From: bobk@gibdo.engr.washington.edu (Bob)
Newsgroups: rec.humor.d
Subject: Re: practical jokes
Date: 22 Jan 1993 05:31:31 GMT
Organization: University of Washington
NNTP-Posting-Host: gibdo.engr.washington.edu

          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
          Super Collection of Practical Jokes (part 5)
          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This one works on heavy sleepers.. Take newspaper or saran wrap which
is quieter and cover their door with it attached to the door frame
Leave above a one foot opening at the top.  Now use lots of those
styrofoam peanuts used in shipping and fill the space between the door
and the paper/plastic.  It's quite a sight when they open the door 
half awake.

********

Guess y'all know this one: cover the toilet cup, below the seat,
with that see-thru plastic....

********

My freshman year we broke into a friends room and took 3,000 dixie cups and
set them out on the floor with their rims touching.  Then we stapled the rim
of each cup to the rims of its four neighbors.  Finally, we filled all of the
cups up to just below the staples on the rim.  

It was great.  The fellow walked in, saw the cups and tried to kick a few.
Well, they splashed all over and he got a little mad.   Next, he leaned
down and tried to pick one up and dump it into the sink.  Then he
realized and they were all connected.  So he sat down a cried.  We gave
him a straw so he could start drinking all of the water (we calculated
it at about 53 gallons).  Needless to say he gave that up real quick.
He then decided to just let the water evaporate.  Well, four hours later
the paper cups started to deteriorate.  So we got a wet mop and started 
dipping it in the cups.

One tip - you can pre-staple the cups into big squares.  Then law down
one row of sqares and staple them together.  Fill all of the cups in that
section except for the closest row. Then lay down a new section and
staple it to the old.  Fill that section .....

********

In leiu of that, try sand in the bed, putting the bed on dominoes on edge
(so that as it's disturbed, the dominoes fall and the bed drops), short
sheeting, Saran Wrap over the toilet bowl (early morning is best), sleeves
sewn shut, mix tabasco w/toothpaste & put it back into the end of the
tube, sand in shoes, crackers in shoes, jello in shoes, eggs (boiled or
not) in shoes, or the following lines in the autoexec file in her computer:

********

>echo FATAL ERROR
>echo unaddressable memory segment(s) found
>echo WARNING do not attempt re-boot
>echo SYSTEM HALT
>a.bat

then write a.bat:

>copy con a.bat
>a.bat
>^Z

********

How about filling up a 30 gallon garbage can (one of those tin ones) and
leaning it up against her door if her door opens into the room.. Whilest
she sleeps.  When she leave out the door, she will be greeted by 'dirty water'.

Something easy to clean up - Get a business size envelope and tear off the top
of the envelope flap.  Get a can of shaving cream and fill the envelope - slip
the open end of the envelope, loaded with shaving cream under her door. Stamp
the envelope hard - with her in there, but not to worry, it is easy to clean
up.

********

If anyone wants a tasteless Halloween prank, here is what you do.
Fill a paper bag with manure and then put it in front of someone's door.
Next, light the thing on fire and knock on the door and then run like the
dickens.  When the owner of the house opens the door and sees the fire, he
will stomp on the bag to put it out and then SPLAT!  

        The topping, the finale, the flaming cherry on top of the prank:
	While the homeowner is stomping wildly on the flaming dog-doo,
	you run around to the back of the house and beat on the back door.
	The victim, now seeing strictly in infra red and snorting with
	rage, will bolt through the house to catch the little %@#**^& who
	did this - and leave flaming dog shit tracks through his house.

********

Have a bunch of buddies over to your place for a party.  You supply the beer,
with the understanding that once the bladders fill everyone must relieve
themselves in a single, tall, rectangular kitchen trash can (get rid of the
trash first).  Then, take the piss-filled trash can and a milk crate to the
intended victim's front door.  Place the milk crate 2-3 feet back from the
door and place the trash can's base on it, leaning the top of the trash can
against the victim's inside front door (not a storm door).  Adjust it so that
the trash can is precariously balanced between stability and falling in.
Knock on the door and run like hell.  It helps if you know they're home and
will open the door.  They're guaranteed to get gallons of urine on their
floors, feet, carpets, rugs, etc.

********

You can do other practical jokes on people such as:

Write sayings like "Assholes live here" on your neighbor's yard with
gas. (the gas will kill the grass and leave letters of brown grass behind).


Plant Kuduz or Mile-a-minute weed in one's yard....grows very fast and is
practically impossible to remove...kills dem lovely rose bushes or covers up
the back porch.

For the car: connect a kazoo or whistle to the tailpipe or put pennies in
the hubcabs.

********

Tie fishing line between two poles across a nice back road.  Cars go by
and...TWANG...ariels a-flappin.

Next, suspend a paper bag or rag over the middle of the road with said
fishing line.  Good for confusion.

Next, douse with gasoline and set on fire.  Fun while it lasts.  Arouses
confusion touched with a bit of fear.

********

How about black shoe polish on one of those old black toilet seats?

********
How about:
	Get a friend(?) smashed on anything alcoholic.  Then, when he's
passed out, drop two scoops of mashed potatoes in his underwear.  Keep a
camcorder handy for when he wakes up...

*********

If you are serious about dirty tricks, revenge, or just
causing mayhem, buy one of these books

REVENGE
REVENGE II
DIRTY TRICKS

by an ex-CIA agent who calls himself George Hayduke
after Ed Abby`s "Monkey Wrench Gang" character.
For hell`s sake buy "The Monkey Wrench Gang" and
"Hayduke Lives!".  These books have better ideas and
dirty tricks than I`ve read here.  (mostly environmental destruction)

How about "The Anarchist`s Cookbook"? (Hoffman) This book will
teach you how to make bombs. 

i`M SICK of all of these boy scout schemes.

