From: bobk@gibdo.engr.washington.edu (Bob)
Newsgroups: rec.humor.d
Subject: Re: practical jokes
Date: 22 Jan 1993 05:25:47 GMT
Organization: University of Washington
NNTP-Posting-Host: gibdo.engr.washington.edu

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

          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
          Super Collection of Practical Jokes (part 1)
          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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 ?"
==

phone gags:
 
If you have a multiline system, call up some shmuck <like a dingo supervisor>
and say you are the phone company and that you are cleaning the lines for
dust and/or water built up in the lines. Tell them to leave the phone off
the hook until a certian time <or, if they are REAL stupid, say "Until we
call back.">. See if the shmuck goes for it. Also, for more added effect,
wait until they leave their office, and spinkle some dust under the earpiece
or leave a puddle of water.
 
Call someone up and say you are the utility man on the roof dealing with the
"High Voltage Phone Fiber Optics" on the roof, and that because of the work
you are doing, the phone will ring a lot. Tell them, no matter what, to NOT
PICK UP THE PHONE OR ANSWER IT for ANY reason, or you might be electrocuted.
Hang up, wait a minute and call again. Let the phone ring and ring until it
is picked up. Give a blood curdling scream.
 
[my friend tried this and the secretray was so shaken, they had to leave an
 annonymous note to tell her it was a joke.]

Smear a thin invisible layer of vasiline or black shoe polish on the earpiece.

Call the shmuck, and when they answer, say "Hello?" and insist that they called
you. Do this a lot during the day with different voices.
 
[This is childish, but harmless] Leave a fake phone message pink slip to call
a number. Give them the zoo's number, and ask for "Elli Fant" or "G. Raffe"
etc... make sure it is a department in the zoo who won't answer "DC National
Zoo" or something. BTW, the zoo gets tons of these calls every April 1st.
 
My friend had a cousin who left LL Bean's Mail Order Operations in a rather
bad way. As revenge, he went down to the cetral phone system, and saftey-
glued a penny to the "Red Reset Button" on the main phone switch. Becuase
he taped down the button, they couldn't pry the faceplate off, and the 
whole phone sytem was down for 10 hours while they replaced the box. I do
not advocate this, as this is a punishable by law kinda crime.
 
Pull the handset cord from the phone and coat the plug with shellack. Plug
it back in. They will pick up the phone, but never hear or can say anything.
Since the phone rang, they can't blame it on the line...
 
Tape the hang up switch down. They pick up the phone, and it keeps ringing...

Hook up the modular cord to something silly, like a lamp, or a potted plant.
A lot of idiots work in offices who have no idea how phones work, and will
more than likely call in a repair guy... who will trace the line to the plant
and make your schmuck look like a... well... schmuck.
 
Leave a message with a phone number to a fax or modem/data line. Make the
message sound important.

**********

Try this one, but caution you may not get some of your messages. A friend once
made a recording like the telephone operator saying: Im sorry but the phone
number you have just reached has been temporalily disconected but calls can be
left at ***-****.  The joke is the number you call back to is the same number
you just dialed.( His rendition of the operator could have fooled the phone
company itself.) 

(I called my friend using a  pre-programmed number-so I knew it was right, only
to dial by hand and get the same message. You acatually had to wait through
about 15-20 seconds of silence before the beep.We had a good laugh at work the
next day.)

********
 
My friend visited me where I worked in the mall. This was during the xmas
season, so the parking lot was packed. We chatted during my break, and he 
had to beef to me about some yutz in a new 1991 Corvette who had diagonally
parked in 2 spaces. Knowing my friend's temper as it was, I asked him what
he would do to the guy if he met him. He said "I just wrote him a note and
affixed it to his car, telling him what an asshole he was." I told him the
guy was more than likely going to see the note on his windshield and tear it
up. He smiled and said he didn't write a note on the windshield, but on his
hood. I gasped and wondered what type of marker he used, and he showed me:
 
A keychain can opener, with fresh red paint shavings still attached.

********

	This is a practical joke I liked to pull on my inebriated friends:

	They would be in the communal bathroom barfing their lungs out and
generally sleeping by the toilet just in case.  I would get a filled cup
of water and run to the next stall, making hacking and puking noises as I
ran.  Then the coup de tat would be the dumping of the water into the toilet
and a huge ugly barfing sound.  This would inevitably start a new round 
of regurgittation on their part.

**********

One for the lab:

Your mate is working hard on a project. Get a long surgical tube, poke it
into a ventilation hole on his/her power supply (while the victim is absent,
of course) and, when your mate comes back and starts the whole thing, blow
some smoke through the tube (after waiting a couple of minutes...). One of
my frieds did it once to another mate - the effect was awesome: the victim
ran frantically around and pulled the plugs from the wall outlets, then
took the cover of the power supply out. After ten minutes or so of tries to
find an overheated component or any other possible source of smoke he
finally found the tube...

********

This practical joke is ideal for use on a friend you know.
However, only males can perform this joke as you will see why soon!
What you do is while engaged in a conversation with your buddy, 
you ask him/her the question:  "What has a little dick and hangs down?"
You answer, "A bat."
Then you ask the question:  "What has a huge dick and hangs up?"
When your buddy says "I don't know," you simply hang the phone up on him/her!

*********

Take a large bucket of warm water.  Add dishwater detergent (the stuff for dishes,
not dishwashers.  ) Pour it in carefully.  Stir.  Place in the middle of
a friend's dorm room.  Add large chunks of dry ice.  Run. 

There should be enough foam to fill a dorm room about 4 feet high (not based on
any actual data, you understand..)
Ruins everything (stereos, TVs books) So use it wisely.  Maybe on a bathroom,
or a phone booth, or a Volvo.

