"Pranks
When I was at Edinboro Universtiy (PA), we once glued all of our furniture to
the celing - beds, chairs, all of it. We were on the second floor, so people
who happened to look in our window saw the entire room, on the ceiling.
My book budget & my crazy glue budget frshman year were about the same. If I
had a nickle everytime I glued my fingers together ... The stuff really is
God's gift to freshman males.
--
Something else we did, for no apparent reason, was to glue pepssi & beer cans
end to end, and extend them from the wall. It was sort of a game, to see who
could get the longest line before they'd crumple. It was also a cool
conversation piece when people would come over.
--
One of the best things to do in a lab is to get some dry ice and pack it
extremely tightly into an eppendorf tube (a small 1.5ml plastic tube with
a lid, for the non-scientists) and place the tube into the pocket of an
unsuspecting passerby. The tube will explode with an almighty bang with
no real danger, unless the passerby happens to be mouth pipetting acid at
the time.
--
In college the guys were fond of "papering" people into their rooms with
a wall of news paper acrossed the door. I went one further by filling up
the gap between the newspaper and the door with styrfoam packing
material. Let's just say the recipient (my RA!) was amuzed when he
opened his door.....
I always wanted to "JELLO" someone into their room. I figured that this
could be accomplished with some caulking and some kind of plastic. It
work work similar to the paper and styrofoam, but you'd seal the door
with caulking, put a well sealed plastic on the door, and fill up the
gap with jello.
The only problem was one of refrigeration of the jello. Soooo...... I
ran acrossed a substance known as anhydrous sodium poly-acrylate. It's
used in diapers and other such application to absorb water. Basicly, a
colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic substance that holds up to 300
times its weight in water. With little water (10 to 1 or so) it is very
much like jello and requires no refrigeration.
--
I went to a boarding school in Alexandria, Va. It was an uptight school, coat
and tie for about everything. My friends and I attempted to loosen it up just
a little bit, with little success.
Prank number one was the one we pulled most often. Most dinners during the
week were sit down, which meant we had to wear coat and tie and sit with
faculty. My friends and I would leave a little bit early, and come back to
dorm. We would fill up our trash cans with water and go up to the third
floor. We waited until the dinner crew began to return, and then let them have
it. It was priceless to see some sixteen year old snob in a $400 suit sopping
wet, especially during the winter.
Prank number two was my favorite. In January of 1992, it got incredibly cold
for a couple of nights (well below zero). My friends and I, before we went to
sleep, flooded the bathroom floor and opened the windows. We were hoping that
it would freeze over. At two in the morning, I heard a fellow go into the
bathroom, slip, fall, and slide over to the other side of the bathroom,
screaming the entire way. There was a sheet of ice maybe a tenth of an inch
thick on the floor.
This prank was in retaliation for one that was pulled on us. Another dorm
stole our shower heads, so we went to a local pet store and bought 300
crickets, or 100 for each floor of this other dorm. Noone there got a good
night's sleep for several weeks. The crickets were incredibly loud.
--
Junior High School Pranks
by Alan Meiss, ameiss@gn.ecn.purdue.edu
For those not familiar with the institution, Junior High is
the transitional stage in most American schools between the lower
grade schools and high school, and generally consists of grades 7
and 8 (ages about 12-15). This is a time of life when many kids
are clever enough to be destructive monsters but not mature
enough to restrain themselves. It's a special delight, I'm sure,
to teach. On that note, here's some pranks and shens from my
Junior High days.
Duck and Cover
Some of you may have seen the fake foam rocks that many
novelty stores sell. These appear to be hefty, fist-sized jagged
grey and white granite rocks, but are actually speckle-painted
foam pieces that squish down to thumb-size. They're remarkably
real looking. In the morning before the doors were opened, most
of us would congregate on the front steps of the school and stand
around talking. The principal's office was just to left of the
steps, and one day he was in the room having a meeting with the
assistant principal. One of the kids had brought a foam rock,
and he walked up to the window with a menacing scowl. As the two
looked up, the kid raised his arm with the rock visible, clearly
winding up for a pitch, and they dived under the principal's
desk. After hearing not the expected shatter of glass but just a
light "piff" on the window, they peeked up over the edge and saw
the kid squeezing and unsqueezing the rock with a big snotty
grin. Fortunately for him, the principal found it funny.
Sprechen Sie Jackass?
In the eighth grade, our social studies club took a field
trip to Chicago to visit the Shedd Aquarium and Adler
Planetarium. We had a raucous ride up on the Amtrak from Indy,
and set off to the Planetarium in loose groups. That semester we
had just begun learning German, and I and a group of friends
decided to try out our new vocabulary. We went into the
planetarium hooting and announcing "WIR GEHEN INS KINO!!!", and
sat down to a mixture of astronomy and fractured German. We'd
greet each new lighting effect in the presentation with a chorus
of "DAS IST SCHOEN NICHT WAR!?!" Finally, we heard someone
mutter, "wish those damn Germans would shut up." My friend John,
sitting on the end, turned around and in the gruffest voice
possible said "NO! WE DON'T HAVE TO!" They were rather taken
aback, and moved quickly to the other side of the room.
The Mess
A whole room full full of Junior High kids attempting to
consume food can be a putrid spectacle, and Miss Manners would
likely have hung herself in despair at the sight of our
cafeteria. The kids at one table liked to play Drink the Pot.
They would all chip in some amount of leftover lunch money, and
then pass around a container which would be filled with every
liquid substance available. Ketchup, mustard, gravy, salt
packets, butter, and a half dozen hawked-up wads of multi-colored
mucoid gastric juices would all be added to the concoction, and
whoever was willing to drink the abomination won the money in the
pot. It was usually about five dollars, and seldom worth it.
My own forte was stuffing straws end to end to form a long
plastic chain through which I'd drink my chocolate milk. My
record was a dozen 8 inch straws connected and successfully
employed. The straws could be joined by pinching their ends and
stuffing them together, but this didn't form a fully airtight
joint, and a dozen straws was the limiting number at which there
was barely enough suction to drink. As it was, it produced a
dripping, bubbling, squirting mess, with nearly the entire
contents of the milk carton contained in transit in the straw.
We also enjoyed bringing along leftovers from our biology
dissections, and there were some highly amusing (at the time)
puppet shows performed with pickled locust parts on utensils.
There was also a pasttime of rolling pennies across the room and
under the food line into the kitchen, with points scored for
hitting workers and bonuses for technique.
PsuedoScience Class
Our eighth grade science teacher had an unmatched talent for
losing control of his classes without fail every year. His
inability to maintain discipline was rivalled only by his
ignorance of the subject, and bedlam frequently ensued. In any
given class, there would usually be one kid hiding behind him re-
enacting his facial expressions, another flipping matches, and
others tossing his plastic fossil blocks out the window (there
was usually a substantial collection of natural history artifacts
littering the lawn outside his room.) Still more who'd been sent
to the back would be rearranging and inscribing editorials on his
slides. He had an uncanny knack for bringing out the worst in
kids; even the most silent, timid wallflowers would become surly
and begin disassembling the plumbing fixtures. Nor did it help
matters that he stuttered when angry, which would result in the
class singing a chorus of "B-b-b-b-b-b-ad! Bad to the bone!"
One day he inexplicably forgot he had to teach class, and arrived
forty minutes late, by which time the projector was running, his
gerbils had been freed to do whatever it is free gerbils do, and
a rather festive party had developed.
Power to the People
One day some friends and I were seized with the notion of
starting political parties in the school, for no readily apparent
reason other than its irritation value. We organized the whole
class of the aforementioned science teacher in the hall outside
his room, and goosestepped two-abreast into class. Our emblem
was the Mr. Yuck poison-control sticker, and our plentiful supply
soon adorned most surfaces. The assistant-principal put a stop
to the festivities by the end of the day, however, after seeing
the propaganda posters we'd posted in the bathroom stalls
regarding the desirability of much less education.