For example, if you really hate someone, obtain a bunch of 
kiddy porn mags (this isn`t as hard to do as it sounds) and 
donate them by mail to your local library in your marks name.   

Also, send threatening letters  to a high ranking official in
your marks name.  Guarenteed he will be investigated.

Anyway the above books teach you how to do all these things without
getting caught.

Deny everything.

********

1.  Friends sound asleep?  Well try this one....
	-put shaving cream all over his hands.
	-VERY SOFTLY tickle him/her on the nose, eyes, and mouth.
	-Sit back and watch the cream get spread!

2.  Have a neighbor you can't stand?
	-Crumple up a newspaper, and put it in his newspaper box.
	-Light it up, and watch the plastic burn.
	This only will work with plastic newspaper boxes.

3.  Getting bored while in the dorms?  If you have communal showers, try
    this one....
	-Pour ICE COLD water into a large bucket.
	-Go to the showers and pour it over the top onto the bather.

********

My favorite is to get two flashlights, walk into a room where someone is
sleeping, shine the lights in their face and yell, "TRUCK!".

********

 String fishing line w/ cans tied to  each end across the road.  When a
 car goes by, the line gets caught on the front end of the car dragging
 the cans down the road making a loud racket.

********

I used to live on a long, straight, fairly traffic-free street in New
Haven, and kids with bikes raced down it all the time in the LOUDEST
fucking bikes they could GET, and at the LATEST hours!  Therefore,
what SWEET revenge it would be to get some black wire or strong nylon
twine, tie in between two STRONG trees or posts at the right height
and THHHWINGGG!  Off with their delinquent, pimply little heads!

********

A couple of loggers did the following _painful trick to a fellow
logger at the head of Night Inlet, Kyuquot Logging, British Columbia Canada,
back in 1978:

The loggers were all fresh back to an isolation camp after a ten day holiday in
town.  They work 50 days and then get 10 off.  They were gathered in Charlie's
room drinking whiskey, smoking grass and talking logging (as _ALL_ loggers do).
Charlie takes a shower and returns to the room and sits on one of the bunks
and continues drinking and smoking with the boys ... scantily clad in his bath
towel.  The evening proceeds, several loggers return to their rooms drunk, but
Charlie and two others stay up and drink till there is none left.  Charlie
passes out and one of the loggers helps situate him on the bed, the other grabs
one of Charlie's caulk boot laces and ties it around his scrotum (Not _too_
tight:), and then sets the 7 pound boot on Charlies chest.  Charlie wakes up
a little while later, grabs the boot and tosses it :-)

Charlie was on a 6:30 AM flight to town :-)

********

>    Getting bored while in the dorms?  If you have communal showers, try
>    this one....
>	-Pour ICE COLD water into a large bucket.
>	-Go to the showers and pour it over the top onto the bather.


Iused to do that to my ex-wife, except it was only a beer mug full.

Musta been enough. The bitch is gone now!!

********

One night,my brother was out to visit me, and we got fucked up.
VERY fucked up. I made the mistake of passing out on the couch.
While I was sleeping, he got in the medicine cabinet and got
the merthiolate out and wrote "Fuck You" on my forehead. When
I woke up the next morning, I was late for work, so I just threw
my clothes on and went to work. People kept lookin' at me funny,
even more than usual. No one had the nerve to tell me until al-
most lunchtime.

*********

>Another trick I learned bartending: WARNING: Don't piss off your bartender
>by stiffing him/her all the time. They probably know this trick.
>
>Put some Visene (Yes,Visene - the stuff for getting the red out) in
>somebody's drink (like five or ten drops). It gives you the runs for a couple
>of days. Crampy ones, too.

Some flight attendants use a similar trick, but they use a solution of 
Epsom Salts (Just a couple of drops, though) for difficult passengers.

It is very quick acting and guarantees a peaceful remainder of the flight
(for the attendants, that is). 

By the way, Epsom Salts is a very potent laxative.Farmers use it when 
their cows get constipated.

********

One time at a party, one of my friends fell asleep so we decided to do
a makeup job on him. it was very detailed to say the least, (it took 
about a half an hour to do) and he was actually avle to sleep though the
whole thing. Soon after he woke, and we decided to take him to a truck stop
for coffee. (We thought the truckers would just love this pretty little 
thing...)  unfortunately, he decided at that moment that he should head for 
home. Of course, he lives on a military base and at that time of night they
HAD to be doing full ID checks.......


another time, a large group of us entered the house of a friend who was gone
for the day, and rearranged his furniture. We also took the time to refill
his underwear and sock drawer with women's underwear and stockings.  (i'm not
sure who got those, but I imagine the cashier had to wonder a bit about it..)
He returned home to quite a shock....
if we had the time we might have stripped the wallpaper and repainted the 
walls. nawww.....


If you're out to just irritate someone, try putting down fertilizer in the
shape of something like "we blow donkeys" or "hi to satellites". then cover 
it (exactly) with flour. when they go to hose it away, the fertilizer will
soak in and they'll have a summer long sign.

********

Personally, I prefer to use oil or gasoline to write messages in the yards of
my sorta-kinda friends.. :)    This leaves a nice litle brown message.
The only way to get rid of it is to kill the whole yard!! Hahahaha

A friend of mine a few years ago got a hold of some Jet Airplane fuel.
He used this on his neighbors young tree (bouit chest height) one night
and it was lying on the ground by morning!!! The stuff is 120% nitro?
Anyway.. they go tsuch a good kick outa this that a cycle of re-planting,
killing, and re-planting went on for about a year.. (when the fuel ran out)
Can you imagine what the poor guy could be thinking?  He tried so hard...

