What makes a prank great?

January 8, 2006 9:45 PM

What makes a prank great ? The Economist (of all places) is looking for the finest prank in history. I'd be happy just to hear your finest. "For the most impressively elaborate pranks, however, go to a university campus. Take thousands of bright young things with too much time on their hands, itching to achieve, amuse and misbehave, and splendid acts of delinquency will follow." See also: Shenanigans
posted by spock (53 comments total)

Rumor has it that some of the folks I went to high school with dug a big hole in this kid's backyard and then knocked on his door and asked for him, and then when he came to the door, they grabbed him and threw him into the hole.

I had nothing to do with it. Really.
posted by NedKoppel at 9:55 PM on January 8, 2006

That group of wacky MIT engineers who turned the Staute of Liberty around so that it was facing the other way...that's my favorite!
posted by ParisParamus at 10:07 PM on January 8, 2006

MY best prank? Well I think it was pretty good.

My stepmother's family owns a small cabin on a largely secluded lake in the adirondak mountains. We go up their for a week during the summer every so often with whoever is available to go. One year my two step sisters, my actual sister and I were there with my father, stepmother, etc. I don't even know how we got on this topic but it came out that my step sister was scared crapless of the Blair Witch Project movie and we were out in the middle of the woods with no roads or anything nearby, you had to take a boat to get to the cabin.

So I layed it on pretty thick after I found this out. Running through the woods at night yelling for Josh (a char from the movie) and waiting for her to go to the bathroom so I could get up and stand in the corner like in the movie. And that all freaked her out plenty and she made me promise not to do stuff like that anymore. So I agreed and let it go for the rest of the night. Then the next day I got a hatchet and some twine under the auspices of chopping kindling and tying bundles... but I actually constructed a pretty good replica of one of the little wooden person shaped things that were found hanging from the trees in the film. I asembled it secretly in the bunk house and hid it under the bed until it got dark. I went up their later and hung it up in the middle of the room.

After a while my step sister decided to go to the bunk house to get a flashlight. She came back screaming and totally lost her shit. It was PRICELESS. She refused to go back into the bunk until I took the thing down and was even hesitant to after I did. Anyway, that's my prank. Maybe doesn't sound so good in the retelling, but you should have seen her face... HA HA HA.
posted by Farengast at 10:14 PM on January 8, 2006

AskMetaFilter thread about college pranks.
posted by tweak at 10:15 PM on January 8, 2006

Names have been changed to protect the whiny.

When I was in marching band, there was this kid named Bob who was on the percussion squad with me.

Bob was the epitome of the fat, whiny cocksucker stereotype. Mouthed off without much to back it up other than pure insecure arrogance, threw tantrums whenver it suited his inability to cope with a situation or get his way, showed off his ability to find new depths of laziness whenever possible, etc. No one liked the kid, and he had no one to blame but himself.

One night during a home game, he said something fairly racist to one of the bass drummers. Luckily for everyone, the bass drummer was cool and didn't start a fight right there in the stands. Not-so-luckily for Bob, we all heard it, too.

We're all coming back from the field and we're discussing what happened, when someone gets a fun idea. See, Bob drove this little Chevelle to school and home games, and because he was a senior, he parked it in the nice paved lot with concrete parking spot barriers. Thing was, though, Bob was a little fatass, and when he would get in his sardine can, the floorboard would drop by several inches.

What were we to do? We lifted the front tires of that unfortunate Chevelle up and over the concrete barrier and didn't bother mentioning it to Bob, who didn't notice. When he got in his car later that night to go home, he quickly found that because of his weight, he couldn't back over the barrier. We left him there.

The lesson, other than don't be racist, is never, ever to fuck with band nerds.
posted by Mikey-San at 10:18 PM on January 8, 2006

mebbe Operation Mincemeat.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 10:18 PM on January 8, 2006

I sincerely apologize for my mixed tenses up there. I am ashamed of myself.