Also, extra for experts.  Put a lightbulb in a microwave for a few seconds.
It WILL light up. Truely.

*********

     During the night, tape sheets of newspaper to the wall on each
     side of the victim's doorway.
     Fill the space between the newspaper and the door with A LOT
     of popped popcorn.
     The next morning when the victim open his door, the wall of popcorn
     falls on him.
 
*********

Call up a friend on April 1 and say: 
"You have just won the New Jersey Lottery. In order to collect your
winnings, please call 1-800-###-####. Thank you, this is a recording."

Now, while I can imitate those synthetic voices used in recordings, I was 
completely unprepared for her response "Wait, I didn't get the number!"

*********

Take some cans of shaving cream.  Drop into Liquid Nitrogen for a few
hours.  Remove.  Cut off tops of cans.  Reimmerse in LN until needed,
then place strategically (under car seat, on top of air filter, etc.

When shaving cream melts, results are quite impressive, apparently.

**********

You're thinking small.  Here at Sun Microsystems, the annual April Fool's Day
prank is a tradition of long standing.  There have been golf courses created in
a set of offices (walls had to be removed, of course), an office in the middle
of a pond (complete with desk lamp, working phone, etc.) with an inflateded
raft tethered nearby for transportation, a building (multi-story office
building, that is) wrapped up as by an exterminator as we "get the last bug
out", etc.

When the president said we needed to put "all our wood behind one arrowhead",
he came in on 4/1 to find a gigantic wooden arrow shaft that started over his
secretary's desk, went through his office, over his desk, and through his
window where the arrowhead was suspended several yards away over the parking
lot.

Last year, a VP found his office reassembled at the bottom of a shark tank at
a local Aquarium, with his SCUBA gear waiting for him ..

Nobody gets hurt.  No damage is done.  They are BIG.  They aren't nasty.  The
local (and sometimes national) media loves it.  4/1/92 isn't far off ;-}

*********

Go to a K-mart or similar store and buy one of the really cheap audio
casettes.  At about the middle of one side record on it a stream of loud
profanities.  Rewind the tape and go play it on one of the display
stereos at a dept. store, with the volume cranked up.  Walk off.
After awhile, you'll hear your tape being played throughout the whole
store.

var: 
Tape a little magnet(like the ones found in headphones) to the tape so that
as soon as it is played once, it will erase the message.  This really
annoys the managers when they try to play it back and the tape's blank.

*********

I once heard of some guys in the metal shop who cut out a thin sheet of
metal with the profile of a .45 calibur pistol.  Then, they slipped it
under a stack of papers in a guy's briefcase just before he was to 
catch a plane...

Security had him "feet back and spread eagled" before they found the
planted item...

*********
 
Well, here's one for the courageous (as it involves a public place).
First some tools: a friend, a plastic bag with a narrow top (an antifreeze
type container perhaps (the flat kind) or a hot-water bottle) and a few
cans of chunky soup (yes, the kind with the potatoes and beef and all the
other goodies).  Mash up the soup into a puky consistency and fill up your
bag/bottle.  This bottle must be concealed in the chest area (of either 
person).
 
There are a few ways to set this up.  Either you do a very good drunken stooper
imitation, or just act fairly normal.  Well, you go to a restaurant - make sure
there are a fair number of people around (some people might be thinking: I know
what comes next - well, keep reading).  Order some food and start eating.

Toward the end of your meal, the person with the bag should make some moans
that perhaps some tables around you could hear.  Then make sort of like a
belching/puking sound and carefully spill the bag out onto the table (making
sure no one can see that it is a bag.  Maybe slop some on your face then
run off to the bath room. The other friend could get up and act concerned
for a few seconds, then sit back down.  Do a little looking around and make
sure people are still looking.  Pick up a fork and start to eat the soup
off the table (yummy - however the other patrons will not think so). 
You might also want to bring some galoshes as part of the props (just keep
them in a bag with you at the table) - you might need them when walking out
of the place. 

********

Okay, here's what you do: first, go bungie-jumping with him.  Then,
make sure he goes first.  Then, right after he leaps, pull a piece of
cord out of your pocket that looks just like what he's using, but with
a cut end.  Then, look over the edge with a look of horror on your
face, and watch his expression.

********

   When I was in College, we found a lonely Volkwagen beetle on a snowy day
all by itself, alone and unprotected on the edge of a gravel parking lot. 
We did the only we could do!  We buried it so completely in the snow and
built up the area around it, that unless you knew a car was there you'd
think it was just another one of the huge rocks on the edge of the parking
lot.

********

On a similar note, Radio Shock sells a sampling synthesizer keyboard. It is
very easy to turn it on and sample a belch into it and leave it turned on for
another unsuspecting customer ;-)

*********

>I need a really excellent April's Fool joke to play on the guy
>I am dating.  Two weeks ago he told me he was getting married to 
>his ex-wife, with a the seriousness he could muster, that I vowed
>I would get him back.  (BTW he isn't remarrying her)

Well, the standard one is to tell him you're pregnant. Then you tell him
it's not his. Then you add that you've decided to marry the child-to-be's
father. It really works well if you tell him the father is his best friend
(be sure to get his friend's cooperation on this).

You could carry this farther by having the friend ask him to be best man at
the wedding.

*******
 
 We left a message for our boss to return Mr. Lyon's phone call.  The number
 that we put on the note was for the ZOO.  She calls the number and asks to 
 speak to Mr. Lyon.  The person on the line has to convince her that someone
 is playing a joke on her and that Mr. Lyon is really Mr. Lion.
 
 She fell for this in a big way.  She has vowed pay back!

 Last year, we used Ms. Ellie Fant. Our co-worker fell for it, believe it
 or not. If I'd a known it was going to be THAT easy...