*********

Prelude:
Girl A and girl B move into a house. Girl A invited Mr X from one of her
classes to the housewarming, because she had the hots for him.
During the party, A and X don't really ever get together.
At the end of the party, girl B asks girl A to sleep on the couch (must
have had shared bedrooms or something :-), and girl A says o.k.
Sure enough, the next morning, girl B and Mr X were an item, coming out
of the bedroom together. 

Girl A was pissed off!

The Joke:
To get even, girl A slowly, over a couple of days or more, replaced girl
B's lubricating gel with.....local anasthetic (spl?)!!!!!!

Result:
Girl B drops Mr X after a while, saying he's the most inept lover she's
ever had!

********

	Or how about when you get some friends together and the victim, 
pretend one of your friends farted and all groan, and hold your nose.
The victim, not wanting to appear to be one of those people who enjoy
a good fart, will inevitably join in.

********

 One of the best ones that happened to me was during my freshman year, we
 were at 'war' with a rival dorm hall.  We'd play practical jokes on each
 other and it lasted about 2 months when the school put a stop to it after
 their last joke.  They went to a bait shop, got about 5 'pints' of live
 crickets, then threw them above the ceiling panels.  People could not sleep
 for quite awhile.  Luckily, I was near the end of the hall, and they never
 got to close to my room.

********

This has happened to a friend:

	We stole his car and parked it a couple of blocks away.  
	He was sweating buckets about it for he had tons of booze in the
	back seat (he was underage).  He thought someone stole it.

		And...

	We were bored waiting for him outside of his apartment  to come back to his apartment.  A friend noticed that his screen door was left ajar.  So we
decided to go in and steal all of his stuff.  You should have seen him when he
opened his apartment.  His TV, VCR, microwave, telephone, typewriter, and radio
was missing (stuffed into his walk-in closet), chairs overturned, and everythingin disarray....

********

My personal favorite:  Takes some visualization.

Two people get onto an elevatorat any given floor.  Unbeknowned to
the other occupants of the elevator these two know each other.  The first
person starts rattling off and making a fool of themself.  This is
really good if the ride is long, like from one top floor to the lobby.

Okay, the person making a fool of themself gets off the elevator
just before the Lobby where everyone else is getting off.  As soon as
the person gets off the other person starts commenting on how much
of a fool the person was andstarts the others commenting too.

As the elevator heads toward the Lobby the first person runs down the
stairwell and jumps in front of the elevator door of the lobby
just before the elevator arrives.  As the door opens the first person
leaning against the elevator jam looking rather casual asks:

"You've been talking about me haven't ya ?"

***Try it, the response is hillarious !

********

Obfolklore:
   Last year here at our Dorm at Oregon State a few of my friends went
and decided that a cool practicle joke would be to get everyone on
our floor to call the from our all-male dorm to the all-girls dorm
to our respective rooms at the EXACT same time.  We picked 8:00pm and
all send the signal and called ... only one busy signal..  I was glorious
you could here phones ringing for at least 3 blocks.   

Most guys got dates out of the whole thing and It was fun.
********

The best practical joke that we pulled was pulled on my friend's floor's
busybody.  I showed up at his dorm, went into his room, and proceeded to
yell at him (my friend).  He yessled back, and we got into a heated
arguement.  Eventually, I fired a few blanks, which this busybody was
sure to hear.
I then ran from the room, and when the busybody went to look, he saw my
friend lying in a pool of blood (we used fake stuff).  When he went to
call security, my friend quickly changed his clothes and put a rug over
the "blood" on the floor.
When the cops and the campus rent-a-cops arrived, my friend was sitting
quietly, studying.
It was suggested to the busybody that he take a nice long break from
college to let his nerves recover.

********

	We were very proud of the following practical joke.  When we
were juniors at Williams, I lived in Agard House with three friends
of mine.  Several large and loud boors who lived there as well were
always taking over the TV when we were watching it (to the point
of them physically throwing one of us out of the TV room when he
was in there watching something they didn't want to watch ... that
is, something that wasn't a sporting event).  They would sometimes 
call important house meetings without telling us, and so on.  
Suffice it to say, we didn't get along with them.
	Anyway, we got them back in the following way.  The 
remote control in the TV room was usually ignored, because it was 
always getting lost.  So a couple of weeks before the Super Bowl,
we purloined it.  We bought some supplies and set it up so that
an infrared (?) emitting diode was behind a curtain in the back of
the room, connected via wiring outside the house (which we strung)
to the lounge next door, where we sat with the remote control.  We
listened to the game on a radio, and every time something dramatic
would happen...
	"He's at the twenty!  The fifteen!  The ten!  The ..."
ZAP!  Masterpiece Theater!
	They would all immediately charge down to the cable hookup
in the basement, but no-one was there.  They'd look in the lounge
and there we were, studying quietly.  Ah, it was great.  (The
remote control was discreetly hidden by a window-drape.)
When they told us about this mysterious phenomenon, we said,
"You know, the same thing was happening to us the other day.  
Hmm, I wonder what could be wrong."
	They were sure we had done it, but couldn't prove it.  
They kept trying to goad us into revealing it, for example: 
"No, they couldn't've done it; they're not smart enough".  We kept 
our mouths shut and just grinned.  

********

While living in the one of the Towers at the University of Pittsburgh
(all you Pitt students out there, i hear you moaning in recognition),
i accidentally walked into the bathroom to discover two of my floormates
putting Saran Wrap over the toilet bowls.  This was under the seats, so you
wouldn't notice it if you sat down.  

********

Wonderful joke I heard about way back when for when you have a lot of
time to kill before the mark gets back.
Take about a zillion dixie cups and a keg of cheap beer.  Fill each cup
with beer.  Cover the entire floor with these cups.  Floor, desk, bed (if
possible) etc.  Everything. It's tons of fun watching them try to get into
their room...when watched from a safe distance.

