a former employers we had replaced the Scumex at one draftsmans
desk with dried parmesian cheese. It looked about the same. It was
extremely interesting watching him draw for a while and then begin
to smell the paper. Took the poor dude almost 10 minutes to guess
that he had been gigged!
*********
I just pulled one on somebody, I slipped some of those anti-
shoplifting strips into the lining of the victim's favorite
jacket. I was set to pull another one, but didn't get the chance
to cut out a silhouette of a gun from metal and hide it in a
piece of carry-on luggage.
*********
Two teachers at my high school started a practical joke war
that culminated in a junk mail war of huge proportions. They
finally called a truce and got it cleared up and the mail stopped,
EXCEPT for the military mail that one had signed the other one up
for. He wrote (honestly) that he had graduated from a fine college
and was interested in the Marines, Air Force, etc. etc.
When I left, about two years after this, he was still getting
PHONE CALLS from 2-4 times a month.... they were VERY persistant
even over he (loud) objections that he was 45 and not interested
in a career change...
*********
New secretary (second day on the job) answers telephone as is told
in official tones: "This is the phone company. We are testing a new
circuit wiring scheme in your offices. Please keep everyone off the
phones for the next 10 minutes. We will be verifying the correct
wiring of your system by passing HOT STEAM through the wires.
Instruct your employees to place their phones on the floor, or,
better yet, wrap them in towels to avoid scalding themselves. We
will advise you when the tests are complete *click*" After momentary
panic, the secretary begins a frenzied "Paul Revere" routine, running
from desk to desk while glancing frequently at her watch. Just as
the 10 minutes are about up, she bursts into her boss's office (while
he is in the midst of an important long-distance call) and, screaming,
grabs the receiver from his hand and flings the whole phone under his
desk...
*********
Tell someone you can pin a glass of water to the wall, a real
glass, not a paper cup, using an ordinary straight pin. Naturally
they won't believe, so you set out to prove it. Get a glass of water
and a pin. Hold the glass up to the wall and start to pin it up.
And then drop the pin. You've got the glass in position just right,
so you ask your victim real nice to get the pin for you. When they
bend down to pick it up, dump the water on their head.
This works especially well when there's a crowd of people watching.
It can also be very dangerous for the joker, so be careful if you
try it.
*********
one time in my undergrad days, it was snowing like mad out.
Someone decided it was time a make a snowball. Then someone else
suggested that we should put this snowball in this one guy's room.
Nobody liked this guy-- so when the word got around, half the
people in our dorm section came out and help! we got this sucker
so BIG that it must be at least 4 feet in diameter. it took about
6 person to haul the darn thing up 3 flights of stairs. we got the
snowball into this guy's room while he was out, turn off the heat
in the room and left all the windows open, so the snowball wouldn't
melt too fast. well... the turkey came back 3 hourslater and found
a HUGE snowball sitting in the middle of his room, and started
melting! I still have the picture of the snowball. (if you really
wonder how big the snowball is, just imagine a snowball the size
of a normal dinning room chair!)
*********
This reminds me of a similar stunt we used to enjoy at the dining
hall in my undergrad days. The food service used opaque plastic salt
and pepper shakers with pop-off tops that could be pried off with a
knife blade if you were persistent enough.
PREPARATION (in a restroom nearby): (1) Empty salt ( or pepper)
from a previously 'acquired' container and fill about 1/3 full with
concentrated lemon juice. (2) Place a thin tissue across the opening,
poke it down a bit to form a depression, and fill the depression with
about a teaspoon of baking soda. (3) Cover (from the inside) the
holes of the top with tape of the appropriate color. (4) Replace top
on container and trim visible tissue from around the top.
Carry the device to dining hall (upright and as stable as is
possible...for your own sake).
After discretely placing the shaker on your table (only place it
near to you... see caveat #1 below), observe the next person to use
the salt (pepper). (S)He will shake lightly at first, then harder
as nothing comes out. Due to the breakdown of the tissue and the
pressure resulting from the classic acid/base reaction, the top will
pop off (quite spectacularly) amidst a shower of foam. Your victim
(as will as everyone around) should have quite a reaction, since one
does not usually observe this type of behavior in a salt (pepper)
shaker!
CAVEATS: 1. The top will come off with some force. If the holes
are sealed well, this will happen on about the second or third shake.
Once, though, due to poor sealing, it took about 5 seconds, during
which time our victim started looking at the shaker to examine the
"foamy stuff coming out" of the holes... we quickly grabbed the
shaker from her to direct the top towards the ceiling before it went
off. So, watch carefully!
2. The "foam shower" (lemon juice & soda) may ruin you victim
meal...be prepared to pop for another one.
3. Don't do this if your victim or anyone near ground zero is
dressed up (this joke will flop at board meetings and the like).
*********
This joke has been done 50 years ago by my father-in-law.
First, a little background:
He lived in a small village, north-west of Quebec City along the
St-Laurence river. In those days, toilets were located outside the
house in what we call in good ol' french canadian 'becosse', from
'back house' I think. These are a little wood shack with no floor
over a hole in the ground where you...You can guess.
Now, for the joke:
He and a friend were thrown out of a party by the doorman.
When it was really dark,, the doorman went to investigate what
was knocking at the window. They had suspended a rock to the window
frame so it hung right it the middle and tied another string to the
rock and hid behind the 'becosse' where they pulled that second
string to make the rock knock in the window. That's an old trick.
The doorman wouldn't fall for that one. So he followed the second
string in the dark and soon concluded that they were hidding behind
the 'becosse'.
He ran toward the merely visible wood structure...
But my father-in-law and his friend had taken care of moving the
shack six feet...Boy he fell in the sh*t !!
*********
This one hasn't come up despite the presence of UCLA on the net.
I'm led to the sad conclusion that the tradition has died.
In the mid '70s, just before it was overrun by fanatic Dungeons &
Dragons (tm) players, the UCLA Computer Club was host to a long
series of "glitter traps." Example: joke subject sits at a desk,
pulls out a drawer. A string runs from the back of the drawer, up
the wall, into the false ceiling, over to a spot directly over the
subject's head, where it triggers the trap: a mousetrap whose action
snaps a card away from its position covering a funnel, releasing a
handful of glitter, which flows down the funnel, through its spout,
through a hole in the ceiling acoustic tile, onto the subject. It
was wonderful to watch: a muffled snapping noise, a quiet "chuff,"
and the slow, glittery descent of a cloud of brightly colored dust,
to settle over the head and shoulders of a club member who by now
has assumed an expression of appreciative resignation.
Another, more short-lived ploy was to suspend a wooden horseshoe
by a string from the ceiling in the corridor, such that the horseshoe
dangles a couple of inches above the top of an upright broom. Most
conventional brooms will stand on their straws with a little coaxing.
We attached a sign labeling the horseshow "wood magnet." Quite a
few people took it at face value.
*********
Another Cow joke I attribute to my 'Ol chemestry prof was the
placement of a cow onto the roof. I would presume a fairly storng
roof, but once up there it would be hard to hide the fact to the
cow that any direction would be down.
