The Ultimate Practical Joke Thread. Tell us about yours

[RickM]

As inspired by the "Most disgusting practical joke" thread, tell us about your best.

Here's one of mine:

In 6th grade I hollowed out a book and wired in a step-up transformer, microswitch and battery. I covered the book with very thin metal sheet (Cartographer plate) and in my best hand printing wrote "1001 Dirty Jokes" (perfect title for Catholic school in the early seventies). I'm surprised I didn't stop some kid's heart cause this thing was powerful....and hilarious.

[djmcmath]

In college, we did a number of pretty classic things.

We took the Company Officer's office and moved it into the nearby head (bathroom, for you civilian types). He was cool enough to operate out of the head for a whole day before he insisted we move it back.

Showers were always fun. Unscrew the drain, roll up a pair of black socks, and shove them into the space. Screw the drain back in real tight. It's almost unnoticeable, unless you're actually looking for it. You get quite a ways into a good shower before you notice that you're not draining at all.

More shower fun -- our showers were little enclose marble stalls. If you were savvy, you could plug the drain pretty effectively, then use the shower curtain and a heap of duct tape to make a waist-high wall. Chop up a few bags of hot dogs and toss them in, then start the water running. If it overflowed, there was a drain out in front of the shower, so it wasn't a desperate problem. However, there's no good way to drain it down the shower drain, especially once it's full.

The other big classic was newspaper. Everybody had a subscription to the newspaper, as we were all required to be up on current events, which left us with a lot of old newspapers. There's nothing more fun than watching your upperclass come back to the dorm on Sunday evening to discover that his room is full to the eyeballs with crumpled newspapers.

If you were particularly cruel, you'd also tear out pages from skin magazines and wax them into the tile deck. That tended to be a real bear to get removed, and I was never known for doing that.

Oh -- the drawers in our desks were relatively water sealed. So were our bunks -- the space where the mattress sits would hold several solid gallons of ketchup. Don't ask me how I know that.

Missing mouse balls and frozen pillows are also classic. Onboard ship, you've got full-fledged deep freezers, so taking a normal pillow and making it a solid block of ice only takes a couple of hours. (smirk)

Ah, the good old days -- duct-taping coffee cups into the overheads, tying knots in the legs of people's coveralls moments before drill periods, and flipping light switches coincident with electric plant shifts; I can hardly wait to go back to a boat.

Dan

[widebody911]

I once took a piece of yellow foam (like you use under a sleeping bag), put it in a cake pan, frosted it, cut it into squares with a sharp knife, and set it out in the break room at work.

[KevinP73]

While selling computers at a retail super store we had a sales manager whom nobody liked. He was a total ass. This took about 3 months to set up and involved two other employee's. The store operator and someone from inventory. The operator had his dedicated store cell number. This number was not given to anyone, not even his wife ( supposedly). It was for district supervisors and emergency services only. The store operator would occasionally call this phone while he was not at work and ask for some fictitious person when he would answere, or ask for him if his wife answered. She would also call his house late at night and ask for him when the wife answered or just hang up. Sometimes when his wife would call the store she was told he was not on schedule that day or was out for an extended lunch break. We could tell that some tension was building between them over the appearent conflicting information she was getting.
Because the store operator was located in the "managers pit" she was aware of most every managers schedule and communications with district and corprate seniors.
His wife's sister was getting married but he was scheduled for the first half of the day. His plan was to get dressed at work and pick his wife, her mother and thier child (8months old) up at her mothers house and race to the wedding. Things were going as planned, he was dressed and ready to leave only to find that once he got to his car he had a flat tire on his big ole ugly SUV. In steps our accomplice from inventory. He's more tham happy to change the flat tire taking his time of course, as our loved sales manager is dressed in his Sunday best going to a wedding suit. His wife is calling every five minutes but has been told that he's already left. Sometime during the changing of the tire, we'll call him Ray ( 'cause thats his name) Ray slips a worn pair of womens panties (donated by our operator's drinking partner) just under the passenger side seat ( where they are most likely to be noticed if someone were putting a child in the car seat in back). And at the same time dropping a condom wrapper on the floor in the back.
From here we can only speculate as to the coarse of events from there. We didn't see our manager for a week and he never let on what had happened. His wife stopped calling the store and he moved to another location when it opened in Porter Ranch a little while later.
Well thats my prank, Hope you enjoyed it as much as we did, And Logan, Hows the wife? Life treating you as well as you treat others??

[RickM]

Good ones. Dan you were one active practical joker...phew.

Here's one of my famous ones "The Ultimate Stink Bomb".....

When in junior high I was into hunting and trapping with the local boys. I decided to develop the ultimate lure for animals. I took the juice from a fresh squid and filled a dropper bottle with the stuff. Well, I forgot about my bright idea and 2 weeks later opened the bottle. Holy $hit...this had to be the worst and strongest smelling stuff on earth. (on the same level as "what crawled up there and died" x 100)
I bring the bottle onto the school bus the next day and secretly open the bottle....ROFLMAO as I recount the events to follow......The bus driver had to pull the bus over to evacuate the gagging kids.
Next was a whiff in the cafeteria....same deal, everyone cleared out.
Last was in the gym locker room. One of the kids grabbed the bottle and smashed it. I ran out of there before the bottle even hit the ground. The herd of kids out of there looked like wildebeest migration in Africa. I remember the coach running out, covering his mouth and nose, and yelling at me...."Are you responsible for this!!!!!????!!!!"