Staple the cups together before filling them, and fill them above the
staples.  That way, they can't just pick them up and empty them, and
can't just tear them either.  The one time I heard of this, the victims
had to resort to using straws to empty the cups.

********

My undergraduate advisor told me that when he was an undergrad at MIT,
he and his floormates performed this trick on a particularly obnoxious
guy who lived there.  The guy would regularly go down to the power
box and kill everyone's power, just for jollies.  Well, they papered
his room one day, and when he opened the door, he calmly lit a match,
threw it in, and left.  The building did not burn down but the student
was ejected.  He had been failing out anyway.

This reminds me of another newspaper prank, which I heard of from an
old friend who attended the U. of Rochester in NY.  A guy who lived
on their floor had the Wall Street Journal delivered to his door
every day, and the others on the floor decided to poke fun at this
upscale practice by sealing off his door (from the outside) with 
sheets of the Journal.  Every morning, the guy would open his door,
see the doorway blocked by the sheets, and leap through.  This 
became a morning ritual.  One day, somebody got the bright idea to
put a Coke machine on the other side of the papers, and the guy
got a concussion when he tried to go through.  

********

Try this at large parties (ie when the host is rather busy), when the phone
rings answer with "Hello, Dave's House of Leather and Erotic Apparel, could
you hold?"

********

>
>About 1:30 am one morning, I am awakened by the phone ringing.  After shutting
-----
Something similar happened to me. The phone rings at 3:30am the night before
my calculus exam, the following conversation takes place:
Hello
Let me speak to Cindy
Who?
I said put Cindy on the phone
Sorry but you have the wrong number
Look ass*ole, put Cindy on the phone NOW
There is no Cindy here, what number are you trying to reach?
You f*cking b*stard, I know where you live, now let me talk to her.
Ok, Ok (long pause) can she call you back, she's in the shower with my roomate.
   CLICK.

********

A friend of mine who attended Duke had an ongoing feud with a floormate for
almost a year.  Finally, he went an bought 200 crickets from a bait shop
just outside of Durham, and deposited them in the victims room while he
was at dinner.
 
********

>More fun with phones...
Sophomore year, my roommate and I nicknamed our room "Lis and Lisa's
Pleasure Palace" and had various answering machine messages playing on
this theme.  Well, one time, one of our friends answered the phone in
a very seductive voice "Hello, Lis and Lisa's Pleasure Palace, how may
we serve you?"  [read this in a very low and husky tone]

It was my father.

Much groveling followed.  <grin>

********

This can be taken to the extreme.  Once at Carleton U.  an entire floor 
received a "leaner" as we call it.  There are three elevators, and late at
night another held all three elevators, placed trash cans filled with water
and leaning outward in each.  Then they pressed 4 and slipped out.  The result:
a big mess on the 4th floor.  Unfortunately the water also went pouring down
the elevators and caused some damage.  Housing was not amused.

********

********

	Odd that no-one mentioned the fun to be had with all the new and
wonderful phone features available now.  None of the below are truly
destructive.  Adjust gender as appropriate (women's lib be damned, I'm not
going to type his/her, s/he every time).  Switching these on/off from time
to time can drive people nuts trying to figure out what is going on.

	1)  If call forwarding is available at your company, forward the 
victims calls to an "appropriate" number (Highly moral people get
dial-a-sex, bosses get dial-a-joke, boring people get time/weather,
flamboyant ones get dial-a-prayer, etc).  Victim may go days without
figuring it out.  Spouse may get interested in what's going o at office as
well.  Forwarding to a VP makes for interesting reactions as well.

	2)  Variation on above is to get an answering machine, record an
imitation of victim's with outragous comments (busy right now with X-rated
move sound track going in background, inviting all callers out on dates,
denouncing whatever private beliefs they have, etc).  Forward calls OR
splice into phone line so only happens on occasion.

	3)  If someone is silly enough to put call waiting onto a line used
for modems, call it EVERY time they use it.  Vicitm will complain to phone
compnay about "line noise".

	4)  Reprogram all their speed calling to dial-a-sex, etc numbers
(as appropriate for victim).  Love to watch the face of someone who thinks
he is calling his wife and a sexy girl comes on the line demanding a credit
card so she can "talk dirty" to him...

	5)  If victim is out of office for an extend period (week+), answer
his phone and say "Oh, Mark doesn't work here anymore.  I think that the
company caught him stealing equipment/supplies/money; using drugs; sleeping
on the job; sexually harrassing the boss; etc."

	6)  If the phone system depends on * or # pound keys, reverse them.
Most confusing.  Even better, rewire 0-9 as well!  Interchange only 2 keys
for continuing wrong numbers.

	7)  Replace answering tape messages with something "more exiting".
Effects records make good backgrounds.  Barmaids and dancers will often
help you out on this one as well.

	8)  Call victim's answering machine.  Leave what sounds to be an
important message and, 3 digits into the phone number, end the message.

	9)  If the company tracks every phone call, have everyone in the
office make long distance calls from the victims phone whenever victim
leaves the room.  You need a spotter to keep from getting caught at this
one.  900 numbers that charge 0.50 per call are good for this.

	10)  One of my favorites works best in large office buildings:
Stay late one night.  Go through the building and forward EVERY phone to
victim's line.  Be sure to do yours also to avoid being suspected.

	11)  If victim keeps phone numbers online and you have write access
to database, scramble the numbers (Be sure not to mess with medical or other
emergency numbers.  You can't play as many pranks on dead/maimed victims).

	12)  Turn off bell on victims phone.  On AT&T phones this requires
a bit of disassembly to implement but may be corrected by just adjusting
the volume (there is a stop to keep bell from going off but lifting a lever
permits the dial to rotate past the stop.  Rotate back and no-one can tell
that it was done.  This is a design feature of the phones).