Little Shop Class of Horrors
We also had an entertaining shop class. The shop teacher
was a fine man who was actually quite patient with us, but he had
some unfortunate figures of speech he'd continually repeat, the
most notable being "X number". He was always discussing "X
number" of nails and "X number" of feet, and the phrase became
highly amusing. One warm afternoon during our lecture, we could
hear through an open window the gym class passing by below,
returning to the locker room. One of the kids stopped under the
window long enough to scream "I HAVE X NUMBER OF BALLS" at
maximum volume, and we spent the rest of lecture trying to keep
from exploding in giggles.
The class also involved a great deal of free-lance
investigation, to put it mildly. We spent several weeks doing
arc welding, and would bring in Hot Wheels cars to weld into the
aftermath of terrorist bombings and "action figures" who were
turned into plastic marshmallows. My own favorite activity was
disassembling plastic figures with a soldering iron and melting
them together in interesting new configurations. We used the
buffer to smooth the suture points, and produced horrific army
soldier/cowboy/dinosaur/goat people hybrids that looked like
demons from Medieval paintings of Judgement Day. There was also
an industrial strength blow drier in the shop hot enough to melt
plastic, and when directed at hapless figures would turn them
into dripping creations that looked like comic-book illustrations
for The Origin of Atomic Blast Man.
Magic Bus
Our town school system had no buses of its own, part of its
effort to avoid being integrated (ahem) into the Indianapolis
school system. I lived too far from the school to walk on a
regular basis, and thus usually rode the city bus. There was a
colorful rabble who rode on the trip home in the afternoon, and
we'd usually congregate outside a nearby convenience store to
wait. One kid enjoyed trying to make collect foreign calls from
the phone in front of the store (he once made it as far as
China), and, being an utter jackass, loved to spit on those
getting off the bus (I was once treated to this, but didn't wipe
the glop off until I couldn't hear the bus, so that he'd think
he'd missed and be denied the satisfaction of seeing me flailing
around). I also had a thoroughly weird friend who enjoyed
popping up and down in the seats behind normal passengers while
making Muppet noises. One day we were sitting in the back of the
bus and found an empty gallon-sized glass orange juice bottle.
He set it against the back of the last seat, and when the bus
decelerated it rolled perfectly all the way up to the front with
a rumble and a crash. Fortunately it didn't break, but we had to
hide behind the seats to avoid thirty people's hostile stares for
the rest of the trip.
--
A friend of mine used to pull this little stunt on the chemistry teacher
every once in a while. He would sneak into the class early and turn on all
the bunsen burners full blast without lighting them and then sneak out. It
sure started the schoolday off with a bang when the chemistry teacher
switched on the classroom light in the morning! :)
--
If you meet an old friend/acquaintance named Jack aboard a plane in mid-flight,
greet him with a 'Hi' - call through the plane...and see what reaction you get!
--
My friend is a graphic designer, so using the lettering he had access ot we put
the words "Joes Taxi - friends telephone number" on our friends car one night.
He was not very pleased the next morning.
--
However my all time favorite accoured when a friend went on holiday. We
completely emptied he room, then put down wet paper with cress seeds on it, all
over the floor. This meant that in a few days, the floor looked like a grass
field. Then on the day he came back we managed to get the local farmer to lend
us 2 sheep, these we placed within his room, where they started eating the
grass. His face when he opened the door of his room was a picture.
---
Son of Dorm Pranks
by Alan Meiss, ameiss@gn.ecn.purdue.edu
Universal Remote
Out of curiosity one day, a friend of mine decided to find out
whether his own tv remote would work on the large screen t.v. in
the dorm's lounge/rec room. Sure enough, it did, and from quite
a distance, too. So he would enjoy walking innnocently past the
lounge whenever there was a broadcast of vital importance on,
such as the Superbowl or a Star Trek episode involving the Borg,
and surreptitiously changing the channel. People got *very* upset,
but never suspected what was happening.
Claven
The roommate of the friend mentioned above was a subject of
constant torment. He had apparently been a big fish in the small
pond of his high school, or had fancied himself such, and was
constantly telling grandiose tales of leaping out of buildings,
getting shot, fathering a number of children that seemed to grow
by the week, and various other dubious exploits. So his
permanent nickname became "Claven", after Cliff Claven, the
windbag mailman in Cheers, and eventually many people knew him
only as "Claven." Guys on the floor would call in pledges for
him whenever there was a telethon on t.v., and he'd get envelopes
from Jerry addressed to "Claven." One time when he had passed
out after consuming a staggering amount of vodka, some of the
guys decided to leave messages on his face with a permanent
marker. I don't remember just what they wrote, but his face was
*very* red by the time he managed to scrub it off. (Another
fellow in similar circumstances had one eyebrow shaved off). One
evening I stepped into the hall from my room on the fifth floor,
and found it filled with smoke. Wondering where it was coming
from, I followed its increasing density down the stairwell to
"Claven's" room, on the second floor. His roommate and some
friends had smoked several *boxes* of cigars, enough to fill half
of our wing of the dorm with smoke dense enough to restrict
visiblity in places to ten feet, and had apparently exhaled every
breath through the clothes that "Claven" had left hanging in his
room. I think the decision to do this was motivated in part by
their having consumed all of his beer in the fridge.
Naughty Bits
One poster mentioned hiding porno pictures in someone's
belongings, and this happened on my floor too, but on an epic
scale. Several of the guys on the floor were needling a very
conservative fellow who was uncomfortable about anything related
to sex. One night while he was gone, they chopped up a stack of
porno magazines into more than a *hundred* small explicit
pictures, and hid them in his things. The word "hid" hardly does
the event justice...they stuck them in his clothes, stuffed them
in obscure pages in every one of his books, unscrewed his
flashlight and wrapped them around the batteries, even
disassembled some of his appliances and installed pictures inside
them! I don't think he ever found them all, they were still
turning up *years* later.
Culinary Artisans
Everyone's occasionally played with their food, especially in
dorms. We made some impressive creations. Tater-tot and
toothpick animals, hundred substance sundaes, nearly every
combination was tried. My roommate enjoyed taking an orange and
stuffing it into his glass; removal was impossible. If we knew
the person working on the dish line, we'd write loving messages
in ketchup on our plates. There was one fellow who took a full
bowl of ketchup, and covered the entire surface of his tray. It
was a spectacular mess, and he thought it was hilarious, until he
found out he'd left his picture i.d. on the tray under all that
ketchup. I gather he had a long talk with the hall manager.
Some Swedish Humor
My roommate and one our friends had been working together on some
projects for their civil engineering classes, and my roommate
knew his account password. So one night when the fellow was
logged in on a slow terminal at the dorm (about 1200 baud), we
logged on too, and enjoyed killing the occasional process to
cause confusion. Once he'd noticed we where there, we cat'ed a
200k file of jokes written entirely in Swedish onto his screen
(cat swedish.jokes > /dev/tty?? ). 200k takes a while to scroll
up the screen at 1200 baud, and it doesn't add to the enjoyment
if you can't read Swedish. My roommate also changed his prompt
to something so embarrassing I won't repeat it here. The fellow
was a Unix newbie, and wasn't aware of the "set prompt" command,
and did his computer projects in private for a month for fear
someone would see his screen.
Head and Shoulders and...
The same roommate, in our feud with "Smokey" from across the
hall, at one point took a leak in the fellow's shampoo bottle
while he was away (a very definite low point in this particular
relationship). I'm not certain if or how many times "Smokey"
used the shampoo, but I did spot him in the hall one afternoon,
pouring the bottle into a tray in the hall, and exclaiming,
"There's something *yellow* in it!"