*******

> A few weeks ago, there was a request for practical jokes.  Some friends and I
> once filled up another friend's car with 29 lbs. of popped corn.  We then put
> a box of salt on the top of the corn.  When our friend opened the door of his
> car (after having stared inside in amazement) the popcorn flooded out to
> pool around his feet, and the box of salt rode the tide and came to rest
> gently right in front of him.  The best part was that the other guy with him,
> who was supposed to be getting a ride home, began to eat the popcorn, and then
> said, "Hey!  Where am I gonna *sit*?"  We have pictures.

A favorite of mine is to do something like that.  However, you need to get into
someone's house/apartment/dorm to do this, and it must be when they are inside
asleep.   What you do is saran wrap a little compartment between where the wall
is, and the door, and you fill this little area between the saran wrap and the
door with either popcorn, or styrofoam(sp??).  When they wake up, and go to 
leave the room, the vacuum created by the door being sealed shut will pull all
of the popcorn/whatever into the room, making a huge mess.

********

I was the victim of this one - while my wife and I were on our honeymoon, my
mother-in-law and my wife's boss filled our bedroom with crumpled balls of
newspaper. Imagine our surpise when we couldn't open our bedroom door. I ended
up going outside, opening the bedroom window (I still don't remember how I 
did it), and burrowing a path through the room to get to the door. Trust me -
it took awhile.... they also took all of the lables off of our canned goods,
saran-wrapped the toilet seat, and short-sheeted our bed. :-S

*********

I played a great one on my roommate who collects comic books.  He has
his most prized editions in plastic bags all over our dorm walls.
I took one of them out to a copy center and got a laser copy of the
cover and replaced it with the origional... A few hours latre
he came home and we got in our usual fake fight about music, only this
time I freaked out.  Ripped the book off the wall and started cutting it
up... He almost died.... and so did I, of laughter.

********

>: One time I discovered how to alter the tumblers in the door locks so that 
>: the owners key no longer opened his door, but everyone elses key on the 
>: floor did. This was not my floor but apparently great fun was had when the 
>: student in question came back from his weekend away. Locking him in, 
>: locking him out, bursting in unannounced, "what do you mean your locks 
>: broken MY key works" etc etc..

>A little hard to do unless you made everyone elses key a master-key. That
>is, unless everyone on the floor was on a sub-master system. But then, you
>would have to recut all the other keys to the new submaster cut. It could
>be possible that all the other keys on the floor, except for the victim,
>had a common cut - but unlikely.

I'm assuming these are Yale locks.

Suppose the victim's key had one extra large tooth.  Then remove all the
other pins, and put in a one size larger pin plus a string of the tiniest
pins.  Then the victim cannot open the door, but anyone (and this may not
be the whole floor, but it could sure look that way) with a shorter tooth
at that pin can.

Now how would I know this?

********

Reminds me of my favourite practical joke.  I wrote "I have a gun - give
me all your money" on the back of a generic withdrawal slip in a bank.
I watched while an unsuspecting customer used the slip.  The poor guy
just didn't know what was happening - armed police, dogs, the works.
A couple of innocent bystanders were killed in police gunfire, but you
get that.  Somehow this guy survived, and I followed his case through
court.  After the sentencing I just didn't have the heart to tell him
it was all a joke.

********

A friend of mine did this to this kid he hated who called his BBS a lot:
 
Posted this kid's home phone on a huge local BBS list, and posted a bait
that any 13-year old BBS geek would go for. It went something like:
 
                      Call Brian's 24-hour BBS!!
                      --------------------------

20 Message bases - 4 x-rated! 4 Nodes, unrestricted chat room! Files galore
on my new 200 meg HD!! From shareware to "special files" for those who
qualify access! Hackers welcome! .SND files made daily from Nirvana and
Metallica! Instant validation with no call-back!e need lots of new users!

Then there was this ascii-picture that said "Metallica Rulz" and the kid's
phone number.
 
Well, this kid got a phone call about every 10 minutes with screaming modem
noise in his ear. And he had call waiting, too! His mom, who was totally
inept, kept complaining to the phone company that her lines were damaged, and
they insisted they were OK... etc. It apparently took 5 weeks before they
finally changed their number.
 
Speaking on computer illiterate moms, another BBS sysop confided in me that
someone's mother got upset that her little boy was on this "BSS" so much,
that she kept calling the number to complain.... vocally. She would shout
into the modem, "We seem to have a bad connection...."
 
********

One of the local radio stations announced that the phone company was blowing
out the lines that day and that people should put bags over the phones to 
keep the dust from dirtying up the area.  The local phone company was
inundated.

My partner Bruce said his wife bought off on it until he suggested she think
about it.  So he called up her voicemail at work later and went "whishhhhhh"
into the phone for a few seconds.

A UK contact also told me that a fellow there had been murdered in some 
black variation of a April Fool's joke.  Apparently the guy had been bumming
drinks by claiming he had terminal cancer, so one fellow he met strangled 
him to put him out of his misery ...