*********

This is a good one for school or business.
It's probably been used in movies and TV.
It was used at this site, to the embarassment
of one of our department heads.

While he was chairing a rather boring department
meeting, the Manager (referred heretofore as Mr. Pid)
Wanted to emphasize a point using the conference room
blackboard.

Several meetings had been recently held in the same
room, and the last had used the pull-down projector
screen, which was now covering much of the blackboard.

With chalk in hand, Mr. Pid gave the screen a little
tug, and released it, sending it straight up and out
of reach.

The entire department almost immediately broke into
uncontrollable laughter.

Mr. Pid was at first surprised, thinking the group to
be amused by the action of the screen.

When he turned around to start writing, we were told
he turned the most lovely shade of beet red, as
taped to the blackboard was a luscious and smiling
Playboy centerfold.

To this day, the identity of the perpetrator is unknown.

*********

    Several years ago at our site I had an argument with a
    co-worker about the use of menu screens.  I argued that
    they are fine for a while, but that soon become tedious
    and that direct verb commands were preferable.  His
    argument was that menus were the ultimate in user-
    friendliness, and that he would always prefer them.

    A few days later I heard him holler from his office.
    Seems he started up the local editor, which gave him
    a menu selection to
	a)insert
	b)modify
	c)delete  a character

    It was talked about for some time.

*********

One of my favorites is to go into somebody's room and turn EVERYTHING upside
down.  This was done to the cook at a summer camp I worked at (she was a lousy
cook; this was revenge for hamburger in white sauce for breakfast).  We invertedeverything in the kitchen; the stove, the refrigerator (both previously
disconnected) and everything in the refrigerator; everything on the shelves and which (i.e., top, bottom, middle) shelf it was on.  Best of all, there was a 
table in the middle of the room with large JARS of ketchup, mustard, etc.; the
tops of all of these were hidden and they were inverted (place waxed paper over
mouth of jar, invert, remove paper) and the table rested on top.  We also
inverted several posters on the walls.
Of course, the cook wasn't very happy about this; after she'd gotten it cleaned
up she demanded that whever did it apologize and wash dishes for a week.  If
nobody claimed responsibility, she said, she would quit.
We cheered.

*********

On the other hand:
one day some friends of mine and I were going to 7-11.  There were several
parking spaces open along the wall of the store.  We were in two cars: a 14
year old chevy wagon and an 10 year old dodge dart.  As the first car was
about to pull in to the lot, a brand new cadillac pulled in from another
entrance and PARALELL parked accross 3 perpendicular spaces.  Needless to
say we were not amused, and quickly retaliated.  Before the driver (a man
in his 60's) could open the door, my friend and I (in the wagon) drove up and
paralell parked alongside him 6 inches from his door.  The other car pulled
up so that he couldn't pull up past us.  This left him hemmed in by brick
walls on two sides and cars on two sides.  Of course, he could have slammed
his way out, but since his car had just cost 10 times the combined values of
our cars, he didn't try it.  We left both cars parked there (with doors
locked, brakes set, etc.) while we picked up some party supplies and left him
there fuming.

*********

Forget about phenothaline, coat the inside of the cup with Nitrogen tri-
iodide, when it dries, don't move the cup!  When the owner attempts to do
anyhting with the cup, even breathe on it, it will probably exsplode!
Don't use to much or the mug will shatter very viontley!

*********

    There was a computer operator at a certain college (I don't know where),
who had been fired for something (I don't know what).  He acquired one of the 
ten platter disk packs that the university was using on its mainframe computer
system, and took it home.  He disassembled the pack and replaced the disk
platters with phonograph records.  He then sneaked back into the computer
center one night, placed his new pack on the shelves, and wrote a script that
would prompt the operator to mount the pack.  Later, when the new operator
came in to do his job, he saw the message to mount the pack, so he did so.
Being new, he didn't know how heavy the disk packs actually were so he didn't
suspect anything, until he powered up the drive.  The phono records literally
exploded inside the drive and sent the spindle straight through the drive door.

*********

One time a group of friends were working on an assignment for
their artificial intelligence class. It was the first machine
problem, it was due that day, and they hadn't started it yet.
Their task was to implement an expression analyzer - nothing
fancy, just a conversational calculator.

Their teacher had said many times in class that a program exhibits
"artificial intelligence" if you cannot distinguish it's reponses
>from those of a human being. They were asking me to help them do
it the other way around. They would type in the expressions and I
would use a calculator to simulate their homework problem and
type back the answers.

The first few problems were easy ones. Their teacher remarked
that their program seemed to be one of the slowest ones (I am
not notorious for my speed with a calculator). The last expression
was some really long thing involving lots of parentheses and
somewhere along the way I made a mistake and so their "program"
got the wrong answer.

You would think the gig would be up, but, being fast on his feet,
one of my friends typed in TRY AGAIN. So, I did, and this time
typed the correct number. Not to be outdone, my other friend said
"We still have a few bugs yet. We haven't taught it about long
division."

(Of course their teacher didn't buy any of this, but he was so
amused he gave them an extra week to work on the problem.)

*********

Everyone's heard about filling the victim's room with balloons, right?
(balloons are great, especially if the victim is your SO and you come by
later, acting innocently, and suggest...well, you get the idea.)