Bang a Gong
My roommate and I my freshman year were, essentially, jackasses,
and enjoyed finding new ways to make annoying noises. Our loft
became a particularly expressive percussion instrument. This
loft had been used at least once before and apparently dissambled
in haste by Storm Giants, for by the time we installed it, it
basically consisted of random sized lumber and an inadequate
number of bent bolts. Thus it wasn't a particularly stable
structure, and only a large amount of newspaper shoved between it
and the wall prevented its collapse. Despite this, if we rocked
in sync, we could treat our neighbors to the opening of the 2001
Space Odyssey soundtrack...*BOMP* Bomp *BOMP* Bomp *BOMP* bomp
*BOMP* bomp. This, however, would generally knock down his Saudi
sword and pair of katanas; it was thus fortunate that we'd be in
the loft, but the latter items usually hit my keyboard and sent
keycaps flying in random directions. I never did find my down
arrow that year. (Our other noteworthy piece of furniture was a
semi-functional recliner chair my roommate had found by the side
of the road while returning to campus one weekend.) We also
enjoyed whiling away the evenings in bed with about $1.27 in
pennies, dropping them...one...by...one...onto the floor below.
We heard through the grapevine our neighbors below didn't exactly
relish this practice, nor the bucket of six dozen superballs we'd
occasionally hurl, nor the mysterious substances that appeared on
their window.
Pop Go the Weasels
Most people have probably seen those little noise makers,
sometimes called Bang-Snaps, that consist of a small teardrop
shaped wad of tissue paper containing gravel coated with some
volatile mixture. When thrown or squeezed, they explode with a
loud snap. My roommate and I went through a few phases of
playing with these. We enjoyed, among other things, balancing
them on door handles in libraries and other quiet places. Some
nights when the room was full of bored people, we'd take some to
the window, and toss them just behind people going up the
sidewalk, and watch the reaction. We were never quite able to
make pizza delivery men drop their boxes (fortunately). Other
residents above us, however, had taken a vehement dislike to the
fact that someone routinely parked their moped in front of the
dorm, chained to the railing where people needed to walk. Every
evening for several weeks after dinner, they would hurl ice cream
cones down at the offending moped, and we would be alerted to the
excitement by white streaks flying past our window. There would
usually be a Gaussian distribution of splat marks around the
moped, but finally one night they hit it square on the seat. I
never saw it parked there again.
--
Dorm pranks!! Hmmm. Well, I don't have time for a canonical list, but
here's one of my favorites. Unfortunately, I was the mark, but it slapped
me up pretty good.
One morning after a particularly violent debate with a keg, I woke up.
This in and of itself was an accomplishment, as was opening either eye, and
trying to remember how I had gotten into my room. Yes, it was time for
everyone's favorite party game, "What Did I Do Last Night?"
I sat up, got up, pulled on a pair of shorts, and limped shirtless out to
the lounge (communal area) to find out. There were a bunch of people
there, and as I walked in they started congratulating me, and one guy
asked, "Well, who was she?" I had to think quickly... Right. So I gave
him a cross-eyed bloodshot befuddled look, replied "Urgh?" and turned and
walked out, hoping they would all think I was just too hungover to respond.
I walked into the bathroom to try to clear my head. As I picked my head up
after washing my eyes, I noticed... Written on my stomach, in deep red
lipstick, by a flowing, distinctly female hand, were two words: "Thank
you."
Oh No.
Better wash THAT off.
I spent the better part of a week refusing to tell anyone about my exploits
that night -- and dreading Her approaching me and demand an explanation for
my not calling her. I was convinced that it was for real, because the word
was spreading around the dorm that I had had an Exploit. But people
weren't making fun of me, nobody, not even a little bit; no -- you know how
guys are -- they were congratulating me. No way there was a conspiracy
going on.
It was agony.
And, of course, towards the end of the week, the inevitable phone call
came. She figured I had forgotten her number... She hoped I didn't mind
that she had called, instead of me calling her... (I was a Freshman Male.
She was a Female. AND she had written on me! How cool! Mind? I don't
THINK so.)
So we set up a meeting, the next day, for lunch. I was all a-tingle. God,
what a sap. Of course you have it all figured out by now, but you knew it
was a setup from the start. I had to live it.
So I showed up for the Date... and there at the anointed table was my
roommate Bill. "Bill?" I say, thinking -- really! -- "What a coincidence!"
"Hi, Don." He smiled ...and handed me the lipstick. And then he started
to giggle, watching me as realization flooded in. I was pretty proud of
myself, actually; it only took a couple of breaths before I realized the
beauty of it and was able to smile. AND I didn't hit him.
All he had done, of course, was write on my stomach after I had passed out.
(He had had the lipstick on hand, Just In Case -- never know when you'll
need bright red lipstick in a freshman dorm.) The rest just kind of
naturally followed after I walked around shirtless, not knowing what was on
my stomach. I, and everyone else in the dorm, just jumped to the same
conclusion. All he had to do was keep a straight face.)
He was a good prankster -- subtle, and very effective! Knew how and when
to end it, too. We had some fun that year.
--
Paper Route Pranks
by Alan Meiss, ameiss@gn.ecn.purdue.edu
During high school, my best friend and I both had paper
routes next to each other, and we would often team up together
delivering to make the work go more quickly. These were morning
routes, and we were usually on the job at about 5 or 6 a.m. I'm
still surprised I had this job as long as I did, as I'm
definitely not a morning person. In fact, once while delivering
I fell asleep walking, and didn't wake up until I tripped over a
curb after apparently having crossed the street. But it's a very
interesting time of the day, because you are remarkably free from
surveillance, which isn't necessarily a good thing for high
school kids.
After our routes, my friend and I would seek out some form
of diversion, usually two hour Gauntlet games at the nearby
convenience store, but occasionally we found more creative
pastimes. On one such occassion, we were walking along a street
that cuts through a strip mall in the neighborhood. (In fact,
true fact, no less, the World's Longest Strip Mall. My fingers
are trembling with passionate pride.) We passed the back loading
dock of a furniture rental company and noticed a number of pieces
of old furniture that had been left out to be discarded (we
presumed :). This was obviously a flagrant waste of resources,
and we decided this furniture needed a better home. So over the
next half hour we assembled an entire living room suite
(pronounced "suit" here in the Hoosier State :) in front of the
Savings and Loan on the corner, complete with sofa, love seat,
and several other pieces. We were en route with our final item,
a large chest of drawers, and smugly envisioning our likely
pictorial spread in Good Housekeeping when a patrol car passed by
and quickly began a U-turn. We figured we weren't up to the
challenge of explaining why we'd furnished the nearby business,
let alone what we were doing carrying furniture down the middle
of a city street at 6 a.m., so we abandoned the drawers and fled.
While I won't claim responsibility, the S&L later failed, and is
now a lingerie shop.
Another fine morning, we were passing behind another part of
the same strip mall and noticed a dumpster with several dozen
extra-long fluorescent light tubes left in it. This dumpster
happened to be located beside a fire escape that went up about 30
feet, and thus was born the great sport of Fluorescent Light Tube
Javelin. Points in this fine form of recreation are awarded for
a) distance, b) style and technique, c) impact radius, and d) the
associated sound effect. Surprisingly, I've yet to see this as
an Olympic event.
In another incident, I was delivering early one New Year's
Eve, and met my friend who was doing the same. It was trash
night, and there were a great many discarded Christmas trees
around the neighborhood left for pickup. My friend and I
concluded that these, too, needed new homes. One large tree
became a very, very snug resident of the phone booth beside the
S&L previously mentioned. The remaining trees, at least a dozen,
we left to grace the porch and lawn of a particularly cranky
subscriber. The gentleman in question, I gather, called the
paper to complain about the forest he had suddenly acquired, but
could never prove anything.
--
When I was in high school we were able to brick in all the major entrances to
the school with materials we found right on the grounds! Also well
appreciated was the 10 foot long paper-mache and chicken wire penis "erected"
in the soccer field and emblazoned with various messages of "well wishing"
directed at the staff. Granted, this was better recieved by the student body
than by the faculty.
--
Here's a dorm prank:
One day as my roommate and I returned from the grocery store, we noticed a
strong fish smell. We discovered that the can of nacho style kippered snacks
that my roommate had decided to try had a small hole in it. The smell made him
want to puke so he wasn't about to eat it. We weren't about to just throw it
away so we waited until about 2:00 in the morning, dished it out onto a paper
plate and slid it under the door of some guys we knew on the floor above us.