********

50 WAYS TO CONFUSE YOUR ROOMMATE
 1.  Smoke jimson weed.  Do whatever comes naturally.
 2.  Switch the sheets on your beds while s/he is at class.
 3.  Twitch a lot.
 4.  Pretend to talk while pretending to be asleep.
 5.  Steal a fishtank.  Fill it with beer and dump sardines in it.  Talk to
     them.
 6.  Become a subgenius.
 7.  Inject his/her twinkies with a mixture of Dexatrim and MSG.
 8.  Learn to levitate.  While your roommate is looking away, float up out
     of your seat.  When s/he turns to look, fall back down and grin.
 9.  Speak in tongues.
 10.  Move you roommate's personal effects around.  Start subtlely. 
      Gradually work up to big things, and eventually glue everything s/he 
      owns to the ceiling.
 11.  Walk and talk backwards.
 12.  Spend all your money on Jolt Cola.  Drink it all.  Stack the cans in the
      middle of your room.  Number them.
 13.  Spend all your money on Transformers.  Play with them at night.  If
      your roommate says anything, tell him/her with a straight face, "They're
      more than meets the eye."
 14.  Recite entire movie scripts (e.g. "The Road Warrior," "Repo Man,"
      Casablanca,") almost inaudibly.
 15.  Kill roaches with a monkey wrench while playing Wagnerian arias on a
      kazoo.  If your roommate complains, explain that it is for your 
      performance art class (or hit him/her with the wrench).
 16.  Collect all your urine in a small jug.
 17.  Chain yourself to your roommate's bed.  Get him/her to bring you food.
 18.  Get a computer.  Leave it on when you are not using it.  Turn it off
      when you are.
 19.  Ask your roommate if your family can move in "just for a couple of
      weeks."
 20.  Buy as many back issues of Field and Stream as you can.  Pretend to
      masturbate while reading them.
 21.  Fake a heart attack.  When your roommate gets the paramedics to come,
      pretend nothing happened.
 22.  Eat glass.
 23.  Smoke ballpoint pens.
 24.  Smile.  All the time.
 25.  Collect dog shit in baby food jars.  Sort them according to what you
      think the dog ate.
 26.  Burn all your waste paper while eying your roommate suspiciously.
 27.  Hide a bunch of potato chips and Ho Hos in the bottom of a trash can.
      When you get hungry, root around in the trash.  Find the food, and eat
      it.  If your roommate empties the trash before you get hungry, demand
      that s/he reimburse you.
 28.  Leave a declaration of war on your roommate's desk.  Include a list of
      grievances.
 29.  Paste boogers on the windows in occult patterns.
 30.  Shoot rubber bands at your roommate while his/her back is turned, and
      then look away quickly.
 31.  Dye all your underwear lime green.
 32.  Spill a lot of beer on his/her bed.  Swim.
 33.  Buy three loaves of stale bread.  Grow mold in the closet.
 34.  Hide your underwear and socks in your roommate's closet.  Accuse
      him/her of stealing it.
 35.  Remove your door.  Ship it to your roommate's parents (postage due).
 36.  Pray to Azazoth or Zoroaster.  Sacrifice something nasty.
 37.  Whenever your roommate walks in, wait one minute and then stand up.
      Announce that you are going to take a shower.  Do so.  Keep this up for
      three weeks.
 38.  Array thirteen toothbrushes of different colors on your dresser. Refuse
      to discuss them.
 39.  Paint your half of the room black.  Or paisley.
 40.  Whenever he/she is about to fall asleep, ask questions that start with
      "Didja ever wonder why...."  Be creative.
 41.  Shave one eyebrow.
 42.  Put your mattress underneath your bed.  Sleep down under there and
      pile your dirty clothes on the empty bedframe.  If your roommate
      comments, mutter "Gotta save space," twenty times while twitching 
      violently.
 43.  Put horseradish in your shoes.
 44.  Shelve all your books with the spines facing the wall.  Complain
      loudly that you can never find the book that you want.
 45.  Always flush the toilet three times.
 46.  Subsist entirely on pickles for a week.  Vomit often.
 47.  Buy a copy of Frankie Yankovic's "Pennsylvania Polka," and play it at
      least 6 hours a day.  If your roommate complains, explain that it's an
      assignment for your primitive cultures class.
 48.  Give him/her an allowance.
 49.  Listen to radio static.
 50.  Open your window shades before you go to sleep each night.  Close them
      as soon as you wake up.

********

   Take all the tobacco out of a friend's cigarette, and carefully
place it back in the pack with the filter sticking out partway.
(You can get the tobacco out with a pencil...be sure not to wrinkle
the paper).  Or offer the cigarette to your friend.  When s/he lights
it, the paper will burn up to the filter in about half a second.

Make sure you're not standing near them when they light it--you're
likely to wind up with it in YOUR face :-)  People throw things
pretty fast when they're on fire...

********

We used to have this one girl who hung around us. She was the only one
who smoked, so somehow we figured it was our duty to her lungs to make 
her stop:
 
1: Insert a toothpick in the cigarrette. The flame doesn't go out.
2: Dip the filters in lemon juice, then garlic, and vinegar.
3: Some magic shops sell flash paper. There is one brand that is thick enough
   to write on, so it is thick enough to look like regular rolling paper.
   Place in her regular pack. She lights up, and a harmless blast of flame
   reduces her cigarrette to a filter and a pile of tobacco.
4: Magician's Phosphor blast powder in her ashtrays. Just a sprinkle will
   make her ashtray spark.
5: Adjust her lighter to maxi-high flame. She got wise and bought a zippo.
   so we stole the wick and replaced the liquid fuel with water.
6: It became a war after a while, so we started to hide her lighter, matches,
   cigarrettes, or put the cigs at the bottom of her purse and crush them so
   she would think they fell back there by themselves.
7: A popcorn kernel stuffed near the tip. Scares the hell out of them, but
   only popped about 1/2 the time.
8: Exploding cigarrettes :)
9: Substituting her cigs with chocolate cigs, while dowel rods, chalk sticks,
   toothpaste <she hit the girl who thought of that one>, those little horo-
   scope tiny scrolls you get at drugstores, and white crayons.

She did eventually quit!
 