::emo::
posted by Mikey-San at 10:20 PM on January 8, 2006

I was cutting the hair of a friend of mine, and he started with the words "Just don't make me look like Bruce". Bruce was the biggest dickhead we knew.

Whodathunk that my friend's head was shaped identically to Bruce's? And whodathunk I'd get it done before he looked in the mirror? :)
posted by Kickstart70 at 10:23 PM on January 8, 2006

I used to live with a guy who got up before dawn to go to work. One April Fool's Eve I waited until he was asleep, then snuck out of bed, disconnected a couple of wires in the phone, and re- set all the clocks in the house for fifteen minutes before he had to get up. I went back to bed and pretended to be asleep. The alarm went off fifteen minutes later and he got up bitching that he felt like he just went to bed. He tried to call to check the time but the phone wasn't working, so he got dressed and left to pick up the friend that he drove to work with. It was midnight plus five, April first.
posted by puddinghead at 10:37 PM on January 8, 2006

Farengast, was the REAL prank the one you played on your sister or the one played on you that got you to watch that inexcusably bad film?
posted by herting at 11:05 PM on January 8, 2006

I was driving on the highway a long distance with a co-worker, who was sitting in the passenger seat. We'd been on the road for quite a while and he was whiling away the time by doodling on some paper in his lap. I spotted a heavy-duty tow truck towing a semi-trailer cab ass end first. I pulled up as close as I could behind it as my co-worker continued to doodle, oblivious to our surroundings. I tapped the brakes to throw us forward just a bit and screamed at the top of my lungs. He looked up to see the entire windshield filled with the view of a huge truck bearing down upon us, his ears filled with my screams. Two minutes later, after he had caught his breath and I had quit laughing, he could only ask "Why did you do that?" God that was good. I still laugh thinking about it and it was over 10 years ago.
posted by Roger Dodger at 11:05 PM on January 8, 2006

I set my dog on fire.
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:06 PM on January 8, 2006

A few friends of mine in college had a roomate they really despised. He was a big football player with a small car. One day while he was at class we got enough people, picked up the back end of the car and turned it 45 degrees on to the sidewalk. We used this thing that had been invented a few years ago called the "internet" to get a fake parking ticket off of alt.shen and put it on his windshield. I think the violation was "car parked all fucked up" or something like that. He seemed confused because he didn't remember parking halway on the sidewalk, so he went to the campus parking authority to straighten it out. He wouldn't talk about what happened next.

We also put a whistler into his tailpipe. Not knowing anything about cars, he asked his bike mechanic roomate (in on the prank) about it and he gave him some mumbo-jumbo about his noise-hose being loose or something and that it was really expensive to fix. He kept it in for a whole semester, and we could always hear his car all the way across campus. Had he only kept it in for another 15 years you might have heard of him instead of Bubb Rubb.

First post on the blue, but I think it's worth it.
posted by chemoboy at 11:20 PM on January 8, 2006

That dude who was fixing a light switch and pretended to be electrocuted and his wussy mate screaming like a beeotch and then jamming a banana in his face when he realised he was pretending.

Best. Prank. Evarr.

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=banana+electric+shock+video&meta=
posted by uncanny hengeman at 11:21 PM on January 8, 2006

For St. Patrick's day several years back, my local watering hole wrapped the bar's exterior in an enormous Irish flag. In the wee hours of March 18, a friend & I kidnapped said flag and held it for ransom. Computer-altered voice messages were left, and a "hostage negotiation" was held with me in a clown mask. I agreed to return the item, but didn't specify when or how. In the wee hours of April 1st, my friend and I hung the damn thing back up. My favorite prank evah.
posted by Banky_Edwards at 11:30 PM on January 8, 2006

I was recently on a 10 day cruise with a large group of friends. In retaliation for a lessor practical joke, I left prepared.

The mind molester is a device designed only to beep once every five minutes or so. Something like a cell phone low battery alert.