*********
I was once in a nice family-style restaurant when I observed some
kids supergluing the dishes to the table. They also attached the
silverware, napkins, salt, pepper, etc. If it wasn't already nailed
down, it was now. They stayed long enough to let the glue set, and
then paid and left. They watched as the poor busboy tried to get the
stuff off of the table.
Also funny is supergluing a quarter to the sidewalk. I know its
old, but in the city, with the diverse types of people around, it
gets really amusing. I watched this old lady whack at it with her
cane for about 10 min. cursing......
*********
A few months ago I saw a newspaper clipping which told of a
newspaper in Illinois (I think...) which ran a story warning
consumers that, on such-and-such day, Illinois Bell would be
"blowing the dust out of the phone lines" and that all phone
owners should cover the earpiece of their phones with a bag
to catch the dust.
Bell made them print a retraction, after receiving numerous
calls asking what sort of bag to use...
*********
When I was in college our RA told us of a good one that
(supposedly) some friends had pulled a couple of years earlier.
These two guys made up a concoction of all kinds of left overs,
semi-pureed it in a blender, and filled a hot water bottle with
it. One of them took the hot water bottle, taped it to his
stomach inside of his shirt and put a short piece of hose into
the top so that it came up to the front of his shirt collar, but
not visible. They both went to a local pub and sat at the bar,
acting already slightly intoxicated. After having a couple of
beers the guy with the hot water bottle says that he is feeling
sick a couple of times and "barfs" VERY loudly all over the bar
to attract attention. Naturally this causes the patrons to move
away from him, all except his buddy, who calmy pulls a fork out
of his coat pocket and begins EATING the stuff. ;-) I don't
know how true it is, but I'd love to have been there watching
faces if it was...
*********
I can't resist a few:
1. Once you have stolen a dormmate's room keys, the room is yours to
plunder. As a variation, steal the dorm keys but reverse the lock
(so the keyhole faces INTO the room); we had a mechanical engineer
who got this down to about 20 seconds. Then loudly announce to
the victim you own the keys, but "let" them win the race back to
their room. PRESTO! Locked inside their own room (with no keys).
If you've fixed the phone to continually ring, they get very pliable
after about 10 minutes.
2. We connected our secretary's electric typewriter to a variac (can
vary the line voltage). At about 40-50 volts (out of the 110) the
little ball makes three or four jerky attempts before finally
striking a faint imprint. Fairly pathetic looking, actually.
3. Reverse the horizontal yoke leads on terminals (so the text comes
out backwards from right to left). This works best on a software
team who thinks they have just released the firmware for screen
drivers. Besides, hardware people figure it out too quickly.
And the standard saran wrap across women's toilets, Karo syrup,
flour in the shower, water-filled surgical tubing jammed in a
drawer...ah, for the good old days!!
*********
One night when you have a few friends around, take turns calling
the same phone number, a really obnoxious acquaintance that won't
recognize your voices is always a good choice. When the person
answers, try to leave a message for John Smith (or any name that
sounds real). Insist that you have the right number and even read
their number to them. Have a bit of fun here, and stretch this on
as long as possible. Repeat several times, once or twice an hour.
Let everybody have a turn at calling. Just as the party is breaking
up, call one last time. Tell the poor soul answering the phone that
you are John Smith, and ask "Are there any messages for me?"
This is sure to get a groan.
*********
Here's one that my roommate and myself did to a residence buddy.
One morning (early) we taped together a bunch of sheets of newspaper
to cover the victims doorframe. Then taped this big sheet over the
doorframe which left a gap of about two or three inches between the
sheet and the door. Then we filled the gap with paper balls right to
the top of the doorway. When he opened the door he was showered with
a barrage of paper balls (makes a nice mess too!) Of course, the door
has to swing in for this to work!
My roommate was (and is) rather inventive and can be quite nasty.
He buttered all of the toilet seats in our wing of the residence
(fortunately told me first). He also buttered doorknobs at one point.
We wrapped celophane over the toilet bowl then replaced the seat:
this one can be really messy!
Try this: hang a shower curtain out a window. When the person below
reaches out and pulls it in, pour a bucket of water onto the shower
curtain. Listen to hear the results. Requires a nosy neighbor below
you.
Six friends of mine and myself tried a less complicated version
of the classic dismantling of a car and putting it back together
somewhere strange. We lifted a friends car that was parked between
two other cars and turned it so that the front and back end were
facing the neighboring cars. This posed quite a problem for our
friend when he decided to go home. Requires either a small car or
a lot of very strong people! :-) I take no responsibility for any
back injuries that result from this. Of course I take no
responsibility for any of my actions. :-)
There are, of course, some fairly standard pranks that are pulled
in residence. Typically, people are shafted on their birthday which
is therefore a hazardous date to reveal. Total demolition of a room
is quite common, but lacks any real humor. A common shaft is to
remove everything from the victims room and set it up somewhere
else exactly as it was. The best examples I saw of this were: a
room moved to the roof of a science building, a room moved to the
front courtyard of the residence (really funny when it started to
snow!) and a room moved to the dining hall.
When I was younger, I had a practical joke genius for a working
companion. We both worked in the same computer store for a while.
He left and became manager of another store. I remember receiving
an envelope with his firms return address on it. Inside was a very
silly brochure. I said aloud "There has to be something else in
this envelope". So I looked and of course there was a sheet of
paper. It read "No there is nothing else in this envelope!" I could
never get him back for anything that he pulled but he was an
inspiration. The last practical joke that I will relate was one
that he taught me and it requires a bit of time to prepare. First
you need: iodine crystals and some amonium hydroxide. Mix the two
together and a brown sludge will form. Drain off the excess liquid
and let the sludge dry. The result? Snap powder, a pressure sensitive
explosive. Just sprinkle this on the floor and watch people's
reactions. Its quite amusing.
*********
I have lived in several different houses with a bunch of guys.
Needless to say things got pretty rowdy sometimes and many were
victims of some pretty funny jokes. One of the favorites as I
recall (and still is) is to go into the bathroom while the victim
is taking a shower, and pour a bucket of extreeeemmmlly cold water
on them over the top of the shower curtain. This is quite a
shocking experience, and if you are fast enough you can get away
before the victim finds out you did it.
I remember one guy I lived with getting this all the time. One
time he got sick of putting up with it and jumped out of the shower
into the hall squirting shampoo at everyone in sight. The next time
this happened the guys were ready with a camera to take pictures of
him as he ran out of the bathroom. These pictures were later shown
at his bachelor party.
*********
1) Got a neighbor that's a real pain in the ass? Do they have a
lawn? Do they have a garden that's accessible? Yes to all the
above? Great! Go out and get yourself some grass-killer and fill
the suckers hose with the stuff. Then sit back and wait for them
water their lawn! Nuff said?
2) Does the person that you want to get even with drink red wine?
If so, have I got one for you! Get yourself some Neutral Red, a
water soluble, crystalline, red dye. Mix some into the persons
wine and wait for them to take a leak. (Nuetral Red comes out as
red as it goes in, and people have a tendancy to get really nervous
when they start pissing what they think is blood!