I shoved it into the room as far as I could with my tennis racket. About 20
minutes later we walked down the hallway and within 20 feet of the door there
was a strong smell of fish. We checked about 20 minutes later and the guys were
awake trying to air out their room. It was so strong it woke them up.
--
At my graduation, we plugged into the PA system also, but we used
the Beatle's "Yellow Submarine" and most of us were singing along with it.
We started it as the valedictorian began her speach, but none of us coud
really stand her. Some other good ones I've seen at other graduations
included simply blowing soap bubbles throughout the entire ordeal, and
getting the biggest, scariest guy in your class, dress him in some leather &
an earring, and have him give the principal (or superintendant) a HUGE hug
as he gets his diploma. That was funny!
--
Hearsay story: Guy I went to school with at LSU told of a prank at a Mississippi
Jr. College (Copiah-Lincoln)-- There was construction work going on in his dorm.
He found welding cables snaked through the elevator shaft to the upper floor(s) of
the dorm--- The doors and frames were metal.
Yes. My college-mate welded some guy into his room.
--
While I was an undergraduate I lived for several years in a Residential
College on my school's campus. One year one of the guys I lived with
turned out to be an incredible mooch. Now, everybody needs to borrow something
from a roomate at one time or another but this fellow was amazing. Every night
at about 10:15 he would go around the suite trying to beg something to eat.
You could set your watch by him coming into your room.
Well, eventually we got tired of this and after friendly harrassment
didn't dissuade him, we decided to resort to tougher measures. So, one weekend
while I was home I borrowed my mother's Polaroid camera (the kind which
spits out self developing pictures) and brought it back to school. We then
went out to the store and bought some fudge covered Oreo cookies, which we took
back to the dorm.
About a half hour before Mark came around, we carefully opened the cookies so
that only one was exposed. We took that one out and Scott (another suitemate
who was also frequently a target of begging) dropped his pants and stuck it
in the crack between his buttocks. I then took a couple of good close up shots
and we threw that cookie away. All that was left to do was move another cookie
so it was showing through the carefully torn packaging and sit andd wait.
Sure enough, Mark came in looking for food. We gave him the normal crap about
always mooching, etc., but he was set on having some cookies. Who were we
to deny him? He took the cookies out of the only opened corner and left.
About 20 minutes later we went into his room and gave him the pictures.
He didn't think it was half as funny as we did, after we convinced him he
had actually eaten the "butt cookie". (Which, please note we had thrown away-
I do not endorse feeding contaminated cookies to anyone.) To his great credit,
he avoided vomiting.
It only stopped him for about a week, but after that he wouldn't eat anything
that didn't come in a wrapper. And we evetually told him he had eaten a clean
cookie.
Yes, this is pretty crude but it was not malicious and we were close enough
friends that Mark took it well. The really funny part to us was tthat it
was Mark who had told us about this kind of prank., but played between
two fraternities using dozens of donuts and lots of film.
--
Another common stunt I have seen involves freezing glasses onto plates
or trays. Take honey, smear it on a surface, whether table, tray,
plate, chair (oo, wish I had thought of this one before) or other
assorted object. Place a glass onto the honey. Fill the glass
with lots of ice, a little water, and a lot of salt to help lower the
temperature of the water below 32 degreeze. Pretty quickly, the honey
will freeze, or at the least become *very* viscous. You can usually lift
the tray and all its contents holding onto only the glass. You get
some interesting looks in the tray-return line like this. Of course,
you always risk that rise in temperature and the subsequent
crash of the tray... but that makes it that much more
exciting, I guess.
(Minor caveat: I have heard of people breaking glasses in their
aggressive attepts to rip the glass off the tray. However, most have
learned to just put it aside and run some hot water over it.)
--
High School Science Class Pranks
by Alan Meiss, ameiss@gn.ecn.purdue.edu
Wherein the author relates the Tale of the Exploding Pen.
Everyone who's taken high school chemistry probably has some
entertaining stories of experiments not included in the syllabus,
myself included. A friend and I did a great deal of spontaneous
research in our class involving myriad flame tests and chemical
combinations "Mother Nature never intended." I recall one time
when the teacher left the room, and my friend dashed into the
storeroom in the back to see what he could filch. He returned
with a heaping handful of silver nitrate powder, which isn't
exactly recommended handling procedure for this chemical. When
rapid discomfort made him dispose of this material, the rest of
us observed to our amazement that his entire hand had turned
silver. By the end of the day it had turned purple. But all
this, of course, is peripheral to the Tale of the Exploding Pen.
One day in Chemistry class we were using calcium metal,
which reacts with water to give off hydrogen gas and heat. This
was definitely Nifty, and I saved several pieces. It became a
source of amusement to drop it in a puddle of water and watch it
bubble and sputter, then quickly hand it to someone during a
quiet class to provoke an alarmed bellow (the stuff got pretty
hot). By the afternoon I had one piece left, which I, based on
thought processes that now entirely elude me, stored, along with
some water, in my pen, one of those Bic Biros with the large
white barrel and detachable endcap. It soon slipped my mind that
I'd done this, and I went on my way to Biology class. Midway
through class, we were wrapping up an experiment, with the
teacher giving a lecture and the class taking notes. I was
standing in the back of the room, writing down final data from
our petri dishes of E. Coli, when my pen exploded. It was very
loud, louder than a firecracker, and I looked up to see every
face in the class staring at me and the remnant of my pen with
great alarm. The resulting silence was finally broken when
someone muttered "his pen exploded!" I tried to play it cool,
giving my pen as cursory an inspection as possible, as if this
were a frequent occurence of little concern, and returned to an
extroadinarily studious job of note-taking. The teacher just
smiled and continued the lecture in a bit; I guess he was used to
this sort of thing.
We had some other interesting experiences in this biology
course, including the development of Live Chicken Bowling, and the
concealment of chickens in people's personal belongings. In one
class I remember, one of the kids wadded up paper towels into a
foot-wide ball, and for reasons I don't fathom arrived at the
decision to set it on fire when the teacher left the room. Too
late it occcurred to him that a large ball of fire is fairly
conspicuous in a classroom setting, so he stuffed it into the lab
drawer beside his desk just before the teacher returned. The
sudden earnest interest in the lecture he tried to demonstrate
was not enough to distract from the smoke rising from his desk,
however, and he got in a significant amount of trouble.
But let me return once again to Chemistry class. In all, it
was a fairly boring class, and we even had to pursue non-
flammable entertainment. I programmed a Blackjack game on my
pocket computer, and we would pass it around the class for all to
play. A lively betting pool would sometimes start when the score
got high. One day we managed to play a full game of Risk in the
back of the room during lecture. Some of us would spend a half
an hour at a stretch duplicating Muppet noises from Sesame Street
episodes: "Tiiiick Tooooock BrrrrrrrRING! Yupyupyupyup". Others
would interupt any rare quiet moments by yanking leg hairs from
other guys wearing shorts. None of this infantilism, however,
can compare to the mayhem related to me by one of my roommates
that went on in his own high school chemistry class.
He had a particularly anarchic chem class that seemed to
involve an impressive amount of pyrotechnics. On one occassion,
someone threw a fist-sized chunk of potassium metal in a sink
full of water, which destroyed it (both sink and water) with a
great shower of sparks. Another time his classmates covered an
entire desktop with infamous nitrogren tri-iodide, an unstable
compound made from ammonia and iodine that explodes when touched,
leaving purple stains. They detonated it by throwing a paper
airplane, blowing the top off the desk. In an act of tremendous
stupidity, they filled an entire liter beaker with the gray
incendiary material from sparklers, and when some fool tossed in
a match, the resulting column of fire burned holes in both the
table and ceiling. In an extra-curriculur adventure, they piled
a mound of thermite they'd prepared in class on a particularly
despised person's driveway. When ignited, it blasted a foot wide
hole through the concrete and down to the dirt. Their most
notable "achievement", however, was placing in someone's locker
in a dish of water a large chunk of some unknown material that
gives off noxious odors when moist. He said that the resulting
nauseating stench spread through the entire school. One girl
barfed in mid-sprint to the bathroom, and the school had to
evacuate the building and cancel classes for the rest of the day.