Long story short, set the device in offending parties room. They were predictably baffled. They called in cruise ship staff. Cruise ship staff dismantles much of the room, including the safe. Finally, hours later, cruise ship employee finds said device, and in his Jamaican accent proclaims "This does not belong to the cruise ship!"
posted by vaportrail at 11:43 PM on January 8, 2006

Ooh vaportrail, I have to get me one of those. My little brother has been annoying the hell out of me lately, and his room is always a mess, so this should be quite entertaining. I hope it arrives before I have to head back to campus. >:)

As far as pranks go, the closest I ever got to pulling one was telling said brother that I had hidden a used pad somewhere in his room, when I hadn't. He freaked out pretty badly about that, IIRC. (He deserved it though, we shared a bathroom and the little punk was going through a "I'm not going to lift the toilet seat when I pee or clean the piss off the seat when I'm done" phase at the time.)


My class' senior prank was going to be quite good. There were two parking lots in my old school: the main one, and a significantly smaller one for seniors only. Only upperclassmen received parking privileges. Anyway, seniors ended the school year a day before the other years, and it was typical for sophomores to fill up the senior parking lot on the last day of school.

Except for this particular year, when a group of seniors came to school extra early, carried all the lunchtables across campus (which no mean feat, as the lunch tables were pretty heavy and probably made of iron), forming a barrier to the entrance of the senior lot.

At least that's what would have happened. I overslept that day, and didn't want to brave the hellish school traffic to go see. But apparently the school admins made the seniors disassemble the barrier before school stared that day. Pity.
posted by kosher_jenny at 12:16 AM on January 9, 2006

Simple, slightly evil: Because we were organizing this big event at a hotel, our office was entitled to the use of one hotel room. Most of us took advantage, taking long steamy showers in the bathroom before heading off to the event downstairs. I noticed how fogged up the mirror was as I got out of the shower.

I'd read somewhere that if you drew on a mirror using your finger, the invisible marks would show up very clearly when it got fogged up. I cleaned the mirror, wrote "I'M WATCHING YOU" on the surface, and let the next person in line use the bathroom. Said person was highly superstitious, highly jittery individual, so I knew I was in for a good time.

She didn't let me down. We heard an agonizing scream, and saw her rush out of the bathroom with just a towel wrapped around her, stuttering, "THE... THE... THE..."

I'd have gotten away with it too if I hadn't lost it right there and then.
posted by micketymoc at 1:00 AM on January 9, 2006

One of the corner offices at my firm was occupied by a woman who was a bit "blurr" (read "spacey"). She had a plant in her office which was about 4' high – as were the rest scattered about the open plan office area. For two weeks I dragged the other plants into her office, one each day, until she literally had to bushwack to get through the door… and yet she still didn't twig (sad pun – sorry).

With no plants left to move into what became known as "the biosphere", I put together a fake article about how excessive exposure to plants can cause brain tumors, characterized by headaches and fatigue (her usual complaints). It was photocopied beside a current legit news article which was circulated to her "FYI". Within 5 minutes of reading the piece, she was off to the doctors office clutching the article… unfortunately we never got the diagnosis but the plants were removed soon after.
posted by missbossy at 1:34 AM on January 9, 2006

I've read ZUG forever, and they have good pranks. Punking Ashton Kutcher was the best.. you may have even heard some of it on the news.

Long story here.

Spoilers/Short story: they claimed to have hacked Ashton's cell phone. Of course, they hadn't, but the media reported that it may have happened. Then Ashton married Demi Moore. BEST PART EVER: they decided THEN to announce that the hack report was actually just a prank, and that so were the marriage reports! The media wasn't sure afterwards if the marriage was real. Best timing I've ever seen.
posted by bairey at 1:42 AM on January 9, 2006

These are pretty good.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 2:58 AM on January 9, 2006

One told to me by a friend. The Helsinki equivelant of MIT is responsible for this one. Also, the studens all look pretty similar, thanks to the overalls. Sorta like this.

In the centre of Helsinki there's a nice little walkway near the seaside and included here are dozens of white benches littered around so that people will have a place to sit. The students went out and purchased an identical version of one of these benches. They carried it around for a while, until a policeman came over and asks them to place it back. They present the receipt for the bench and so the cop, assuming this is some kind of gag, radios it in advising the other police not to bother stopping the students...