********

 Make sure you're near a window that overlooks a parking lot (a dorm or office  window is perfect) with a lot of cars in it. Find one that looks new and ob-
 viously well kept up. Scribble a note that says, to the effect, "To whom it may concern: I'm sorry about the damage to your car. Contact me at this address and I'll help arrange for repairs...follow with a bogus address..stick it under    the poor bastard's windshield wipers and stand back. I guarantee (sp?) at least ten minutes of frantic searching around and around the car, looking for the sup-posed damage. I also guarantee that your mark "finds" a scratch or dent that was never noticed before! 

 I did this one on moving-in day here at the University, and my roommate and I 
 watched as this guy came out with his FATHER and they BOTH went looking for    scratches...they BOTH found some, too!

********

When driving on Interstate, you and your friends pull up to some deserving
car full of your favorite pickons.  Somebody in your car nonchalantly looks
over to the other car, does a double take and then gets every one in your
car to start laughing and pointing at some spot low on the other car.
It's amazing how flustered the driver of the other car gets and how 
often they'll pull off to see what you have been pointing at.

And for the really crude, pull up along side some real conservative types,
and when they look at you, start picking your nose and *grin*. 

********

1)  Fill a large trash can 3/4 with water.  Make sure idiot hall-mate's door is
latched.  Lean can up against door, so that when door is open 40 gals. H2O come
flooding in...

2)  Take a large amount of talcum powder, rug cleaner, other powdered substance
(well, allow me to take the opportunity to say 'Me? No, I saw this on T.V., um,
or, um, uh, well, don't try this at home or use anything poisonous') and spread
it on the floor immediately in front of Idiot hall-mates' (closed) door.  BTW,
this is one you should do when Scummo is out beating gays or otherwise not in
his room.  Get a blow dryer and blow said powdered substance under door. 
Instant snow cover!

3)  Really, don't do this one.  A capacitor is an electronic component used to
staore an electrical charge.  Caps are the reason why you shouldn't open even
switched-off electronic gear unless you have a clue of what you are doing. 
Anyway, get a large cap, charge it, and place it leads-up in a urinal.  Hee,
hee.  Ker-zap-pow-eeeeeeeyyyyyooooowwwwwccccchhhhhh!!!!!  Please note that this
could be lethal and you shouldn't do it.  *FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY*

********

Me and a few friends did this last summer to a guy who was a cocky asshole
who thought he could get any gal.

One night when he went to bed early, and we knew a lot of people would be on 
the floor for a party down the hall:
We took a condom and filled it with an appropriate looking hair conditioner.
Then we hung it on his door knob, and poked a hole in it.  some of the 
conditioner ran down the side and some even dripped down the door...
we left the following note:

"dave,
your not going to believe this, but...
IT BROKE!!!
Im scared! call Me ASAP.
--John"

It was great for a lot of stares the following morning at the dining hall  :)

********
1) Y'know that styrofoam popcorn stuff that comes in your stereo box?  
Ever think how much of that stuff must get used by packaging companies 
worldwide?  NO?!!  Well, guess what, kids, it has a use.  

A friend of mine went to spring break one year, foolishly leaving his
room unguarded.  When he returned, it was filled, floor to ceiling, with
popcorn.  We had driven to a factory that packs speakers and filled a
U-Haul with the stuff; they had it out by the dumpsters in enormous cartons.
You know, I think this is how civil suits get started.


2) Remember fibreglass?  Any of you who might be in the insulating business
know that getting naked and rolling around in a swath of the Pink Panther's 
Best is not such a good idea -- fibreglass is made of teensy little fibers,
you see, which itch like hell if they get on your skin.

The prank -- place a strip of the stuff in an empty dryer.  With any luck, 
the next bozo won't even look before he loads in his undies.  Next stop --
Itchy City!

(I have not actually performed this prank, as my doctor has told me I am 
allergic to bludgeoning.)


3)THE CLASSIC

McDonalds Playland holds such fine, dear memories for me......  hence,
this bad boy...... NOTE:  I do not condone this prank as it is highly
illegal and could cause emotional retardation in youngsters.

At 3 AM, sneak into McDonalds Playland with hacksaw in hand.  Remember 
the quasi-life-sized plastic Ronald McDonald statues?  Well, sorry Ron 
-- cut the bugger off, just above his silly red shoes.  Remove the statue 
(they make great lawn ornaments!) and leave in its place: 1) striped duds,
probably available at your friendly neighborhood resale shop, 2) an orange
wig, and 3) a note saying CAN'T STAND THIS DEADEND F*CKING JOB.  DEFECTING
TO BURGER KING.  EAT ME, KROC. 

According to a friend who was on the scene a few hours later, aka opening
time:
  "There were only a couple folks on duty at the early morning shift. The
  girl at the register looked kind of green; she didn't even notice the
  missing statue, perhaps because it was partially obscured by a big slide
  contraption.  At any rate, soon after opening a family with kids came in;
  two youngsters, apparently fairly precocious, went out into the playground.
  Moments later, they reentered the restaurant sobbing; when questioned by
  their parents they replied, "Ronald ran away!! He's GONE!!!"

At this point, the friend had to leave his post, as he feared his giggling
would blow his cover.

********

Fill an ordinary wastebasket about 3/4 full of water (4 gallons or so).Sort-of lean it against the door so it *doesn't* fall into the room.
Listen as bozo mutters "damn frosh don't know how to do an RF," while
he pours it into his sink, from which you will have removed the gooseneck
during dinner.

********

1) THE SWITCHEROO

	I mailed this one to somebody privately, but I want to post it
generally.  The set up:  an ex-roommate of mine had a habit of going to
the university pub every Thursday night and getting toasty.  Nothing
wrong with that, but it was a primo opportunity to GET EVIL......

	One Thursday evening, after he had left, friends and I inverted
the room.  Not upside-down, left-to-right -- i.e. mirror imaged.  Every
thing was flip-flopped -- furniture, bed; we even got industrious and
reversed the LED on his bedside clock so the reading was backwards.  The
idea -- give him a nasty shock, to be written off as a drunk hallucination.