In an entire semester of Chemistry class, his only remotely
educational experience was learning to make soap, and he had to
repeat the subject here at Purdue, minus the pyrotechnics.
--
In high school, we had a demonic librarian who had been around
forever and lived just to come after people for late library
books. She ruled her library like a warden might administer a
prison. Well it so happened that the library had only one
entrance, and it was a heavy metal gate. On the final week of
classes, a group of guys came and made sure she was the only
person in the library. They took a kryptonite bike lock and
locked the gate shut. She came out from behind her desk and
started yelling at us. Someone had a helium baloon and had
tied the key to the lock to the balloon. They pretended to
offer the key to her and then let the key and the baloon go.
It was actually kind of a sad sight to see her hopping after
the key on her one good leg as the baloon took off for the
ceiling. Of course we all told her the whole thing was a sign
of our affection for her (heaving coughing here).
--
Most Dorms use heavy wooden doors that can be easily opened with a hard
flexible piece of plastic (like a drivers licence or Student ID works
best..., credit cards are too stiff).
In the middle of the night, jimmy the door open with your handy dandy door
opener (I can open my door faster with my student ID than with a key ;). Now
be VERY quiet, sneak in and grab the sleeping bozo's keys. NExt take a paper
clip and stick it in the little hole on the INSIDE of the doors doorhandle.
This allows the knob handles to slide off slick as a whistle. Take the
inside handle and push it in on the out side and put the outside handle on
the inside. this reverses the door handles. You can now lock the guys in
their room from the hall... and because you have thier keys, they can't get
out!
--
In the vein of Dorm pranks, at our university the locks on the
doors are the same size as a 1 cent piece, so you put some epoxy on
the coin and casually place it on the lock as you walk past.
The important thing to know is that these doors lock themselves
when they are closed.
think about it.
--
When I was in High School, my chemistry teacher had the priviledge of
scaring most of the freshman chem class. He had a wooden cutting block set
out on the bench at the front of the class, with a large butcher's knife.
After everyone took their seats, he produced an apple, two 200 mL beakers
containing clear fluid, an empty 500 mL beaker, and an eye dropper. He
proceeded to cut the apple in half, and then place the knife back in a
locked drawer (he didn't trust us!). With the dropper, he squirted some of
liquid A onto one half of the apple, and we all saw it eat away at the apple
rather quickly. Then, after rinsing the dropper, he squirted some of liquid
B onto the remaining half of the apple, which also ate it away. He then
poured liquid A and liquid B into the 500 mL beaker, and swirled the mixture
for a few moments (about twenty seconds). He then downed the whole thing in
one big swallow!
As it turned out, liquid A was hydrocloric acid, and liquid B was sodium
hydroxide. They were both of the same molarity, and so when mixed, they
produced salt water. The most interesting happening of this was the next
year, when a young lady passed out as the teacher swallowed his drink...
## if you have the stupidity to try this, make sure you know alot about
chemistry and that you get the concentrations right!!! ##
--
College Daze: I admit, this was not a very savory prank, in hindsight 20 years
later. Dorm room doors were inset a couple of inches from the wall. We were
across a walkway and up a couple of floors from a target. There had been a big
party the night before, and there were enough beer cans around to fully fill
up the door frames. We noticed this guys' overhead light go off, and desk lamp
come on. Out came a Playboy. Oh Oh.
We snuck down and very quietly stacked beer cans in front of the door, in the
inset. Then went back to our room, turned off the lights, and started yelling
at the guy that we could see him wacking off. He got up, ran to the door. Saw
the cans, gingerly felt the stack, which fell down. He ran into the hall,
ranting and raving.
LATER that same night, after quite a few more brewskis, about 1:30 am, when he
was asleep, we went back, restacked the cans, and drug a heavy oaken table out
of a nearby study room, and stood it up behind the cans.
Then one of our cohort tossed a water balloon against the target's window, while
we taunted him. This time he opened the door and without testing charged full
speed into the wall of cans. And table.
When he came to, the table had been replaced, and the dorm counsellor was
asking him what happened, and did he need to go to the hospital.
--
If, as in most dorms on our campus, every door is opposite one other,
and they both open inward, do the following:
Purchase several hundred feet of parachute cord (Or anything that
won't strech). Tie one end to a doorknob, and the other end to the
doorknob on the opposite side of the hall. Make sure the cord is as
tight as you can get it. Nobody will be able to get out of their
rooms! Particularly good if you do it to the whole dorm. >:)
There will be the occasional single door, but if you're creative, it
won't be too much trouble to tie those down as well.
--
When I was student at MSU, I found an ad for ladybugs in the back of a
High Times magazine. I ordered 10,000 of them and set them loose on our sister
floor. They were still finding ladybugs 6 months later.
We also got ahold of some of the official letterhead for our dorm and sent
a letter to a guy on our floor from the head of the residence staff. In the
letter he was told he was being written up because he was seen masturbating
in his window. We finally told him it was a prank as he was on his way to
the meeting with the resident director.
--
April Fools last year my friends and I had a hayday. I was at a
private boarding academy, so prank opportunities presented themselves
regularly. The first thing we did was to break into the Administration
building and spread 150 rolls of Toilet paper over the Ad building and
Chapel. (I know this is nothing new, but it was still a lot of fun.) After
that, we went back to to the dorm and removed all of the benches from the
second-floor chapel and placed them all over second floor (where the hated
juniors resided :-) ). Then we removed EVERY SINGLE light bulb on second
and third floor (bathrooms, showers, stairwells, everything except
individual rooms, for obvious reasons). We couldn't do it on first,
because it was too near the deans, and there was a desk monitor awake and
alert. We took the light bulbs out on the lawn in front of the Ad building,
and spelled out "April Fools". When the dorm woke up in the morning, all
the guys stumbled out into the hall, knocking their knees on the benches
that they couldn't see in the dark, finally climbed over the benches in
their towels, and then cussing everyone out because there was no lights in
the shower. It was rather enjoyable.
--
Hoosier Boys' State Pranks
by Alan Meiss, ameiss@gn.ecn.purdue.edu
One summer when I was in high school I got to attend Hoosier
Boys' State. This program is sponsored by the American Legion,
ostensibly to raise the civic conscience of our country's future
leaders, but the reality is more akin to "Lord of the Flies."
The blessed event was held at Indiana State (technically, a
university) in Terra Haute. If you've ever been to Terra Haute,
you may remember it for its tremendous aroma. The city has quite
a few active meat rendering plants, thoughtfully positioned
around its perimeter so that summer breezes fill the town with
noxious smells produced by giant vats of rotten, fermenting
animal carcasses. I've heard of pedestrians literally throwing
up in the street, overpowered by the stench. But I digress...
Kids attending Boys' State are divided into "cities", each
city occupying one floor of a dormitory. Over the course of a
week, elections and party meetings are held, laws passed, a
newspaper printed, and a lot of other genuinely enjoyable
activities. The real fun, of course, was spontaneous.
One of my roommates here at Purdue also attended that year,
and lived in the rowdiest "city" in the entire program on the top
floor of one of the dorms. They had firehose battles in the
halls, spraying one another at full power and literally creating
a river running down the stairwells. One day they filled one of
the elevators with as many people as they could muster, about 30
in all. Once everyone was packed in, laying on top of each other
like sardines, someone with enough freedom of movement to reach
the buttons pressed main floor. They had a harrowing ride down
the entire height of the building, and bounced about 3 feet up
and down on the cable when they got to the main floor, a sort of
elevator bungee jump. The cable held, but that particular
elevator was shut down for repairs the rest of the week.