3) (I'm surprised nobody mentioned this one yet.) Go to a pet
shop and buy a fancy looking pet collar and leash. Then, the next
time you see a dead animal in the road, attach the leash and collar
setup to its neck. Attach the whole thing to revengees rear bumper,
making sure to toss dead animal under the car so it won't be seen.
When revengee drives away, chances are he/she will be stopped by
either a cop or a member of some animal lovers group for draggin
some poor defenseless pet down the road. Either way, they are
gonna have some awful quick explaining to do!
4) Last, but certainly not least, is a great stink bomb. This
one takes a bit of time for preparation, so it's not too good for
spontaneous revenge. (But it's worth the time!) Get a quart jar
with a rubber seal. (Mason jars work quite well.) Pour about 1/4
to 1/2 inch of crystal Drano along with about an inch or so of warm
water into the jar. Place the lid on the jar and allow the mixture
to sit in a warm place for about an hour. Take the lid off and add
six egg whites, (no yokes). Add a quarter cup of Methylene Blue,
then fill the jar to within an inch of the top with water. Seal
the jar tightly and allow to sit for four to six weeks.
(I warned you it takes a while!) When the 'bomb' is ready to use,
you can either throw it like a molitov(sp?) cocktail, or shake it
up and pour the contents out, making damn sure you don't get any
on yourself. The results have to be seen, or is that smelled, to
be believed!
*********
Is everyone out in net land familiar with Sensormatic? They are
the company that make the large plastic clips that set off alarms
when you exit a department store. I used to work for a department
store and the is what we did.
Open up the clip and remove the shiny piece of paper. It is about
an inch long and about half an inch wide. This is the "thingy"
(that is the technical word for it) that sets off the alarm. This
"thingy" is easy to insert into a pen case, lining of a jacket...
We did this to a co worker and needless to say, he had problems
wearing a particular jacket to work.
*********
We have various local spots where the teenagers park, cruise,
hold drag races, drink beer etc. We happen to own a white 1983
Dodge Diplomat, the exact kind of car used by the State Patrol
around here as well as many law enforcement agencies nationwide.
(Actually our car WAS a state patrol car, but that's another story).
Anyway, my brother in law, who is a cruiser, would occasionally
borrow this car and drive it down to the cruising spots. Needless
to say, when they saw him coming there was brief but furious
activity. He finally had to stop doing this because it made
his friends so mad.
People hate to pass us on the freeway too. It is not unusual
to see some Camaro or Porche come zipping along through traffic
until he is about 2 car lengths behind us, then decelerate to a
perfect 55.00 miles per hour. It takes him about 10 seconds to
look us over, decide we aren't in uniform, notice that we don't
have state license plates, and make up his mind. He will then
typiclaly test how fast his car will accelerate to about 90 mph.
*********
They had a 'witchy' old lady next door that was constantly
complaining about everything and everyone in the neighborhood.
After one really good round about kids and pets messing up her
spotless front yard, my buddies planned what turned out to be a
better joke than they originally thought. Juvenile as we all were,
they planned to write some dirty words in her meticulously-groomed
front lawn with some kind of powder that would stand out. The only
thing they could find was some Ortho Super-Gro Lawn Food (white
powdery stuff). They wrote the message in the dead of night, and
next morning it was bold and white for the world to see. The
'kicker' came after. She came out, saw the graffiti, and
immediately grabbed a hose and WATERED IT OFF!
To this day, those sections of grass are just a little bit
greener than everything around them, and the words can STILL
be read!
********
In a similar vein, tell your victim that you have a test of
coordination you would like him to try with you. Find a door
with a fairly large crack between the door and the wall when
the door is open. (You know, over by the hinges; across the
width of the door from the doorknob...) You need an egg (NOT
hard-boiled), and a wood floor (you don't want the egg cracking
on carpeting, do you??). Now, have your victim get on the
opposite side of the door from you, and put 2 fingers through
the door. Hand him the egg, in those two fingers. Working
with him, trade the egg back and forth a couple of times,
moving UP the door frame. After you have his confidence, leave.
He will be trapped there, holding this egg by two fingers through
the door. If he lets go and nobody takes the egg, it will crash
to the floor. Best to do in the person's own room.
*********
A few years ago some members of the infamous Dartmouth Outing Club
pushed an occupied one-seat outhouse off its foundations, onto its
door. The victim tried in vain for a few minutes to roll the
entire building onto a different side, but soon gave up, as it
was too heavy. She then was forced to climb out through the seat,
and over the pit near the bottom (now side) of the outhouse.
The followup to this episode was that some `friends' seized
me in the middle of the night and tied my feet in a noose suspended
in a tree. But that's another story.
*********
This practical joke is hearsay. A fellow student some years ago
related the following. Apparently another student was a bit of
a braggar. His favourite topic was his car, and one sub-topic
was the terrific gas milage (pre-metric) it got.
So it began one evening. Fill up a one-gallon container of gas
each night and pour it into the victim's gas tank. Wait for the
story each day to get better and better. Repeat until it cannot
be taken any more. I believe 2 weeks was sufficient.
Finally the moment (days) of truth. Each night for 2 weeks,
the effect was reversed, and one gallon of gas was REMOVED from
the victim's tank. It was amazingly effective at reducing some
of the stories. I suspect the truth was never revealed to the
victim.
*********
Another harmless practical joke to be played on people living in
multiple story apartment buildings is as follows: Knock on victim's
door. Say, "I've got to use your window, someone's about to jump
from an apartment above yours." Run to window and look outside,
but don't let victim look. At this point your accomplice dumps a
rag-filled dummy either from the window above or from the roof.
The dummy should be fully closed; for added realism put some
plastic bags of fake blood inside the clothes. On the sidewalk
below, a third accomplice puts down a plastic sheet, then covers
it with a sheet painted to resemble the sidewalk. After the body
hits, let the victim see the gore, then convince him to run down
and help while you stay and call the ambulance. As soon as the
victim has left, signal your accomplice to remove the sheets and
the dummy and head for some prearranged hiding place. Then you
leave the apartment and disappear somewhere in the building; later,
you make your way downstairs and leave. The victim will race
downstairs expecting to find a dead bloody body and will instead
see only clean, empty pavement. Of course, it is best done late
at night since the joke would be spoiled by a passer-by who
informed the victim of the "body's" fate. The fun comes imagining
the victim trying to convince the police or anyone else of what
happened!
*********
In our residence the lounge door can be locked (or unlocked) by
any room key from the floor. You can also remove the handles from
a door (ie the lock comes too) and switch the handles.
We did this to one guy, he was the only one who could lock the
door to the lounge (we never locked anyway) but everyone could get
into his room. Every night for a week (at about 3:30 am) someone
would go in and do something to him while he was asleep (nothing
really nasty). As he was a sound sleeper, it actually took him a
week to figure out what was going on.
Disclaimer: Kids at home, Don't try this.
*********
This one reminded me of a joke some of the guys on our floor pulled
on another guy while he was in the shower. While he was in the shower,
they took all his clothes and even his towel and hung them outside in
the hall (over water pipes in the ceiling - we were in the basement).