Unfortunately, inflated balloons are bulky to carry, and it can take a
dangerously long time to inflate them in the victims room. There is a 
solution. (I've actually done this, it really *does* work, even if it 
sounds ridiculous) Go out and get 2 or 3 styrofoam beer coolers. Inflate
the balloons in the privacy of your own room. Fill the beer coolers
with liquid nitrogen. (at 77 K it can liquify air) Stuff all 2 thousand
or so inflated balloons into the beer coolers. (don't worry, they will fit,
liquified air occupies *very* little space) You may need a refill or 3 of
liquid nitrogen. Get a friend or 3 to help carry the coolers to the victims
room. Make sure there isn't any paper or other water-damagable stuff on 
the floor. Strain out the majority of the LN2 and dump the inflated balloons
onto the floor. Close the door. (if there is a window or transom, it's
great fun to watch the balloons reinflate to fill the room)

*********

During my freshman year at OSU, Some of the guys in my floor
"discovered" this (on about the second day 8-).  The doors in the
"Tower" dorms have a lever shaped door handle, but the pennies still
work if the person has locked their door (for instance, to sleep).  I
discovered that if you flip the flashplate for the door over, and
re-install it, then the pennies only place pressure on the door handle
latch, not the deadbolt.  You should have seen the look on Chucks face
when I opened the door in the morning after he pennied it in...

As a parting gift to the dorm staff, we turned our bathroom into a
pool/sauna, but that's another story...

*********

I had a UNIX practical joke pulled on me that was absolutely
insidious:  the perpetrator simply changed my .profile to
include a stty call to change my wake-up character from a
newline to a space.  The effect was that if I typed a command
in correctly everything worked, but if I 'kill'ed the line
or tried to delete characters, only the last parameter would
be deleted.  He had me going for WEEKS trying to figure out
what was wrong with the system...

*********

the dept administrator is somewhat of an msdos jock, and one day, he changed
my adviser's rainbow prompt to be something like:

		fatal disk error

so everytime the return was pressed, this was displayed... now seeing that
we have been having various hardware and software problems, one after the
other with the little trash machine rainbow, my adviser was very upset...
when he realized that it was a joke, he thought that maybe i had done it...
(i don't know why, because i don't normally do this type of thing).

once we had sorted out what had happened, we set up the administrator's
account of the vax to behave in a similar, but more frustrating way...
i am a bit worried about this, though, because he rarely uses the vax...
it has been about two months, and still no screaming...  (just redefine
some symbols in his login.com... important ones, like:

		$ dir*ectory :== type
		$ type :== directory
		$ show :== logout

*********
    
An OSU Architecture prof (I'll call him Dr. Jones) had a habit of telling his
students to "Go take a flying leap" when they gave dumb answers. One student
decided to take the prof to task;  the class was taught in a second floor room
so the student practiced jumping out the window (with the help of an
assistant who would catch his arms as he jumped). The two got this down to 
an art, and one day provoked the "flying leap" comment from Dr. Jones. The
student said, "Okay, if you say so," turned around, and leapt out the 
window. His partner (who was supposed to grab him but say, "oh God, I missed
him !") *did* miss, and the jumper fell and broke his ankle.

No, this is not a cut on stupid practical jokes. The humor follows:

As a result of this episode, the department chairman had to file an
accident report. One line of the form requires the DC to outline
"What actions will be taken to prevent future recurrences of this accident ?"

The Department Chief answered, "In the future, all of Dr. Jones's courses
will be taught in the basement."

*********

Last year I had a job teaching an officeful of secretaries to use their
IBM XT.  Well, for April Fools Day, I inserted a Pascal program at the
beginning of the AUTOEXEC.BAT file (runs on startup).  The program
essentially said "Hello, Department of Defense Missile Network..." and
gave instructions which led to "Missiles Launched", and "congratulations,
 you have just launched World War III.  Say goodbye to everything you
love." I slowed down the printing to match 300 baud, so it looked quite
threatening.  After the "say good-bye message", I had it tell the user
to hit RETURN, after which the program said APRIL FOOL and went on to
the normal programs.

The results were interesting.  The people who were comfortable with the
computer loved it.  The real computerphobe registered only that this wasn't
her database program, and (as usual) demanded key-by-key instruction,
ignoring the prefectly good instructions on the screen.  No-one really
was startled, they didn't have the background.

*********

    Get a thin sheet of lead, cut out the outline of  a reclining nude
(trace from  a magazine if you wish),  tape it onto  an inside wall of
your suitcase.  If you're really artsy, glue or  sew on a cover sheet,
such that the deception is non-obvious when the people check it.
    Other shapes, or messages (taped onto cardboard)  work too.  Don't
do something that suggests a hijack attempt.

*********

	A few months ago I was flying down to L.A. from San Francisco with
a friend.  He had stayed up too late the night before and promptly fell
fast asleep as soon as we were airborne.  The airline magazines soon 
paled, so I looked around for some way to entertain myself until we
reached L.A.  
I went up the steward and asked if I could borrow one of the oxygen masks
that they use in their little speech just before take-off.  He looked
puzzled and said that they didn't work and were just for demonstration.
I said I didn't care, and much to my surprise, he gave it to me.
	I took it back to my seat, put it on, and strung the hose to the
up just above my head.  Then I reached down and shook my friend
furiously.  As he groggily woke up, I yelled,
	"Quick, put on your mask, we're falling fast!"

	The look on his face was pretty classic!  
	Interestingly enough, he didn't fall back asleep on the plane.

*********

This is a simple, harmless, and hilarious practical joke, that has claimed me
as a victim.  The setting is a pool hall, bar, or anyplace else with a pool
(billiards) table.  Place any ball at one end of the table and give your victim
the cue ball.  Challenge the victim to focus on the cue ball while walking 
around the pool table three times.  At the end of the third time, the victim
is to place the cue ball on the table, take a cue stick and hit the cue ball so
that it stikes the ball at the other end of the table.  This is very difficult
to do; not because of a loss of coordination from walking and staring at the
ball, but because while the victim is concentrating on the ball, you lick your
finger and wipe chalk off the end of the cue stick.  The victim will miscue
almost every time.  It gets funnier, because if the victim is like me,  he/she
will be determined and try it again.

*********

Speaking of fun practical jokes with a car, I have a couple of
interesting ones.