	This did NOT work as expected.  Said roommate enters room at 2AM,
reeling like a deep-sea fisherman. (So far, so good.)  He flips on the 
light and, to my consternation, DOES NOT BAT AN EYE.  Worse, he promptly
turns and urinates where the garbage can should have been.  Sadly, the
receptacle in question was at the moment on the other side of the room; 
its usual position was occupied by a pile of tennis rackets and a box of
leftover pizza.  This was Bad.  After this annoyingness, he wandered over
to his bed and passed out on it, never noticing that it was on the wrong
wall.  To this day, I have never figured out if a) he was just too darn
blithering to notice, or b) he was on to my joking and wanted to wreck
my evening.  If it was b), it worked!

2) TOILET JELLO

	Every year Rice U. offers prospective students an opportunity to
come and see what Rice is all about.  They come and stay in the rooms of
volunteering students who want to be civic-minded and responsible.  One
year I decided this would be a good idea; I hosted two kids and was, may 
I say so, quite nice to them.  In turn, they were two of the twittiest
little warthogs I have ever had the misfortune of sharing a sink with. 
Hence, come Friday night (their last evening at Chez Solberg), it was
VENGEANCE TIME!!!

	I would now like to share with you my recipie for toilet Jello.
Believe it or not, this actually works.  Take a couple of good handfuls
of ice and put it at the bottom of your toilet bowl.  Wait a few minutes. 
If you have put in the correct amount, the toilet water will be nice and 
chilly, but the ice won't be in any hurry to melt.  Now, using standard 
instant Jello, preferably orange, mix up a nice, healthy batch in the 
bowl.  The cool water should gel the mix nicely, yielding a toilet bowl
full of America's favorite instant dessert treat.  Finally, for added
suspense and intrigue, insert your least favorite twerps' tooth brushes 
into the Jello as topping.  Believe you me, there is no sillier sight
than a toothbrush suspended in an orange gelatinous mass in your toilet
bowl.  That I know of, that is.

	I wonder whatever happened to the little weasels.  If you're out
there, reading this, I hope you get a bad case of gas.  Rice will not
miss you.

3) SKYSCRAPER HIJINKS

	One residential college at Rice is a multistory building with a
couple of elevators and stairways servicing the upper floors.  This lay-
out makes it highly susceptible to sabotage, as was done five years ago:

	A fire drill was called, and all residents vacated the building.
During their absence, a disciplined, highly-trained team of prank 
commandos entered the building.  The stairs were chained closed from the
inside.  The elevators were ridden down to ground floor.  A two-by-four
was placed in each elevator such that when released it would fall against
the doors; then the top button was pressed and the doors were closed.  The
elevators rode to the top floor and opened their doors, at which time the
boards fell out into the doorway, blocking the elevator car open.  The
criminals, who I may or may not have been among, fled into the maintenance
tunnels, leaving an entirely sealed-off building to a slightly frustrated
residential college of over 200 persons.

********

  My friend Mike has this egg timer thingy with some colored plastic
beads in water with clear glass beads in it too.  When you flip 
it over the color beads sink to the bottom but because of the glass 
they swirl around first and look cool.  Ideally you shouldn't be
able to see the glass but you kind of can.

  Mike and Richard figured that if they used a chemical closer to the 
refractive index of glass than water is, then it would be harder to see
the beads and it would look cooler.  So in the CRC they found this chem,
carbon disulfide, which seemed like it would work so Richard went to a
chem store and ordered it - the store didn't keep it in.  When he picked
it up the guy made some elaborate preparations with it putting it in
two different safety wraps so Richard asked what the scoop was.  The
guy said, "Yeah, it's kind of dangerous.  I mean, we don't keep it in the
store."
  "How dangerous?" Richard asked.
  He looked in this guide to hazardous materials that the guy showed him
and he found that there was a 10 page entry for this stuff which included:
exposure to the chemical can cause sterility, impotence, damage to the
peripheral and central nervous systems (leaving no nervous system 
untouched), its flamable and explosive, etc.  A little unnerved he asked
whether he could return it when he was done with it and the guy looked
at him like he was crazy and said of course not.
  He took it home and explaned the situation to Mike and they both left
it unopened on the kitchen table for a while wondering what to do with it.
At work Richard had a chem friend who said he'd take it off his hands for
him so without telling Mike he brought it into work and gave this chem
guy the bottle but kept the box.  Later that day he went home and put a
glass of water in the box with a heavy piece of metal on top of it which
would fall and break the glass if it was nudged.  All this was in the box
though, so it couldn't be seen.  He then also sliced off a small corner of
the box so that liquid could come out but the cut was hardly noticable.
The night at dinner Richard "accidently" knocked the box over onto the floor
where it obviously broke and liquid started leaking.  Mike freaked out, jumped
up and ran to open the door - which was locked - so he ran to his room to
get the keys and noticed that Richard hadn't moved but was still sitting
there shaking slightly (suppressing laughter but Mike didn't know this.)
So Mike wigged out again thinking that Richard was really being affected
but by this time Richard couldn't hold it in anymore and burst out laughing
and had to explain the whole thing to Mike...

********

Ho ho ho!  Ah yes, we had almost the same prank back there in the neighborhood
when I was a kid.  Remember Hydofluoric Acid?  When that silly ol' HF stuff
gets on your skin you can't get it off.  It eats away the flesh and eventually
eats into your bone.  Whoo, what a gag!  We'd pour a little on the Ronco Slip
n' Slide and chuckle like the dickens when little Billy next door would do a
belly slide down the damn thing.  Uh, those were the days!!