I don't know how long he stayed in there and/or whether or not someone
ever gave him back his clothes. The worst part of this one was that
there were 2 shower stalls in the bathroom - and I happened to be in
the other one; it could of happened to me!!
*********
In my younger days, while employed at a warehouse, I was the butt
of the usual practical jokes directed at newcomers.(Fetch me a light
bulb repair kit, son;etc) As days passed, I noticed that one of my
antagonists was actually afraid of his terminal. This was at the time
when the press was full of accounts of the dangers of X-rays from
color TV's, and this guy was deathly afraid of the noise made by the
high-voltage section of the CRT as it warmed up. Each morning he sat
in his swivel chair, coffee in his left hand, and with the chair as
far as possible away from the terminal, used his right hand to
quickly flick the ON switch, and then jerked it away from THE
CERTAIN DEATH THAT AWAITED. After the racket settled down, he
would wheel up to the terminal and commence operations.
This situation was too good for yours truly to pass up. I went
upstairs and pulled out a stock item, a stadium buzzer, used by
high schools on the football fields to announce the end of a
quarter. I came in early the next morning and installed it in
one of his file boxes, near the terminal. I ran the wires out
to the next office via a pass-thru, and alerted all of the staff
(but him) of what was about to transpire.
He entered the room, coffee in hand, and sat in his chair. All
others were heads-down in work. He adjusted his chair to the proper
distance, reached way out for the switch, and as soon as he pulled,
I plugged in the cord. As the buzzer sounded, he assumed the facial
expressions of one who has seen death reaching it's skeltal fingers
to snatch him from the land of the living. Coffee flew to the
ceiling, and for a few brief seconds before hitting the opposite
wall, a new world land speed record for backward swivel-chair
operation was established!
*********
Preface: The person that this is played on must be someone who
really deserves it because it takes several people to pull off. He
must also live on the first floor of his dorm. It must also occur
in the winter in a suitably cold and barren area like Dartmouth.
PHASE 1:
We did this trick to someone we found very difficult to live with.
When the victim was away from his room we began to pile up a large
amount of snow outside of his window. The conditions were perfect.
His window was divided into two sections. One didn't open, the
other (in theory) swung outward like a door. The snow was wet
and packed heavily and easily. (On colder days a hose may be used
to harden the snow.) We built a huge pile of snow which reached
six or eight feet back from the part of his window that swung. We
then, as a demoralizing factor, put a cosmetic layer of snow which
completely covered the section which didn't open. When we had
finished the outside work we went into his room and closed his
shade and curtain so that he would not notice what we had done
until it was too late.
PHASE 2:
We then waited for him to come home. Luckily his room was on a
side of the dorm away from the entrance so that our work wasn't
visible from the approach. He arrived and entered his room. We
listened outside his door until we heard his shade go up and a
sudden "What the F--K?" as only pure, white snow was visible
through the window. At this point we wedged a paperback book
between his door and the frame. (Similar to using pennies, but
more effective.) We then sat back and listened as he started
towards the door. "Allright, who put all the snow outside my...
what the F--K? OPEN THIS DOOR!"
The show got more exciting as he, thinking that he could still
just go out the window, walked over, opened his curtain, tried to
open the window, and became aware of the magnitude of the problem
facing him. He had no phone, and so could not call the campus
police to come help him. His neighbors would not heed his cries,
because most of them had assisted us with the trick.
We eventually released him, but only after he had come to the
realization that he needed to be more considerate of those living
around him, or else face living out the rest of a prematurely
shortened life in a small, snow covered dorm room.
*********
My favorite dorm practical joke involved collecting newspapers for
about 3 months by everyone. When a guy on my floor had a three hour
lab we crumpled up newspapers and completely filled his room from
floor to ceiling. When he returned, he had to go in through in the
bathroom, and wasn't even able to get the door open far enough to
get through.
*********
About nine years ago the book "The Adolescense of P1" was very
popular at the computer shop where I was employed. In case you
don't know, this is about a hacker named Gregory and a computer
program he wrote which is self-perpetuating. Years later he is
employed as an honest Systems Analyst and has almost forgotten
about his "child." Then the system downstairs prints out "CALL
GREGORY" and locks up...followed by a thickening plot, some
humorous, some frightening.
I worked nights. It wasn't hard to replace the boot file on
our system disks with another that typed out "CALL GREGORY"
before replacing itself with the original.
It's funny that there haven't been more computer practical
jokes posted here. What a marvelous opportunity the computer
affords the practical joker!
I designed and wrote a point-of-sale system which was first
installed in 1976, after which I left the company. At midnight,
December 31, 1977 every system in the country stopped whatever
it was doing, flashed every light and sounded every beeper on
every cash register, printed "Happy New Year" on every printer,
and went back to whatever it was doing. I wonder how that
happened?
Some of the least elaborate practical jokes are the most
effective. Go with a couple of friends, stand near some busy
street corner, and take a great interest in some point near the
top of a tall building, or maybe just up in the sky. Watch the
reactions of people around you.
Take an old windowshade, go to a gymnastics show or anywhere
else where people wear leotards, wait for someone to do a split,
and tear the windowshade briskly, making a very loud ripping
sound...
Go to any gag store and get a fake plastic vomit. Put it in a
drinking fountain. Wet it is amazingly realistic ...
*********
Back around 1969 at another university, we had just gotten time
sharing facilities and because of the unrest (this was about Kent
State) we had armed guards protecting the computer and the few
terminals. It being around midnight, I got the guards playing an
interactive monopoly game. The next evening i was confronted by a
VERY upset computer operator. Apparently at about 4:00AM one guard
landed on Boardwalk and the game ended when he didn't have enough
money to pay the rent. The guards DEMANDED the operator restart
the game and became more and more upset when he couldn't.
*********
Recipe for LARGE quantities of soapsuds:
1. Fill a large bucket with hot water.
2. Empty contents of one bottle of dishwashing detergent into
bucket (Ivory, Joy, Dawn, or equivalent).
3. Drop in a few pounds of dry ice that has been crushed to
small pieces.
4. STAND BACK!
Recipe will fill a phone booth, or a small room (or even a big
one). A friend and I once did this in the bed of his truck. While
stopped at traffic signals the whole bed would fill up to the rim
with suds. Then, as we would accelerate away from the light,
large "chunks" would break loose and waft lazily through the air,
causing much consternation to the traffic behind. On the freeway
the result was much smaller pieces of suds billowing out of the
back of the truck. It looked like a snowstorm! It's funnier to
see than the description sounds. We were hysterical.
Also, the soap can be omitted from the above to obtain fog.
A phone booth that is opaque with dense fog looks pretty strange too.
*********
Okay, this is something me and my best friend did to our
Comp. Sci. teacher senior year of high school.
We started this joke by getting into heated arguments for
a week before the actual event and of course everything was
building up a big head of steam. By this time the other kids
knew something was up and we let them in on the joke, so now
we have about 30 people helping in our cause.
Anyway, on the day of the crime we went to the school's
dressing room and, since we were both active in the drama
club, no one asked what we were there for. So, I get ready
for the fun by making myself a nice layer of plasti-skin and
filled it with stage blood. Danny, my friend, obtained the
services of a prop knife, you know one of the ones that
retract and we tested the depth of the cut with the thickness
of the skin, it was right, so now we are set.