1) Give the victims car an oil change, to 70 wieght oil.  This should
work very well in places where it gets cold because when it is cold
enough, the oil should more resemble a brick the oil, and the car should
be unable to crank.  I wonder how long it would take even a good
mechanic to figure out what has been done.

2) A Classic.  Stones in the hubcaps.  If done correctly, the driver
will hear something rattling in the hupcaps and check to see if it is
the wheel nuts, finding nothing, they will continue , only to hear the
sound again.

3) When expressway driving becomes boring.  This trick is been done with
a radar detector and a very fast (looking) car.  While driving on the
expressway, look for a fast car that looks like it may not have a radar
detector.  Accelerate hard to about 70 and see if the other car follows.
If it does, bring your car up as fast as you feel safe and pretend to be
racing him.  This should get the other car's driver to start going very
fast.  Continue this "race" until you come on a turn or hill.  After
going through the turn, hit your brakes hard and bring the car to
exactly 55.00 mph.  The effect is to make every one on the road start
doing 55.00 because they assume that if you are going that fast, youmust
have a radar detector, and it must have just gone off.  (I hope I don't
need to mention the illigalities with this joke, and the need for a
radar detector.)

*********

When my girlfriend and I were in our early teens (the age is important) we used
to go to the local department store clock department. We would set all the
clocks that had alarms to go off within minutes of each other a few minutes
later. From a vantage point behind a rack of clothing we always got a chuckle 
when the alarms started going off and the poor sales clerk was trying to find
out which ones were going off! (now, having been a sales clerk for a brief
period during my college days, I don't think that would have been particularly
funny!)

*********

While in grad school, I was an "assistant" in a lab which contained two
pdp-11/23's running UNIX System 3.  Much of my education came from
jokes played on me by my more knowledgeable friends.  I'm sure I
deserved them; I was into writing multi-player games, and I got a
kick out of writing special caveats that only I knew about; these
caveats could give other players invisible handicaps.  (Don't ask me
for the games; they're very terminal dependent and I don't even
know where they are anymore.)  We once wrote a multi-player version
of Walter Bright's empire from scratch.  I added H-bombs (like fighters,
but when they hit a city it goes neutral, and when they hit a neutral
city it goes away, etc)  Only, the program was rigged so that when
a certain friend completed an H-bomb, he got this dialogue that ended
with the H-bomb developers testing the bomb in his own city!  It was
VERY funny.

[1]
The lab contained two kinds of terminals; Zenith-something-or-other for
one pdp and TVI-something-or-other for the other.  The console for each
pdp was some other type (e.g., vt100 or somesuch).  I normally logged
in on a Zenith in a particular spot.  One day my first attempt to login
failed and my second succeeded. I thought nothing of it, and continued.
Later, I happened to be on the console when I did a ps and noticed a
program running in the background belonging to one of my friends, B.
Although it was not uncommon for real work to be done this way (and the
program had an innocent sounding name), I poked around in B's directory
to see if I could figure out what it was doing (I was root; what a feeling
of power!).  An ls revealed a very strange directory name; under that
directory lived some interesting looking programs and files.

It turned out that B had written one of those password-catching programs,
and had run it on my favorite terminal, apparently hoping that I'd login
as root there.  The directory name was an escape sequence that caused
an "up-cursor, carriage-return", so an ls on a Zenith would overwrite
the funny directory name with the next file/directory.  I had done the
ls on the console (different escape sequences) by pure luck.

I figured out the file in which B was writing the login name and password,
and replaced my login and password (yes, his program worked!) with:
"B is a bad boy".  Eventually he came in.  I casually asked him about
the background process, and he had a simple explanation ready.  I then
left him to the "Zenith" room, and went to the adjoining "console" room
and waited.  His reaction was quite rewarding.

[2]
B waited almost a year to try again, and this time he was nasty.  I was
working on a huge program, a dbms, for my Master's thesis.  I was having
some trouble debugging, and looking at the prospect of spending yet
another semester finishing it.  During a particularly frustrating session,
another friend stopped in to mention that B had done something to my
..profile; I thanked him and checked it out.

It was a very subtle change; I don't remember how I happened to notice it.
My PATH was set with /usr/bin in front of /bin (default on our system was
/bin in front of /usr/bin).  I looked at /usr/bin, and found an executable
cc, owned by B.  Further exploration revealed that B had written new
read() and write() primitives; his cc arranged that the resulting a.out
would get the bogus primitives.  These primitives read or wrote garbage
about 1/6 of the time.  Can you imagine debugging a dbms with this handicap?

So, how to get back at him?  I figured the first step was to pretend I
hadn't discovered his little trick, so I modified my makefile to run
/bin/cc directly.  After a day or so, B stopped in to ask how I was doing,
and I told him everything was going well.  He happened to notice my /bin/cc
lines, and asked why I did that.  I told him I had some simple shell
scripts named "cc" scattered about, and didn't want to accidentally pick
one up (this was before aliases).  He swallowed it.

The next day, /usr/bin had an executable make to go with the cc.  B's make
made a backup copy of the makefile, changed all the /bin/cc's to /usr/bin/cc's,
and ran the real make; when the make finished, it moved the original makefile
back.  I was amazed at the trouble he had gone to -- and got a good lesson
in shell programming as well!

*********

                        Joke 1

It all started with a girlfriend's birthday party.  Her
boyfriend, who I had known since elementary school, wanted 
to give her a suprize party.  So he asked me what should we do.
I came up with a plan to kidnap her during dinner.  But this 
wasn't any kidnapping.  What we did was to get three people that
she didn't know to arrive while we where having dinner. Of course
all of these people were speaking a foreign language that she
didn't understand.  She was bound, gagged and blindfolded.  Then
while everyone drove to the resturant, she was driven around in
a car with three people speaking a foreign language.  BTW-she 
new something was up and wasn't scared, because she knew something
was up. 
Anyway, they bring her into this very nice resturant. We're all
waiting at the table, about 15 of us, and we proceed to start
dinner.  Her food was in front of her, but she was still bound
gagged, and blindfolded. After a few moments we untied her, she was
really embarrassed, because everyone in the place was staring at
our table, which was in the middle of the room.
She vowed revenge.