********

1)	I understand this one was performed at Cal Tech during their famous
Senior Jack Week, although the story may well be apocryphal.
	Some freshlings decided to pull a really confusing one on a revered
elder, so they decided to make his room disappear entirely.  They removed
the door to his room and sheetrocked over the space in the hall.  They 
stuccoed the entire area so that it would look the same as the rest of the
wing, and repainted so that no tell-tale patch was in evidence.  They 
supposedly rearranged all room numbers so that there was no gap, and even
went to the trouble of moving a hall light down the hall a few yards to
muddle any familiar landmarks.  When the job was done, there was no trace
of any room on the spot.
	As I heard the story, the victim returned to college and became 
mightily confused, even going so far as to check other nearby dorms to
ensure he had entered the right building.  Just as he was about to throw
in the towel and surrender to the apparent hallucination, though, the
illusion was broken by a crucial error -- through the wall, he could hear
his phone ring!  The boneheads had forgotten to unplug it.

2)	A classmate in my residential college earned a substantial amount
of money working off-hours by starting up and managing his own company,
called Pranks Inc.  (I think some national publication did a story on him.
He was in the news a few years ago.)  Anyway, the point of this company is
to invent and implement personalized practical jokes for clients.  Here is
one example of their work:
	A husband wanted to play a joke on his wife for their anniversary.
It seems the lady was always complaining that she was too short, since her
husband was much taller and the couple looked a little mismatched.  The
day of the anniversary, when the lady was known to be out of the house,
the good people at Pranks Inc. entered the home and made a few alterations.
Every piece of furniture had its legs shortened by six inches.  The cords
suspending hanging lamps were lengthened.  All wall-mounted objects were
lowered, including pictures, hooks, even fixtures!  Even the kitchen
countertop was lowered. The net effect was that when the woman came home,
she had appeared to grow to Amazonian proportions.  I don't know if it
worked or not.
	I've lost touch with the guy in question, so I don't know if
Pranks Inc. is still in business or not.

3)	I'm gonna take a risk here and post a prank that HAS NOT YET BEEN
PULLED.  I hope nobody in the Rice Administration reads this group, or has
the patience to reach this part of the article!
	Rice library, like that of most major universities, is a large,
imposing edifice, filled with many twisty little halls and passages.  
Some portions of the building are unused, either in the process of 
renovation or awaiting use.  An important characteristic of the place
is that it is linked to the infamous Rice University Steam Tunnels, a
system of accessways that links most of the buildings on campus.  These
tunnels are off limits to students, but that can't stop anybody who knows
how to jimmy a door.
	The prank -- go out into the country and purchase 5 live chickens.
Securely label each bird with a tag with a number on it: 1,2,3,5 and 6.  Now
enter the tunnels and release the birds in the basement of the library, 
preferably late at night.  The birds will hopefully disperse into the 
building by the time the library opens again.
	This prank has two parts:  the first, when the library management
tries to catch five frightened chickens; the second, seeing how many weeks
they stew over WHERE THE HELL chicken #4 could have got to!! Imagine....
	"All right, men!  We will sweep the aisles in an orderly formation!
The first man to smell ANYTHING ROTTING will IMMEDIATELY......"

********

At State University of New York at Buffalo, the bookstore has a convenient
US Post Office inside the store.  Yes, how convenient!  Anyway, a few of
my friends decided to take advantage of this convenience.  They purchased
a Post Office Approved shipping box from the unsuspecting clerk and stuffed
it full of sweatshirts and books (in a vacant aisle) then mailed it to
themselves!  No need to shoplift yourself when the Post Office will do it
for you!!!

********

A prank pulled during Charities Week at the University of Aberdeen was
as follows:
Outside Marischal (pronounced Marshall) College a bunch of Irish labourers
were digging a trench in the street. One of the students called the cops and
told them a bunch of students had dressed up as labourers and dug a hole
outside Marischal College. Meanwhile another one told the Irish guys a
bunch of students dressed as policemen were coming to stop them doing
their job. There was a huge fight, which ended with a chase down the street
when the students appeared to collect moneyfrom the onlookers. They had
collected a fortune by the time the protagonists realized they had been had.

********

At about 2am, shortly after I'd moved to a new apartment, the phoone rang.  My
roommate picked it up, and, half asleep, this is the conversation he thought
he had:

 Voice: Hi, this is 99 KCPX.
 Roommate: Okay.
 V: We want to play a song, if that's okay.
 R: What?
 V: <name of song>.  Is that okay?
 R: Yeah.
 V: Okay, bye.

My roommate and I decided that either (a) it was a prank call by some friends
or strangers, or (b) it was a prank call by the radio station.

The next afternoon, the phone rang.  I answered.

 Voice: Can I make a request?
 Me: What?
 Voice: Is this KCPX?
 Me: No.
 Voice: Sorry.

I then looked at the letter eqivalents of our new phone number: 375-KCPX.  The
call at 2am had been someone trying to make a request, and my roommate had
been too asleep to understand.

Our phone number provided great amusement over the next two years:

 Me: You're caller number 99!  You won!
 V: I did?  What did I win?
 M: An all-expenses paid trip to Provo, Utah!
 V: But I'm already in Provo.
 M: Then it won't cost us a penny.

 V: Hi, can I make a request?
 M: Sure, go ahead.
 V: "I Want Your Sex" by George Michael.
 M: Oh, I'm sorry, but we can't play that on the radio.
 V: Oh.
    <hangs up, calls back a minute later>
    Can you play "Funky Cold Medina" by Ton Loc?
 M: I'm sorry, I can't play that on the radio, either.
 V: Oh.
    <hangs up, calls back a minute later>
    Can you play "Coming to America" by Niel Diamond?
 M: No, sorry.
 V: But hey, that's a good song.
 M: Yes, it is.  But I can't play it on the radio.  This isn't a
        radio station!