We walk into class seperated by about a minute and we start
right where we had left off, teh name calling, the pushing and
all the other aspects of high schoolers that don't like each
other. So Danny pulls the knife out of his pocket and yells,
"That's it Ray, you're dead." So he swings at my neck and the
knife cuts the plasti-skin and the stage blood goes everywhere,
I crumple in a gurgling heap and lay prone under the table of
trash80's. Mr. Waddington comes up and sees Danny standing
over me with a blood covered knife and sees me apparently dead
starts to roll me over. I flop over like any good corpse and
he dabs at the blood now covering my neck and says the line
I was waiting for, "My God you killed him!" At that moment,
I opened my eyes and asked him what he was doing. I have
heard of peoples faces going white and now I saw it.
After he relised what we had done, he congratulated us on a
job well done.
*********
Where I used to work, one of the group leaders used to have a
Playboy calender. One of the young ladies who objected to the
posting did a mastectomy & placed the paper in the phone between
the pickup and the connection. The phone seemed to be complete,
but did not work.
*********
One prank I haven't seen listed yet is the one I used to do at
summer camp and the college dorm. Take the top off the toilet
tank. Inside, there is usually a vertical plastic pipe about
1 inch in diameter. Going into the top of this pipe is a little
plastic tube. Turn the tube outward and, if it is long enough,
then put it toward the toilet bowl with the end just sticking
out. Replace the tank cover, making sure that the little plastic
tube is just sticking out. When someone flushes, the tube will
squirt water.
One time in Colorado I did this at 3:00am. The guy that got
caught must have flushed with his elbow while still seated. His
back was sprayed with ice cold water. His language was abominable,
and made funnier since this was a Christian camp. Oh well, we're
all human.
*********
These are computer-related practical jokes played by an old
acquaintence years ago at a nameless university in Northern
California. He wisened up and stopped playing them when the
various administrations of the computer centers found out who
it was. Sometimes I simply could not believe that he would do
things like this.
The first one was probably the worst. The undergraduate computer
center was being connected to a large terminal lab across campus
via a long line across campus. This had taken the technical folks
who worked at the computer center months of planning, pulling
cables, attaching lines, reconfiguring the system, and so forth.
It was at about this time that Jack (not his real name), wrote
a program called "GARB" (short for "Garbage") This program sat
in the background running at low priority. It would choose a
random interval, sometimes seconds, sometimes minutes, sleep
for that interval, and then wakeup. At that point, it would
choose a random ASCII character and then choose a random
terminal on that computer and send the character to the
terminal. Then it would loop back into its sleep mode until
the next time it woke up.
The administration and technical people spent weeks wondering
why their attempts at connecting cross-campus cables were causing
spurious data across existing lines, as well as the lines that
had been connected. They had people out there with the elaborate
technical equipment trying to trace down the source of the "noise"
that was polluting the terminal lines with stray characters.
Quite a while later, they did indeed discover the problem and
confronted Jack. I'm not sure what happened after that.
Another thing Jack did, before that, was write a program called
"GOD". It would patch the running monitor and actually insert a
jump into the code that performed the logout-job function within
the monitor. The jump simply took control of the monitor to a
patch-area elsewhere within memory where a simple comparison
took place to see if the logout being requested was of any jobs
belonging to Jack. If so, it simply did a no-op, with an
appropriate return-condition indicating success (so that the
calling program which initiated the system call would not know
the job had not been logged out). This program, "GOD" most came
in handy to Jack during the wee morning hours when few people
used the system but the proverbial "wheel wars" occurred, in
which enabled superusers with privileges attempted to conquer
each other in various ways.
Needless to say, none of the above behavior is tolerated by
the administration any more, with good reason.
*********
Propose to the victim a co-ordination test, and tell him that it
has been taken by the brightest people around you (quote some
scores!). You sit in front of the victim and put your palms about
twelve inches apart. The victims task is very simple. With eyes
closed, his palms clasped together, he should cautiously take his
palms between your palms, remove them, and repeat the process.
Of course he must not touch your palms otherwise he "looses".
Each cycle counts as one point and "any average person can get
100 points". As I said, tell him the scores of some other people
you know.
Let him paractice a little with his eyes open. Then blindfold
him (to avoid the "natural" temptation of cheating) and say START.
After a while leave. It is a hilarious sight to see a person rock
his clasped palms back annd forth for no obvious reason.
Be sure to invite many of your friends to witness this sight.
You will find that this co-ordination test really sounds sincere,
and many innocent people who listen to you explaining to the
chosen victim, actually volunteer to take the test before the
victim. This gives you a choice of victims to choose from.
OK, OK...I insisted on taking this test too and made a fool
of myself!!
*********
1. This one happened impromptu. A group of us were novice UNIX
hacks working for our department of computer science, all on similar
terminals. I had written a small program that would transmit a
single character at a time to another terminal. (No big deal, but
no one else had tried it.) One guy was typing away, and I was
making his cursor "wiggle" by pressing the forward and reverse
arrow keys. He exclaimed that something was wrong with his cursor.
Another guy picked up on this, and explained that the cursor beam
must be loose. He gave the right side of the first guy's (John's)
terminal a good hard whack, I transmitted a carriage return. John
laughed, but actually sat there typing in (some text), and whacking
the side of the terminal every time he needed a carriage return,
FOR SEVERAL MINUTES. Needless to say, we were hysterical.
The second guy, (Tim), says "John, watch this!" and put his hand
under John's desk and gave the underside of the desk another whack:
I transmitted a "HOME" character, moving the cursor to the top of
the screen, again as if the whack had moved the cursor. John
continues typing, whacking the bottom and side of the terminal
whenever he needs cursor motion. Tim smacks the top of the terminal
and I transmit a CLEAR key: it looked as if the characters have been
"knocked off" the screen. John is just about the get the lab
manager when we clue him in.
2. I once had a job as a COBOL programmer. A particular program
was to input no more than 20 items from an operator, and them
produce the appropriate report from them. I asked my boss what
the program should do if the operator wanted more than 20 items
to appear in the report. He said, oh, that will never happen.
But what if it does, I asked. Gruffly, he said, have it notify
the operator.
This particular machine had a seriously loud bell (control G)
that sounded like a real bell, plus it was fairly easy to make
the screen flash off and on. I coded it to flash and ring the
alarm for a minute. I tried it once and it was truly alarming.
I never heard if anybody tried to enter more than twenty items,
but it is something I think about from time to time ...
*********
On the subject of practical jokes on the computer, I pulled the
following one. When I was in college at New Mexico Tech (located
in Socorro, which is spanish for help!), I was a programmer for
several departments. As a result, I was setting up some user
interfaces. The machine was a dec 20 (with tops20) and there
was a central terminal room with about thirty adm 3s (now, there
is a terminal) in it. anyway, when this 20 went down in a
controlled manner it would send out a warning "dec 20 going down",
then three dots at one second intervals, then a "p", then go down.