                       Joke 2
She wanted revenge. So I came up with the idea of getting a baby picture
of my friend, her boyfriend, from his mother, and printing up posters
of it and putting it up all over campus.  Out side of his classes, labs,   
and work.  His mother gave me the most adorable picture of him when he
was a baby with his teddy bear.  His features hadn't changed that much 
and the way the picture was set up he looked as though he was in a 
police line up.  So we made it into a "Most Wanted" poster, with a 
concise discription, and his name across the top in 40 point type. I 
printed up about 150 posters which we put up all over campus.  The next
day every where he looked and turned there was a poster, even in some
of the men's rooms around campus.  It took him weeks to find all of
the posters.

                       Joke 3

If you are wondering what all of this is building up to.  Here is the
ultimate joke that was pulled.  After several more *practical* jokes
which I was the ring leader on.  My friends realized that at the hub
of each of the jokes I was the organizer and brains behind the 
opperation.  So it was my turn.

I really liked this one upper division Economics class that I was taking
that quarter.  I was the VP of one of the Econ clubs on campus and everyone
knew who I was including the professor.  Well, one Friday afternoon while
this class was meeting.  One of those warm afternoons where everyone in
the class is dozing, including the professor.  All of a sudden three 
people enter the class in surgical grab, masks, protective gloves, boots,
green suits, the works and a wheelchair.(I learned later that they had
*borrowed* all of these items from the medical school.) Anyway, the looked
like the real thing.  They went up to the professor and told him that they
were looking for me because I had contracted a infectious disease, and 
needed to be removed from class immediately. They handed him a very official
looking document and started for me with the wheel chair.  You could have
seen the people around me move, them my *friends* wheeled me across the
length of the campus screaming "out of the way infectious person." 

When I went back to class the next week, the professor looked at me oddly
and asked if I was OK to be out.  He really believed the whole thing.

**********


	Back before microcomputers, I worked for a company that sold
Interdata 16-bit minis - a desk-sized multi-user machine for which
we had written our own operating system. Since it was multi-user, it
had user accounts and logins and passwords and login programs that would
run when the user fired it up. One day a colleague and I had to re-possess
a system for which the purchaser decided not to pay. On the way bringing
the computer from Sacramento back to our Palo Alto offices, we stopped
overnight at my friend's Berkeley apartment (we were students there at the
time) and decided to haul the computer upstairs so we could play with it.

	We invited my non-computeroid roommate over to play the games on it,
but before he arrived, we wrote a special login program for him. It went,
as they say, something like this:

	My roommate (Doug) sits down at the terminal and we tell him the
account number and password to use. Our bogus login program prints:

	UGH! IT'S DOUG! I HATE YOU! GET YOUR GREASY FINGERS OFF MY KEYBOARD
	AND DON'T EVER LET ME SEE YOUR UGLY FACE AGAIN!
and then it logs him off.

	My colleague (Kevin) and I scratch our heads and say, "Hmm, that's
odd - try it again." Like a fool he does, and the computer prints:

	LOOK, YOU JERK! I TOLD YOU TO KEEP YOUR FILTHY FINGERS OFF MY KEYS!
	NOW GO AWAY AND DON'T BOTHER ME!
and logs him off again.

	So I sit down at the terminal and login with the same account and
password. The computer says:

	HELLO, MIKE. HOW ARE YOU? YOU'RE LOOKING MIGHTY GOOD! WHO IS THAT
	STANDING BEHIND YOU? ACCCCKKKK! IT'S DOUG! I HATE HIM! HE'S A 
	DISGUSTING PERVERT AND I CAN'T STAND THE SIGHT OF HIM! BARF!
	BARF! BARF!
and logs me off.

	So Kevin and I again scratch our heads, then Kevin tells Doug to
stand around the corner in the kitchen, so the computer can't see him.
I then log on again. The computer says:

	HELLO, MIKE. IS DOUG GONE? GOOD! I REALLY CAN'T STAND THAT GUY!
	SO ANYWAY, WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO DO TODAY?
		
then the computer goes into a carefully timed 30-second loop doing nothing,
giving us time to give Doug the all-clear to come out of the kitchen. Just
as he finishes reading the new message, the terminal beeps and prints:

	AAAGGGHHHHH! DOUG'S BACK! BARF! BARF! GET OUT OF MY FACE YOU UGLY
	MORON! I THINK I'M GOING TO BE SICK!
and logs me off again.

	By this time we're rolling on the floor, convulsed with laughter
while apologizing for the computer and saying that we don't know why it
doesn't like him. Finally, we tell Doug that we'll have to use the master
account on the computer, and we give him the account number and the password.
He logs in, and the computer says:

	HELLO, MASTER. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO... OH MY GOD! IT'S YOU
	AGAIN, IS IT? WELL, AS DISTASTEFUL AS IT MAY BE, I HAVE TO LET
	ANYBODY ON THE MASTER ACCOUNT RUN ANY PROGRAMS THEY WANT, BUT
	THAT DOESN'T MEAN I HAVE TO LIKE IT!
and finally Doug gets to play blackjack, startrek and hangman to his heart's
content. We finally told him how we did it later, but to this day he still
doesn't quite trust computers. I can't imagine why.

**********


  And that's it. hope you enjoyed it...

  Note: Many of these stunts were originally collected by davidv@sco.COM.
  ==

  Bob (bobk@gibdo.engr.washington.edu)     Seattle, Washington