********

My brother told me of this one, and actually claims to have done it when he
was living in a dorm:  

1.  Choose victim.  This should be someone who you don't like, and probably
    won't suspect you, as you know how paybacks are...

2.  Obtain a large vat or other sufficiently large container or containers
    (totaling about 10-15gal give or take, depending on dorm room size).

3.  Purchase the amount of Jello which will match the volume of your
    containers (you might want to spread this out between stores, or get
    it from another town, depending on how bad you think the'll want to 
    try to track you down later).  Pick a color which you feel will suit
    the poor victim(s).

4.  Wait until late at night when you are sure your victims are sufficiently
    asleep.

5.  Fill the container(s) with hot water and mix in jello as per instructions.

6.  Place a wet towel in front of the victim's door in a semi-circle.

7.  SLOWLY pour jello under the door (BTW - this only works on hard floors)
    until you are reasonably sure they have about a 1/2" deep layer of jello
    across the span of their floor.  This will chill and gel during the next
    hour or so, especially if the building has good AC.

8.  Quietly clean up after yourself, disposing of all evidence and return to
    your room to imagine the feeling your victims will experience between 
    their toes when they wake up in the morning. 

Notes:  Please try to find a color that will not permanently stain the floor
    - it's your victims you want, not the school.  Also, consider what they
    may have lying on the floor.  When playing a practical joke on someone,
    try not to be too destructive!  (I really don't recommend doing this for
    these reasons, but there were a few people I wanted to try it on <-:  ).

********

One of the best practical jokes I've heard of supposedly happend to someone
here at work awhile back.  While he was out of his office(for lunch), a few
people removed all of his belongings from his office(including furniture) and
put down a layer of sod.  then they put everything back exactly as it was
before!  All they needed was a cow... hahaha

********
|>  One of my good friends was the subject of a popcorn practical joke. One
|>woman put unpopped popcorn all through out his stuff.  Everything in his
|>dorm room had popcorn in it--every pair of shoes, & socks, pillow case,

|I understand that some pet stores will sell you ladybugs by the hundreds
|as "feeders" for other pets.  You put the container full of bugs in the
|fridge for a few hours (get them slow and befuddled), and quickly pour
|them into a big manilla envelope, and close it. Then you go to the poor
|sap's room, open the envelope and (fast!) shove it under the door as far
|as you can.  When the bugs warm up, they will crawl out of the envelope 
|and proceed to get into everything in the room.

Oh, hell, any bait & tackle shop will sell you as many crickets as you want.
I wouldn't waste ladybugs for something like that.

*********

Office practical joke:

Place a piece of scotch tape across the holes in either the mouthpiece or the
earpiece of their phone.  This was the interchange between Tom in our office
and Lizanne in telecommunications:

Tom:  Lizanne, I can't hear you very well!
Liz:  Is it just me?
Tom:  No, it seems to be everyone.
Liz:  Tom, I am going to give you some very technical advice.  Take your
      handset, and smack it against your desk three or four times...

He did, at which point he noticed that all of his co-workers were convulsed
with laughter.  Then, two months later, when his suspicion died down, we
nailed the mouthpiece.  We forgot about it until one of the technicians
walked in and said to him:

Tech:  What seems to be the problem?
Tom:   No-one can hear me when I talk.  (This is when my face went red)
Tech:  Well, I'll give you a new handset.
Tom:   Thanks.                          (Tech replaces set, inspects old one)
Tech:  Say, who put the piece of tape across your mouth piece?

Co-workers collapse again!

THEN, two months later (this guy is such an easy mark), we taped down the
hang-up button on the phone, so that he couldn't call out or answer calls.

A fun time was had by all.  Well, ALMOST all.

********

If you have call forwarding on your office phone system, set everyones phones
to forward calls to the victims number. It works great.

********

Another bit of fun with phones: Pull out the jack that connects the 
handpiece to the base, and put a teeny bit of tape over the contacts. 
Reassemble phone. When it rings, picking it up will complete the circuit, 
but nobody will hear anything. 

********

I always liked the water balloon trick.  make a water balloon but don't tie
the end.  insert it into thier desk drawer such that the end is pinched
tight when closed.  when they open it, WHOOSH!!! .... one hosed victem.

********

Yes, once again I found myself sitting around tonight, bored almost to
tears, trying to find something to do.  As usual when such moods hit
me, I picked up the remote control and began randomly flipping through
the television channels.  Within minutes, the hint of an idea began to
form in my mind.
   I turned off the television and grabbed a handful of change as I
headed out the door.  My target:  the local coffee shop where all the
employees and patrons take their jobs, and their coffee-drinking, so
seriously that humor is probably not in their dictionaries.  Needless
to say, it was a perfect target.
   On my way over, I stopped at the gas station (yes, we do have gas
in Indiana...gasoline, that is) and purchased a small can of oil.  
It wasn't very high quality, but it would do.  I then proceeded to the
cafe in question, and (hiding the oil can in my coat) seated myself at
one of the more centrally located tables (I wanted a good seat).
   The waitress came up to me, and with a stern, humorless look, asked:

   "What would you like, sir?"

   "A cup of coffee, please," I replied.

   A few minutes later the coffee arrived (with the waitress, of course),
and as she turned and walked away from me, I quickly and quietly opened
up my oil and poured a small amount into the cup.  I grabbed a nearby
match (everyone at cafes carries a matchbook...it's the law), lit it, then
dropped it into the coffee.
   With flames spurting out almost 3 inches above the rim of the
cup, I called the waitress over, and in a calm, rational voice said:

   "Excuse me Miss, but my coffee's too hot."
*********

  ==

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