When it came up, it would send out a message "dec 20 coming up",
then three dots at one second intervals, then a "p", then the login
header. Anyway, the victum sat down to use a statistical package
(it is so much fun to play with people whose use canned stat
packages). After he had been on for ten minutes, he received the
dec 20 going down sequence and then his terminal went dead. So he
waited (about five minutes). However, all during this time,
everyone around him was typing away merrily. Finally he asked if
the system had gone down. Everyone said no. Then he asked the
operator. Again no. Then the system manager. He finally brought
back the user servant (someone paid to answer user's questions)
back to the terminal. They played with the switches, then the user
servant scratched his head and said "beats me". About this time,
the message "dec system 20 reengaged" appeared on his terminal,
then the three dots, then the "p", then the message "automatic
login in effect, status at crash resumed" and he was right where
he left off! The program that caused this then deleted (and
expunged) itself. To this day, I don't think he knows what
happened to him.
*********
Another practical joke under the guise of a co-ordination test
is the following. Ask your victim to take a quarter and place it
on a piece of paper. Then ask him to take a pencil, and without
removing his finger off the quarter, to draw a circle around the
quarter. Have him repeat the same exercise with each of his
fingers pressing on top of the quarter. Afterwards, have him pick
up the quarter and rub it along the bridge of his nose. It'll
then be really funny to watch him walk around with a black line
on his face.
I also have heard of a practical joke that can be done to a person
while he/she is sleeping. If the person's hand is dipped in warm
water, this causes a subconscious relaxation of the bladder and
causes the person to wet his/her bed. I have never tried this, nor
have I seen it tried, but I've heard it from quite a few people.
Has anyone out there ever tried it?
*********
This is true. It seems that a colleague and myself are scheduled
to present a paper next month at an AI conference. We've never
heard of the conference nor did we write a paper.
Also, just today I got a letter that begins "Thank you for
agreeing to serve as chairperson of the following session at
ICASSP-87 in Dallas, Texas." I've never met nor spoke to the
person sending the letter nor did I agree to be a chairperson.
Either someone is setting me (us) up or this is a sneaky way to
get volunteers.
*********
A computer related practical joke a played in my younger days
(2 years ago...) was to write an unstoppable program (disabled
break, ^C, etc...) that would imitate the login procedure. I
would leave it running on a public terminal and whenever
somebody tried to logon, it would always print the message
'User validation error' (Or whatever message corresponding
to the operating system [that was VAX/VMS.] login error)
and loop back.
Meanwhile, the user ID and the password were written in a
file in my directory...
The only way to get out of the program was to turn off the
gandalf box.
*********
Back in the good old college days, when pulling all-nighters
(sure, you must have done some of those before!), at about 2 or
3am, try calling someone to "remind" them to go to the bathroom
(or do something). Wait for half-an-hour or so, call again just
to make sure s/he did what you asked them to do earlier!
*********
When I was out at Union College in Schenectady N.Y, we had a
great college radio station that would give away pizzas, movie
passes, clothes, etc. for answering trivia questions throughout
the day. One day, my friend and I recorded a trivia question
on our tape deck and kept the tape in the deck. A little later
one of our good friends came over to visit and we were all
listening to the campus station. As soon as one of the songs
ended, we turned on the tape with out our friend noticeing and
the D.J asked a trivia question for a large pizza. Our friend
knew the answer and since he was closed to the phone, he
immediatly picked it up and dialed the station. He was really
excited that he got through and started yelling the answer at
the mystified D.J. He was incredibly embarrased, we were trying
so hard not to laugh it hurt.
*********
DEC 20 practical jokes were rampant at an undergraduate computer
center I once frequented. One practical joker, call him Jack (yes,
the same Jack mentioned in an earlier message on this list), wrote
a program that was really rather nasty.
This program maintained two tables or arrays of strings. The
strings would be things like:
[FROM TTY NN: HI SWEETIE, JUST CAUGHT YOU LOOKING AT ME]
or
[FROM TTY NN: HEY YOU GORGEOUS HUNK, COME OVER AND MEET ME]
The program would cycle through the system sending out these
messages occasionally to a random terminal, insuring that the
terminal mentioned in the terminal messages above would have
an actual logged-in job. The person who received the message
would either be a) annoyed b) flattered and want to meet their
admirer or c) angry.
I heard that many meetings of users resulted from this program.
*************
In 1972 I was working at a very boring job in an aerospace
factory. There were three guys my age (early 20's) in the
department and we were always playing what we saw as a joke on
some poor unsuspecting soul. I was also in the Navy Reserve at
the time and had to take two weeks off during the Summer to do
my training. When I returned from two weeks off, not yet bored
enough yet to begin playing more jokes, the other three guys
went off their heads pulling any kind of trivial, dangerous or
otherwise obnoxious stunt they could think of. At the end of
the second day the supervisor called me into the office and said:
"Jones, I don't know what's the matter with you but you better
knock it off. I've had two weeks of peace and quiet while you
were gone and now that you're back all hell's breaking loose.
You go on back out there and stop bothering people."
I knew that I hadn't done anything but I didn't bother to
protest. I could recognize a well executed joke when I saw one.
*********
A great trick I have gotten away with many a time requires a
little preparation, simply to go to the grocery and get a few
packages of Kool-Aid. Then while your 'prey' is away, simply
spread it nice and liberally into his bed, best if done in
stripes, to leave his body in different colors. This works best
in a warm room where he is sure to sweat during the night to
the utmost.
*********
If you have access to a two(or more) line phone, this is a great
one, dial the first six numbers of your prey's phone number, and
put that line on hold, then dial the other number; a pizza place,
or his girlfriend is good for starters, then escalate to college
offices, activist terrorist organizations and the CIA are good
from then on. After you dial the second number, quickly put the
second number on hold, then dial the last number of the first
number and push BOTH buttons down at the same time to activate
both calls at once, then listen, but don't laugh, or they might
hear you and do worse in return.
*********
Try taping a drunk to his bed. Get a large roll of masking
tape and when he passes out wind it around him and the bed.
Another good one to do with a drunk is to put one of those
fake bald heads over his hair. Then when he wakes up ask him
if he knows what he did last night.
*********
I am far too Nice a person to ever have done these, but a friend
of mine...
1. Leave old trash paperbacks around launderettes and other public
places. Write inside the front cover: Property of (Victim.) I need
this book for my thesis. If found, please return to (address) for
$10.00 reward.
2. Post ads around town for a garage sale at Victim's house
starting at 7:00 AM next Sunday.
3. Call lots of people and identify yourself as the victim, and say
"I was walking throught the neighborhood recently and just realized
I dropped my wallet. Could you please check the sidewalk in front
of your house and let me know if you find it? Thanks *so* much.
My phone number is...
*********
How about some chocolate Ex-lax in brownies.
Or maybe some ambesol in the mouthwash.
*********
The best practical joke I know of is from MASH. However, you
need a reputation as an incorrigable joker for it to work. Just
let the person know you are going to play a big one on him
within 5 days. (Pick your time frame.) And that he will be
powerless to stop you. If you do it right, he'll worry himself
to pieces and make a fool of himself. Then DO NOTHING.