Each floor also seemed to have one misfit who ended up being
hounded mercilessly. Sometimes this was due to obnoxious
personalities; some megalomaniacal kids arrived with campaign
posters preprinted and delusions of granduer. One such person,
distressed by a lack of support in his party's caucus, responded
to hisses and boos by screaming "I AM AN ENTITY", which rather
than garnering him any respect merely earned him the nickname The
Entity and a lot of taunting. Other kids were just shy or
awkward and fell naturally into the role of "goat". On our
floor, one fellow was chased naked through the halls for an hour
because he'd been caught not singing while peeing (a "city
ordinance"), but that hardly compares to what happened on my
roommate's floor. Some poor guy there was tormented
continuously, with the climactic event being an elevator ride
from hell. The Young Leaders on his floor stripped him, tied him
to a chair, smeared him with syrup and oats, placed him in the
elevator, and pressed every button. By this point in the week,
active warfare had broken out between floors, and thus at every
stop he was pelted with water balloons and various other
substances as the doors opened. Finally he arrived at the lobby,
and his screaming combined with his remarkable appearance quickly
attracted the attention of the dozens of parents gathered there
for Parents' Day. I think he left for home after that, and given
the probable damage to his psyche is likely now a serial killer.
Floor counsellors were not immune to this bunch, either.
Midway through the week they had developed a strange fecal
obsession, and enjoyed taking group dumps in boxes and hurling
the contents onto other floors. They arrived on a similar course
of action one day when they noticed the sun roof of their
counsellor's car was open a crack. They pried it open further,
and a large group relieved themselves inside with great
enthusiasm, including both numbers one and two, so to speak. It
was a very hot week, and an Indiana summer can do magical things
to effluvia trapped in a confined space. Their counsellor got a
rare treat when he discovered the present they'd left him about
four days later.
Convocations were also interesting events, and by the end of
the week tended to resemble movie scenes of angry villagers
rallying to destroy Frankenstein's monster. One of the speakers
we were frequently assembled to hear was exceptionally pompous,
giving speeches filled with facts and figures obviously intended
to impress the audience but seldom managing to. Someone began
whistling in the auditorium whenever he would recite one of his
Amazing Facts, a long "wheeeeet-WHOOOOO" that would send the kids
assembled into hysterical giggles. By the time of the final
address, every single sentence he uttered was greeted with a
unanimous chorus of whistles, and he final stomped off the stage
in a rage. In another assembly, a kid fell sound asleep, and
those around him left very quietly to avoid waking him, and left
him there for who knows how long. My single greatest achievement
of the week had been the squirt-gun assasination of the (Boys'
State) Lieutenant Governor during a Senate meeting, although this
wasn't quite as noteworthy as the group who adbucted the Governor
and held him hostage on the roof of one of the dorms. It did,
however, produce a chorus of "You're dead!" whenever he attempted
to make speeches. There was also an impressive talent show at
one night's assembly, in which a kid actually took bites out of
apples as he juggled them.
My favorite event of the week, however, was the Police Demo.
We got to pick various workshops and events to attend if we
weren't involved in "political" meetings, and I wisely opted for
this one. We were taken to a field at the edge of town, and
given an impressive demonstration of firearms and explosives by
the State Police, who obviously had their fingers right on the
pulse of young Hoosier males. They shot a number of objects with
powerful rifles, exploded long arrangements of "det cord", and in
the grand finale, detonated a large cache of explosives in the
trunk of a car. At least, we had thought it was the finale. We
were invited to wander into the field and investigate the remains
of the car. At this point, the troopers shot tear gas canisters
at us so we'd gain the valuable experience of running through
choking clouds of tear gas, which I must say is amazing stuff. I
did have the presense of mind (or lack thereof, perhaps) to grab
a nice fist-sized chunk of undetonated explosive from the trunk
of the demolished car. I'm still not sure just where I left it
though...
--
By the way, you didn't mention the ISU steam tunnels at all. Once we
noticed Brother Jed -- a misanthropic street preacher who travelled the
U.S. Midwest -- berating the evil young college students. So we stopped
to see the show, which typically included his unbelievable pronunciation
of "homosexual" with about 20 syllables. On good days, 25.
After a bit we noticed he was standing on an air vent. So we found an
entrance, picked up some wire and fashioned it into a trident, got
underneath the air vent, waved the trident out the air vent and shouted
things up like "Come down here where you belong!"
--
When I was an undergrad, I lived i a ten-story coed dorm, one floor girls, one
guys ... My roommate, a crazy sonofabitch, convinced a guy on the 9th floor to
let him tie a rope to his loft and climb out the window, scaling the building.
The rest of us ran to a second floor projection, to watch his daring feat. As my
roommate went down the building, he looked in everyone's windows--who the hell
shuts their curtains when they're 7 or 8 floors up and there's no other
building around? He would shout down to us what he saw. Included among the
sights were a couple ******* like crazy on one floor, and a guy spanking his
monkey on another floor. Everytime we'd see those people in the cafeteria, we'd
laugh our asses off.
Another popular prank was to reverse the peepholes in people's room doors. That
way, people in the hall got a clear shot of the whole room and the activities
within. One floormate was seen involved in some activities with a girl from the
floor below, but the teasing didn't last too long once he pointed out who was
really the fool--the wannabe's peeping in from the hall!
--
> Canonical List of Pranks
>.....
> -Hide pornographic pictures (the nastier the better) in places where
> someone who is very easily offended or embaressed will find them quite
> unexpectedly. Even better if there are numerous amounts of small pictures
> hidden in obscure places that will still be found even years later.
We did this to a fraternity brother, with literally hundreds of small,
nasty clip-outs. (Not that he was offended, but his girlfriend was.) A
couple fell out during his open-book final a month later. Better yet, he
had this sport coat he never wore. Two years later, he wore it to the
funeral of a distant relative. Reaching into his pocket for a tissue he
found...you guessed it.
Here's a prank to do at the library: if you know someone who's a
homophobe, sneak a book on homoerotic art into his backpack when he goes to
the bathroom. When he leaves, it will set the alarm off and the attendant
will search his backback. Especially hilarious during finals week, when
everyone needs some comic relief while cramming.
--
Canonical List of Pranks
Compiled by Stacy Behrens (sjb3@lehigh.edu)
Version 2.0
This is a list of pranks and practical jokes of all sorts. The
contributors are listed at the bottom. I take no responsibility for anyone
getting in any trouble or causing any harm to anyone due to anything listed
here. If you have a good prank and it isn't listed here, mail it to me and
I'll see about adding it to the list. I'm not necissarily interested in
funny stories unless there is a prank that can be described in a fairly
short paragraph contained within. The pranks on this list range from
harmless to the downright cruel since the idea is to have a list to cover
all occasions.
-Rigged Door
-Mail
-Camping
-Showering
-Toilet
-Food & Resturant
-Dorm Room
-Body
-Classroom
-Tape & Movie
-Miscellaneous
-Computer
-Phone
-Appliance
-Sleeping
-Pyrotechnical
-Vehicle
as well as the list of contributors
PART 1 of 2
-----Rigged Door Pranks------------
-Balance a nearly full bucket of water against someone's door at night.
When they open it the next morning it will fall and flood their room.
-Remove someone's doorknob and reinstall it with the lock on the inside.
Works best if the victim is in the room and the door is locked and you have
his/her keys.
-If the door is metal and has a metal frame, weld the person into (or out
of) their room. Can be done to the hinges as well if there is no metal
door.
-Steal a person's door. Leave a trail of clue's as to where to find it.
Have them running all over the place trying to find it and have them end up
somewhere near where they started. (like in the next room)
-Jam so many pennies between the door and the door frame that the person
cannot turn the doorknob to get out. Even better if the pennies are
superglued in place to prevent removal. Also you may wish to put vaseline
on the inside doorknob to prevent them from being able to turn the knob.
-Place "Bang-Snaps" in precarious positions on a door so that they will
drop and explode when the door is opened. (such as balanced on the
doorknob)
-Brick up the entrances to a building at night before anyone arrives.
-----Mail Pranks-------------------
-Send in subscriptions to embarasing magazines in the victim's name. Make
sure to check "Bill Me".
-Get change of address cards from the post office and change the victim's
address to someplace like Guam.
-----Camping Pranks----------------
-Bury someone's hatchet or ax in a tree about 20 feet off the ground and in
plain sight.
-Snipe Hunts. 'Nuff Said.
-Spray someone's tent with some aerosol based bug spray. This will erode
the waterproofing of the tent.