[id10t]

Aside from the usual BOFH (Bastard Operator From Hell) tricks like changing passwords to 32 digit numbers, etc. a fun one for Windows users is to take a screenshot of the desktop, set that as the wall paper, and move all the real icons off the screen. Click on an "icon" and nothing happens.

Setting up VNC and taking control of a user's mouse, etc. is fun too

[RickM]

One software based joke played on me a while back was an application labled as something interesting....can't remember what is was called. Anyway I double clicked and it went into a very fast and realistic (yet fake) deletion of all the files in all my directories. I nearly shat my pants as I unsucessfully scrambled to stop thing from running. I think I ripped the power cord out of the wall.

[Shuie]

Originally posted by id10t
a fun one for Windows users is to take a screenshot of the desktop, set that as the wall paper, and move all the real icons off the screen. Click on an "icon" and nothing happens.

. Thats great!


I worked at a movie theater when I was in high school. Have you ever seen how much popcorn they throw out at the end of a night? Its definitely enough to fill up the entire passenger compartment of an assistant managers car through an open sunroof.

Our highschool senior prank was to deflate one tire (ball bearing in the valve cap automates the process) pull the license plate from every car in the parking lot put them in a big pile. It was amazing how many people couldnt change a tire and had no idea what there plate number was. This took a group of 6 people to pull off and earned us all a week of detention after finals with a threat of no diplomas.

I worked in a plant for two semesters when I was in college. Our general foreman had a borderline violent anxiety disorder. We called his desk from one of the phones on the floor and then hung up on him 5 or 6 times. Once he had a good screaming case of the red-ass we conferenced the last call into the overhead page recording system when he picked up where he proceeded to scream and threaten whoever was calling him. 3 seconds after he hung up, the whole shop floor got the page of him screaming obscentities and threats and he got a free golf cart ride to HR.

[tabs]

No Comment

[Robert Coats]

Back in the early 80s, I was a Naval Aircrewman, flying in P-3 Orions.
.

To become aircrew, you had to pass a pretty tough check ride flight. It was always tradition to screw with the aircrew candidates on this flight. There was this officer who'd love to help out. He was a very short and thin guy, and could squeeze into small compartments on the aircraft. While the aircrew candidate wasn't looking, the other guys would stuff the officer into an impossibly small locker. Then, as the instructor was quizzing the candidate, he'd inquire about a circuit breaker that did not really exist. "It's not documented, but you need to know where it is. You have to open this door, and stick your arm way up inside to feel it. Go ahead."

Of course, the candidate would do exactly as he was told, and the officer inside would forcibly grab and yank on the kid's arm as hard as possible.

Even though our flightsuits were dark green, and the inside of the aircraft was poorly lit, it was easy to watch a dark patch of Nomex fabric appear, indicating involuntary urination

[Moses]

Our high school english teacher bought a new VW bug. He was so proud of himself for buying an "energy efficient" car.

Every day after he parked his car in the teachers lot we would sneak in and top off his tank. By the end of the week he was boasting to every class that he had put more than 150 miles on his new car and the gas gauge hadn't even budged!

His mileage degraded noticeably over the weekend. Didn't take long for him to figure it out.

[techweenie]

Moses: when I was a kid, the neighbors did that to a doctor on the block -- addinng increasing amounts of gas over a period of 2 months. He couldn't shut up about his great mileage.

Then they went the other way, adding less and less, and finally siphoning... the good doctor became very quiet. When his mileage dropped to half, the instigator broke the news. Apparently, the doctor had been bugging the VW service manager to the point where they were thinking about buyng the car back.

[}{arlequin]

I put that cold sore cream that numbs your lips on a minute or two before I saw and kissed my gf. Then I just sat back and enjoyed the "bug out" show. It makes it a little better if she's had a few...

[RickM]

At about seven I gave my younger brother Exlax and told him it was a candy bar. Need I say more?

[Hugh R]

In automechanics in high school (1970's) we used to take a capacitor for a distributor, zap it a few times with the high tension lead from a coil and toss it to someone. Yikes!

[johnco]

once time we wired my friend's horn to his headlights. unfortunately he went home before dark... but when his wife decided to sneak off to see her boyfriend at 2am while he was sleeping... busted! the blaring horn woke up the neighborhood before she could drive off.

[ejfbmw]

Most recent... Valentines' Day Flowers sent to each of my three (married) sisters with a card that read "You know why from you know who".

[joehahn]

One of our teammates on the high school lacrosse team used Clinique soap (ask your wife or girlfriend what it is) and he would freak if anyone used it. On away trips we would have 4 of us in a hotel room. I called first shower after one of our games and ripped out nearly my entire pubic triangle and ground it into his soap...deep...with my thumb. On the way out of shower I told him I had used his soap and it was marvelous. The pain that I endured was well worth it, listening to his screaming tirade. He wasn't too mad, he ended up being my best man, best friend etc and we still laugh about "Puby Soap". Give it a try on your significant other!

joe 68 L

[woodman]

1 tbs. Castor oil
1 chocolate shake for my little brother
-'nuff said

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1 bowl of chili
1 pig
1 School Library
-'nuff said

[LeeH]

Our high school chorus took a big trip every year. Once, we stayed at a hotel in Gatlinberg, TN where all the rooms faced a covered, indoor pool. Pretty cool when you're in high school. One guy was running late getting ready in the morning and headed in for a quick shower. Another guy quietly opened the bathroom door and removed every towel and article of clothing. Next we opened the room's curtains and door and called all the girls over to watch the show. He opened the door and dove back inside. Moments later he came out with a red face and wearing the shower curtain. Wonder what sort of punishment that stunt would bring today?