*********
Go to one of those miniature golf courses that has a windmill
hole. Replace the motor with one that can spin the windmill at
about 1000 RPM. Then illuminate it with a strobe light so it
looks like its moving at about the same speed as before.
*********
How about those relatives that seem to stay longer than
expected...
If you had someone staying at your house, especially if they're
traveling with small children, help them pack up the car. Slip
some limburger (sp?) cheese into their car somewhere where it'll
slowly get warm. You can imagine the consternation when they pull
to a rest stop to change junior's diapers and find nothing there.
Or the line, "Did you hit a skunk or...?"
*********
1) Get a piece of plastic as long as the victims bed and a little
over twice as wide. Remove his mattress from his bed frame and
line the frame with the plastic. Tape the plastic to the bed if
necessary. Fill with water (a hose connected to the tub is helpful)
Fold the rest of the plastic over the water, and make the bed.
(Done to my roommate by mutual friend.)
2) If your victim has a roommate, switch all their possesions.
Or, turn all the posters upside down and hang the furniture from
the ceiling. (Both done to me.)
3) If your victim _is_ your roommate, switch the material in your
waste baskets and pull his bed away from the wall a quarter of an
inch every day.
4) Wait till your victim is away for a weekend. Dip everything
plastic (pens, phones, etc.) in liquid nitrogen, break it, and
stick it together again. Everything plastic will break when he
picks it up.
5) Polish the floor and stick teflon to the legs of select items
of furniture. (The polished floor is a bit of a giveaway, but
teflon isn't dramatically slick if there's much grime.)
*********
Maybe a bit on the "im"-practical side but if REVENGE is what you
want...
I s'pose the keyword (superglue) says it all. The places I've
like to hit are the person's car - namely the dust caps on the
tire valve stems, the gas cap, and the windshield wipers. Pretty
nasty, ain't I?
Then there's always putting a paper bag of sh_t on the person's
front step, setting it on fire, knocking on the door, and running
like h_ll. The victim will come to the door, see the fire, and will
usually try to stomp it out with his foot.
I'll be the first that these are rather terrible and
childish but...
*********
This was done to me when I was in college and living in a
fraternity house; Take someone's door and hide it for a while.
You would really be surprised how often you want to close the
dang thing and it's not there to do it!
*********
A recent favourite in our residence has involved the kidnapping
of some small beloved object (teddy bear, harp seal, stuffed banana,
etc.). Once this object has disappeared and before its owner has
noticed it's gone, suspend it from a window in the dining hall,
tv lounge, physics building,... If small animals don't work for
you, perhaps mens undergarments stolen from the laundry might?
*********
I think I have one of these books. It is by George Heyduke
(Hayduke?). When I read it, I was practically overcome with
mirth. Some of the things he suggests are hilarious! It says
right in the book that it is written for entertainment purposes
only, and not to try any of the ideas, so I guess he has his
behind covered. Some of the better ideas that I remember are:
1. "Time bombs." This is the phrase he uses to describe chicken
parts. Easily gotten at any supermarket, they are innocent little
items that can be carried almost anywhere (in a baggie, if
neccessary). But when stashed in an out-of-the-way place, like
under furniture cushions in the house or under car seats or in
the trunk in a car, and given a little time, YOW! Watch out for
the smell! Gotten ripped off by a used-car dealer? Wait awhile,
then take some test drives in some other cars. With a few
strategically placed "bombs" in a car with the windows closed
in the hot sun.... use your imagination. Getting evicted?
Remove some outlet covers or switch covers and stuff some of
these babies down inside the wall. They'll be impossible to
find, and won't start to smell until after you're long gone.
2. Parties. Parties are great fun to plan, especially if you
plan them for someone else to host (as a surprise). Print up a
few flyers for a party at your victim's house and distribute
them where undesirables will be sure to see them. For example,
you might put up flyers around biker bars advertising "all the
beer you can drink", and "crowning of Miss Biker", or something
equivalent. Even if the reluctant host doesn't let them in his
house when the horde shows up, he will still wind up with a
party on his lawn. Of course, if you're his neighbor this
gives you a good reason to complain to the cops or to his
landlord, etc.
3. Set your victim against a third party, or against another
victim. Let other people do your dirty work for you. Here's
an example: Call up the electric or gas company and impersonate
your victim. Request that service be terminated for a week or
two (going on vacation, or whatever). As soon as that happens,
call your victim. Impersonate an officer of the gas/electric
company, and be very nasty and abusive, saying that service
has been discontinued because of non-payment of bills. This
should rile up your victim, asasuming that he HAS paid his bill
and knows it. At any rate, tell him he must come down to the
office immediately to discuss the problem or you will send the
police to his house to collect, or something like that. Then,
once you have him mad, and know he is going to the gas/electric
company, call up that company. Impersonate your victim. Be
very nasty, and try to get into an argument with a supervisor.
Wind up the conversation by saying that you are coming down
there right now with a gun, and you are going to kill somebody.
Then hang up.
Or, if you call enough times so that people associate your voice
with his name, you could call back some time after the argument
and make a bomb threat. They would recognize the voice as being
'him', and knowing that he was disgruntled would make him a prime
suspect.
4. Buy a cheap toy gun. Plant it in your victim's car. Then call
the police and anonomously report that you saw a suspicious armed
person in the area, and give the vehicle's description and location.
A variation of this would be to plant baggies full of phony drugs.
He probably won't be arrested, but he will probably be stopped and
harrassed.
5. Enter subscriptions in his name to the most filthy
homo/bondage/snuff magazines you can find, and change his
address by one so his NEIGHBOR receives them. His neighbors
will not only be disgusted by his perversions, they will also
be irritated by the fact that he is too dumb to even get his
address right on a subscription.
6. If you can get one of his credit cards, or even a charge
receipt or carbon copy of one, use the account to order gifts
through the mail. Order gifts for REAL friends and relatives
of the victim, and have them delivered directly to the recipient.
It puts him in an embarrassing position to have to explain to
his family and friends how his gift to them must be returned.
Also, can you imagine the guy trying to convince the bank that
HE did not make the purchases? Don't use his charge accounts
for your own benefit, or you will very likely be caught.
*********
Another joke which one can easily perpetrate goes like this:
Fill a plastic, or rubber, tube with water. Hold the tube
vertically up into the air and with the thumb of one hand plug
up the bottom hole of the tube and place it next to your ear
(hide the fact that you are plugging the hole).
Next, call a friend, or victim, and tell him that you are
hearing something really strange through the tube and he should
come over and listen in on it. When he gets close enough to your
ear to listen turn the tube towards his ear and release your
thumb.
*********
My favorite was to place a singles' advertisment for the victim.
I'll leave it to you to think of what to say, but my favorite was
(for a heterosexual person) to place an ad looking for someone of
the same sex.
*********
I believe this is from "The Complete Book of Dirty Tricks."
First, go to the library and find some phone books for large
cities. In one of the phone books you should be able to find a
person who has the same name as the target. Then go down to
the post office and file a change of address for the target,
forwarding his mail to himself in a far away city.