-----Showering Pranks--------------
-Urinate in a person's shampoo.
-Put Nair or some other hair removal chemical in a person's shampoo or
conditioner. You may need to distract the person for a moment to let the
stuff take a better hold.
-Fill the shower head with dry temper paint, onion salt, easter egg pellets
or the like.
-Flush toilets while a person showers. The more toilets the better.
-Swipe a person's cloths while they are showering. Put them in an
embarasing place such as the showers for people of the opposite sex.
-----Toilet Pranks-----------------
-Place clear cellophane over the toilet bowl but under the seat. Works
best at parties where a large percentage of the people are drunk.
-Flush waterproofed cherry bombs or M-80's down public toilets.
Explosives in Port-O-Potty's can be fun too.
-Place vasilene (or some other reasonably clear gel) on the seat at night.
Listen for the screams. ICY-HOT or Atomic Balm are even better. Also put
the stuff on the toilet paper.
-Shoe Polish of the appropriate color on the seat.
-----Food & Resturant Pranks-------------------
-Convice the person that they have eaten a piece of food that has been
soiled by some bodily function. Have fake "evidence" (or real evidence if
you really are cruel) to back up your claim such as pictures.
-Give your name as Pupupu to a maitre-de. When he calls you to your table
you will hear, "Pu-pu-pu Party of four...".
-Freeze glasses to trays in the cafeteria. This can be accomplished by
smearing the bottom of the glass with honey and sticking it firmly to the
tray. Next fill the glass with ice, water and salt to lower the
temperature. After a few minutes the honey should be frozen to both the
tray and the glass.
-Glue glasses in a cafeteria to the bottom of a table.
-Dribble glass. Need I say more?
-Put pure crystallized caffine in someone's coffee pot. This will make
expresso look like milk.
-Get some of the tracer pills that turn urine blue (or some other
interesting color) Crush and slip it into some food. The victim will be
peeing blue for 2-3 days afterwards though the pills themselves are just
dye and are completely harmless.
-Bake brownies or cookies and substitute Ex-Lax for part of the chocolate.
Use some chocolate to keep the taste right.
-Rig the lid of salt shakers to fail when used, resulting in a veritable
salt lick on the victim's food.
-----Dorm Room Pranks------------
-Fill an accordian folder with shaving cream, insert under someone's door
and stomp on it which will send large amounts of shaving cream into their
room withought ever opening the door. Also can be done with a fine powder
(Talcum powder works nicely) in a bag with a hole in the bottom. Slip the
open end under the door, stick a hair dryer in the hole and the room gets a
nice sugar coating.
-Take a dump into a small cup and place it in the most hard-to-find/get-at
place in someone's room. They'll tear their room apart looking for the
smell.
-Place raw eggs under the person's pillow or comforter or somewhere else
that is bulky enough that the eggs won't be noticed until after they have
been crushed. This is lots of fun to clean up after...
-Fill a person's room while they are out with massive quantities of
crumpled up newspaper. This takes a fair bit of planning, a lot of paper
and a small room but can have good results.
-Remove doors on your hall and swap them with other doors from around the
hall.
-Cover a person's door with butcher paper and fill the space between the
door and the wall with confetti, peanuts, etc.
-Attach a remote control to the fire alarm in a room and set it off from a
safe distance. Watch the victim(s) panic. When the panic subsides, do it
again. And again. And... well you get the picture.
-----Body Pranks--------
-Hold a magnifying glass over someone who is sunbathing. Be prepared to
run shortly after you do this.
-Place Icy-Hot, Atomic Balm or the like in someone's jock or underwear.
Warning! This results in screaming in the most macho of guys.
-Wave microwaved mayonaise under the nose of a person who is drunk and
feeling queasy. Alternately start asking questions such as "Would you like
a cold greasy pork chop? How about an earthworm omlette?..."
-----Classroom Pranks--------------
-Sucker freshmen into walking too close to an active Van-De-Graff
generator.
-Superglue EVERYTHING in a classroom down. Chairs, chalk, books, whatever.
Don't be choosy.
-When a teacher leaves the room, have everyone turn every desk and chair
upside down. When the teacher returns be sitting on your chairs working as
if nothing had happened.
-When dissecting animals, take the liver (or some other brown organ) and
place it in the instructor's coffee. Place parts from your dissection in
various places around a caffeteria salad bar.
-----Tapes & Movie Pranks----------
-Crack open someone's audio cassettes and flip the tape over so that what
comes out is pure gibberish.
-Rent porn tapes from the video store and record something like Barney or
the Wizard of Oz over them. Just imagine the next person who gets them.
-----Miscellaneous Pranks----------
-When you see several folks relaxing in a hot tub, throw ice cubes into the
tub. They'll wonder who's throwing stuff at them, but the cubes melt
almost instantly leaving no evidence or clues as to who is doing it.
-Release large numbers of pigeons into a gymnasium or lecture hall.
Young pigs in the hallway are good too. Even better if they (pigeons or
pigs) have been fed laxatives.
-Hire a stripper to appear in a high traffic area, such as a cafeteria
during peak hours.
-Fill several vending machines in a high traffic area with condoms and beer
cans.
-Put every single chair from a large building in one room. The smaller the
room the better. Also good near the entrance to a building.
-Fill someone's umbrella with confetti, wait until a rainy day and enjoy.
-Leave insect egg cases/clusters in innacessable areas.
-Errect a large paper mache penis on school grounds in a very public place.
Write messages on it for added effect.
-Hide pornographic pictures (the nastier the better) in places where
someone who is very easily offended or embaressed will find them quite
unexpectedly. Even better if there are numerous amounts of small pictures
hidden in obscure places that will still be found even years later.
-Hand the principal/headmaster some small item when getting your diploma.
Marbles, balloons, condoms, coins etc. Works best if everyone does it.
-----Computer Pranks---------------
-Change the prompt on someones computer to be black on black. This is
rather cruel if the person is computer illiterate. Very effective the day
before a big project is due.
-It is possible to play sounds remotely on some workstations. (Sun
SparcStations for instance) You can have all kinds of fun playing sounds
like flushing toilets and other unusual sounds. Works best if the person
is a relative newbie.
-Run a XXX-GIF slide show on the overhead computer projectors found in many
computer rooms and large lecture halls. Very effective if done before a
large class. You may wish to superglue the drive doors shut as well as all
the relevant power switches in the "on" position and the power cables to
the wall and hide the keyboard.
-Write a small program that prints "Formatting C:" and starts printing a
series of dots at intervals afterwards. Simulate disk access by
contiuously creating and deleting an empty text file.
-Write a daemon that sends each individual page of a print job to a
different printer on the network. Select the printer at random.
-Convert a XXX image to a bitmap and make it someone's OS/2 or Windows
backround. You can also change the backround of someone's X-Windows
session remotely as well as make picture appear and they can't stop you.
(use XV or a similar program)
-Reverse the turbo switch so that the machine runs fast when it should run
slow and slow when it should be fast.
-If they haven't changed the default password for their BIOS, change it
yourself and lock them out of their machine.
-----Phone Pranks----------------
-Coat the reciever of someone's phone with shoe polish and then give them a
call. Instant gratification. Make sure you match the colors of the polish
and the phone. Small amounts of shaving cream work too.
-Glue the victim's reciever down, and then start making lots of calls to
the victim.
-----Appliance Pranks------------
-Wrap an *extremely* fine gauge wire several turns around each prong of the
power cord of some plug in appliance with a single strand going between the
two prongs. The current coming out of a wall is sufficent that the wire
will instantly and completely vaporize the wire and will result in a
startling flash. This one leaves no evidence and will make the person
terrified to plug the appliance back in. WARNING: this is VERY dangerous
if too large a gauge of wire is used.
-Purchase a "universal TV remote" from a place like Radio Shack. When
walking by public TVs, such as those in a dorm lounge, change the channel
without giving anyone any idea you are doing it.
-Take a transciever like the ones ham radio operators use (3 watts or
more is good) and push transmit while near a TV. Will have the effect of
semi-scrambling whatever is showing. Them more powerful the transceiver,
the more the TV signal gets messed up. This does work on cable TV.