If I remember correctly the book states that this is very
illegal and is only included for amusement.
*********
Another person I know told me he once ordered some phony
business stationary, and used it to place an order for a
70,000 pound steel coil to be delivered to this person's
(a high school teacher) address. The coil showed up and
got dumped on the front lawn.
*********
One of the best ones I heard, was to do the following:
During winter time in any part of the country where it gets
really cold, take your victims mattress, soak in water until
it has reached it's saturation level, then hang it outside
until it freezes solid. Once solid, replace on the victim's
bed and make the bed up to look like normal. Boy will they
be surprised when they go to bed.
*********
Next time when you are having dinner, keep an empty jug of
water on the table. When somebody asks you to pass the jug,
pretend while picking it up that it is full of water and
heavy. Keep the jug on the table near the victim. The victim
will apply what he/she considers is appropriate strength
needed to pick up the jug. This will cause the jug to jerk
up to a significant height. The sight is very funny and so
is the victim's face.
Must try to believe. Even the most prude of your aunts will
not mind being a victim of this joke.
*********
AH yes...ye ole highschool days...(seems everyone knows of or
has done a VW bug stunt already). We also had a rather unliked
teacher, whose VW was carried up onto the gymnasium stage on
the last day of school. Needless to say, every year after that
he arrived on the last day of school driving the cab of his
brother's semi.
*********
This is more of a practical joke WITH a Beetle...MIT has some
very wide, very long corridors that turn out to be VW-accessible.
One night a guy I knew started cruising the corridors. The
practical joke came when the campus police started chasing him.
He whipped around a corner, into a freight elevator, and away.
They never found him.
*********
If you live in a dorm with tiles on the bathroom door, pour
rubbing alcohol in the cracks, wait for your victim to go into
the bathroom and seat himself, and light the alcohol.
If you can get into your victim's house, staple the sides of
many paper cups together so that they are in a ring or matrix
configuration (anything too large to drag out the door), and
fill them all with water.
*********
A friend who lived in Durham sent a postcard to his girlfriend
in Milwaukee that said "Here is a check for the twenty dollars
I owe you." and had a blank spot and a piece of tape on it.
*********
One good practical joke that I've seen done to somebody:
1) Take an old record album cover.
2) Fill the insides with shaving cream.
3) Place it halfway under a locked door to the victim's office,
home, room, etc. with the open end inside the room.
4) Jump on it.
Another, if you can get access to the victim's key chain is to
switch all his keys for keys that look exactly the same, but don't
fit the locks he's trying to open. If you can be around for this
one, it's much more fun to watch the person go crazy as he cannot
open anything he owns.
*********
This reminds me of something a friend of mine did to get even
with a landlord that evicted him. There was a hole in one of his
walls so he put a couple of dead fish in in the hole. He then
plastered over the hole and repainted the wall. Can you imagine
the smell after a month of summer heat? Nobody could tell where
the odor would be coming from until the bottom of the wall would
start to rot. He did some other things to the house but this was
by far the most subtle and undetectable until some time later.
*********
One of my favorite practical jokes is to get a somewhat long
spool of rope, and when walking down the street (acting official),
get someone to assist you in measuring a distance. Pick a spot
near a corner, go around, and find another person to hold the
other end of the rope. Go across the street and just wait...
*********
Ask somebody what time it is when he/she is holding a glass of
fluid in the hand attached to the wrist where he/she wears a watch.
You'll be surprised how many people pour fluid onto themselves
trying to be helpful to you.
*********
Buy a BIG pile of magazines of every conceivable sort, and clip
every coupon for a catalog, trial product, free brochure, etc.
Specialty magazines have the most, such as hobbies or sports (or
computers). Your victim should be deluged with junk mail (and
since most such lists get sold to other lists, the response will
be a geometric function of the number of clips you send).
*********
It should be noted by people wishing to play practical jokes,
that some people take them dead seriously. Such people tend to
escalate the level of jokes by a couple of magnitudes. My three
favorite stories are from different colleges.
One joker sprinkled finely ground powdered milk underneath his
victim's sheets. It acts like powdered sugar in the sense that,
as you sweat in your sleep, it dissolves and comes up through
the sheets onto your body and into your pores. But your sweat
makes it sour, and when it gets into your pores, it stays there.
You smell very strongly of sour milk for about a week (4 days
if you shower and sauna every day). The next weekend, when the
joker was walking back from a party, three guys jumped him.
They were dressed in ski masks and painter's suits (those light
paper/cloth jumpsuits that people wear to paint autobodies).
They stripped, tied, blindfolded and gagged the joker, and
spraypainted him blue. No one was ever caught.
In another case, a yuppy practical joker taped a guy's car
closed with strapping and duct tape (the thing apparently
looked like a ball of tape when he got through). For those
if you that don't know, the adhesive on such tapes ruins a
car's paint job, and can, if you try to remove it en masse,
even take off chips of paint and door guards (especially in
winter). Two days later, the yuppie's BMW was found with all
four of its racing radials slashed to ribbons. The yuppy of
course, called the police on the guy who's car he taped. The
guy did not admit to slashing the tires, as opposed to the
yuppie, who told the police why he thought the other guy was
responsible (ie: he admitted to the police that he taped the
other car). Charges were never pressed about the BMW (lack
of evidence), and charges were pressed about the car taping.
Did the guy actually slash the BMW wheels? He always claimed
that he didn't (of course the last time I knew, the statute
of limitations wasn't up yet).
Then of course there's the people who take the direct route
to revenge. Some guy thought he would make a very large, easy
going, farm boy feel more at home. So he got some fresh pig
manure and dumped it in the farm boy's room. The very large
farm boy, apparently lacking a cultured sense of humor, beat
the living shit out of the joker. Then he told the joker that
if it happened again, the joker would eat the pigshit. Nobody
doubted him.
*********
Call a mortuary and report the victim dead. Arrange to have his
body picked up at his house sometime when he is at home.
*********
One of my favorites is to put a couple of ping pong balls
in someones gas tank. The car will start just fine and will
run for a couple of blocks. Then the balls will get sucked
into the gas feed and cause the car to die. The balls will
now float back to the top of the tank and he will be able
to restart the car. This will be very frustrating to the
car owner, espiality if he works on his own car. First he
will replace the fuel filter then maybe the fuel pump.
From there on out he will be pulling his hair out to
figure out what to do next.
*********
My favourite was one I heard that someone at Boston University
did to his roomate, who he hated. Late one night, while the
roomate, a very sound sleeper, was asleep, this chap superglued
his...er...male organ...to the inside of his leg.
The roomate must have been a sound sleeper.
*********
My favorite was always the Saran wrap on toilet bowl one.
Second prize goes to the chubby girl eons ago in high school.
A single teacher had made out of line remarks *during class*
about her size. She got him a paid subscription to a raunchy
skin-mag *delivered to the school*. He got called on the
carpet but good, and the Superintendent would not believe
his protests of innocence..
*********
Get a list on the free classified throwaways in town
and print the following:
RED 86 Vette: Won on game show, must sell, leaving
country. Steal!! First reasonable offer takes...
Call <
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