-Leave toothpast on the underside of light switches and doorknobs.
-Use appliance timers to detonate stereo equipment at high volume.
-Leave a copier to print 99 copies at 33% resolution on 8x14 paper.
-Leave someone's furniture in a 99% disassembled state. Repeat as
necissary.
-----Sleeping Pranks-------------
-Fasten someone to their bed with numerous bungi cords.
-Bury someone several feet deep in wet unrolled toilet paper.
-Place the sleeping person's hand in a bowl of lukewarm water. Will
fequently cause bed wetting.
-Shave parts of a person while they are passed out drunk. Be creative. Do
things such as half a mustache, one eyebrow, etc.
-Draw in permenant marker all sorts of messages on the skin of a person who
has passed out drunk. Messages should include things like "[insert name of
another person you dislike] was here" with a big arrow pointing to the
person's rear end.
-Print a message in lipstick on someone's chest. (such as "Thank You")
Works best after a night where they really got drunk and may not remember
what they were doing the night before.
-Sprinkle Sand or Jello Mix or the like in the person's bed.
-----Pyrotechnical Pranks----------
-Burn a hole in someone's newly paved asphalt driveway using thermite.
-Place industrial strength smoke grenades (the sort that will fill up
entire buildings) in obscure places in a public building. Also good in
someone's car or truck.
-Coat a black toilet seat with a *very* thin layer of nitrogen tri-iodide.
NTI is an easy to make contact explosive that will leave a purple stain on
their rear. Do not use very much or you will hurt the victim.
-----Vehicle Pranks----------------
-Place an old beat up vehicle near the entrance to a school building.
Remove the wheels and fill it with cement. Nearly impossible to remove.
-Cut an old wreck in half and weld it together around a flagpole.
-Dissassemble an old car and reassemble it on top of a building or in the
main lobby of the building.
-Fill someone's car or truck top to bottom with snow. (You'll need a
shovel most likely)
-Place a dead fish in an area of the engine that is hard to get to and that
will get hot. Jammed under the radiator is just about perfect. After a
couple of days the smell just becomes unbearable.
Thanks go out to the following people for their contributions to this list:
-James Frye (frye@lars.acc.stolaf.edu)
-Gary Meyers (dbsgrm@arco.com)
-Clay (clays@wam.umd.edu)
-Jonathan Tracy Osborn (jonnio@fox.WPI.EDU)
-Mac (jb013c@uhura.cc.rochester.edu)
-Don Schneider (dondo@holonet.net)
-Jan Chojnacki (janc@icebox.iceonline.com)
-T.C. Freres (tf2a+@andrew.cmu.edu)
-June Peckingham (junep@bu.edu)
-John Collin (jcollin@phakt.usc.edu)
-Idris H Hsi (idris@isye.gatech.edu)
-James York (york843@mach1.wlu.ca)
-Jeff Kroll (darkmage@ecst.csuchico.edu)
-Suraklin (darkmage@ecst.csuchico.edu)
-Rich Boehme (vballer@chop.isca.uiowa.edu)
-Barry Gold (barry.gold@SanDiegoCA.ncr.com)
-Howard Richards (hir@cix.compulink.co.uk)
-Dallen Christiansen (dchriste@uvsc.edu)
and a special thanks goes to:
-Alan R. Meiss (ameiss@gn.ecn.purdue.edu)
for numerous contributions to this list.
If you wrote a prank to rec.humor that is listed here and your name isn't
write to me and I'll be sure to give you proper credit!
--
Ammonium tri-iodide is an extremely fun chemical. But you have to be
careful. My chem prof played a really cool joke on this really annoying
bastard in my class. Real pop-off, and he deserved it. You simply fix
iodine crystals (expensive) and ammonia (roughtly as much as the crystals
can dissolve into). While it is liquid, it's reasonably safe. Don't use
more than a drop on anything, since it will explode once it's dry, and
can be dangerous.
However, when placed on a countertop in a very small amount, the first
person to touch it gets quite a surprise and a stain on their skin and
doesn't come off easily. Hilarious actually. I've only made it once,
though.
--
A friend of mine was using a pipette to measure out a measure (sic) of
some acid or other. Of course I told a joke which cracked him up, and yes,
you guessed it, a mouthfull of acid. The amusing thing is he wouldn't spit it
out! I was yelling at him to spit it out and he just ran around waving his arms
about! Oh dear... memories.
--
I went out on the piss (ie: getting severely drunk) one night. An allnighter.
Next morning, at chem class, still rather drunk. I thought it would be amusing
to turn on one of the gas taps and light it!!!!! Argh!!!!
Good thing I wasn't caught, and that no one else was in the room at the time.
Good thing that the scorch mark on the wall opposite wasn't too visible
either... *shiver*
--
I know that this doesn't really count as a "prank", but once in high
school chem we were doing potassium experiments, and there were 36
students (so there were 37 people including the teacher). Each student
has 20 test tubes full of water and into each one he or she places a small
amount of potassium (the experiment was supposed to test the production
of hydrogen.) After the experiment, each person puts the test tubes into
a central trash can (for those of you slow in math, that's 740 test tubes
EACH ONE of which is pumping out hydrogen.) Later on we were doing tests
with glowing splints, and the teacher said "don't put a burning splint into
the trash can" (for obvious reasons) Well, one girl thought that a glowing
splint (not burning) would be ok. All I can say is that the column of
red flame was more spectacular than any movie nuclear blast! In fact,
to this day (6 years later), there is still a very large burn mark on
the ceiling of that classroom.
--
Another one with the same teacher was another potassium mishap. Since
potassium cannot be stored in water, it is stored in a sort of oil. Well,
he took a golf-ball size chunk and held it in is hand as he cut it. Un-
fortunately, the oil was slippery and the chunk fell into the beaker.
Well, what happened was that the beaker EXPLODED and impaled the teacher
with several bits of glass (he was in hospital for a day or two) and the
desk was strewn with a hundred or so pock-marks.
--
However, one real prank was with the SAME teacher was in order to keep
sanity and good behaviour in class, he would keep 2 squirt guns with
him. One with water, and the other with SILVER NITRATE SOLUTION. (this
stuff looks just like water but it turns skin BLACK on contact) He shot
about 4 people during the year, but only one girl (the same one with the
hydrogen) got the silver nitrate (on the FACE!!!).
--
Finally, this was one I did in college. My first year in the dorms,
I would keep a bottle of root beer which someone would continually drink
without my knowing. After I couldn't stand it anymore, I went to a
friend in the chem dept. and asked him for an acid/base indicator that
turns base pink (I forget what the indicator was), and put a bit in my
root beer bottle. The plan was that human urine is somewhat base, so
when the culprit drank my root beer, he began to pee pink. Needless
to say, about 12 hours later, this guy thought he was gonna die!
--
Put dog "do" in paper bag, light bag, put on someones doorstep, ring bell,
laugh as they stomp out the fire.
--
Well I am a Medical Technologist, and through the years in the field
we have pulled some good jokes. One of the funny ones I can remember is a day
when I was working in Hematology. One of the other techs, that was working in
Chemistry, was this real whining hypochondriac. Well he came over to me
telling me that he felt really sick and was wondering if I would run A CBC and
Differential on him. So I drew his blood and labeled it and it to hematology
and ran it.. It was normal as normal could be, but I decided to have a bit of
fun. Earlier in the day a known CLL patient had been in and gave some blood,
so I took one of the extra tubes, poured it into a new tube and labeled it
with this techs info (making sure to make a mark as to not confuse the real
sample up). Well I ran the CLL pt. blood and made a smear, then I went over
to him and said "you had better take a look at this". He came over and looked
at the results and then looked at the smear, and went a bit pale and said that
I must have mixed it up, with somebody else. So I gave him the falsely
labeled tube and he ran it himself getting the same results. You should have
seen his face I thought he was gonna Die right there! Anyway I let him suffer
for about 2 min. or so then gave him the real results and from the look on his
face I though I was gonna die! HEHE :>"