All the benches moved/disappeared pretty soon after this.
posted by slimepuppy at 3:34 AM on January 9, 2006

As far as elaborate hoaxes go, this case of art forgery was a good one:

1984 was the centenary of Amedeo Modigliani's birth (1884-1920) and great celebrations were staged in Livorno the city where he was born: exhibits, conferences, seminars. Three high school students bought a Black and Decker and managed to shape up a few stones as rough oblong human heads, big olive shaped eyes and long thin mouths. They threw the stones in one of the Fossi (Canals of the port system) and then spread the story that Amedeo Modigliani (the famous painter and sculptor) leaving Livorno to go to Paris in a fit of frustration against the ungrateful city dumped his sculptures in the Fosso. Sure enough the stones were retrieved and all the most important Italian art experts and critics published articles on the fantastic recovery of Modigliani's sculptures. The Superintendent of Fine Arts in Livorno even organized a special exhibit of the stones that was an international success.

The boys, at that point felt ashamed by the ballooning story, eventually confessed the hoax, but nobody would believe them. It was only when they supplied the press with the pictures of themselves in the process of manufacturing the heads with the Black & Decker that the hoax was finally accepted as such. The embarrassment of the Italian art experts was total: some of them had the courage to insist supporting the idea that their opinion was more credible than the pictures. Some of them preferred a long silence. The story of the Teste di Modigliani is still great fun in Livorno and a good example of how you can do your own artwork, if you really want. Black & Decker ran pages of ads with the fake heads and with the obvious line: it's unbelievable what you can do with a Black & Decker.

(also mentioned here)
posted by funambulist at 3:41 AM on January 9, 2006

A couple, from my time at university.

1) Ah, holidays in dorms. They get boring. And, since the colleges all get newspapers every day, there is an ample supply of paper. Also, the rooms in the dorm have louvers over the doors - which are easy to remove with a small amount of patience. One winter break, when the normal occupant of the room was not present, a great deal of time was spent in the hallway scrunching up newspaper and throwing it over the door. We filled the room. Since the door opened inwards, the guy had a time of it trying to get back in. They made the louvers lockable after that.

2) April fools' day. The engineering first-years (about 50 of us) pulled a good one. Since April is close to semester start here, and rooms for lectures are usually still pretty flexible, we went around to all the lecture theatres and put overhead transparencies advising a change of location for the 10am lecture - to one, particular lecture theatre. I think we had around 5000 students (and more than a few lecturers!) try to rock up to a theatre that usually seats about 300.

Ah, joyous days.
posted by Jerub at 4:01 AM on January 9, 2006

My favourite art-hoaxer is Han Van Meegheren (Wikipedia link). Arrested at the end of WWII for selling a Dutch national treasure -- Christ and the Adultress by Vermeer -- to an enemy of the state -- Goering -- his extraordinary defence was that he was in fact a national hero because the painting wasn't a Vermeer, it was a Van Meegheren. In fact the entire body of Vermeer's early work was Van Meegheren. Moreover, he would prove it by painting a completely new Vermeer while under house arrest.

Which he did.

The Dutch, a pragmatic people, dropped the treason charges and brought in forgery charges. Van Meegheren was found guilty, sentenced to two years, and died in prison. There's a lot more to the story, and it's worth looking up and reading.

The best detail: when Van Meegheren sold Goering the fake Vermeer, Goering paid him in counterfeit currency. Both biters bit.
posted by Hogshead at 4:21 AM on January 9, 2006

The Economist (of all places)

Actually, the Economist is a generally very jokey magazine newspaper magazine. They use far too many puns (pretty much every headline) and frequently use their editorial cartoons as the main illos for articles. And their year-end issue is always full of fun little things like this.

To be honest, I wish they'd stop being so "puckish" or whatever they intend by the joking. But they give far more depth and context than the other weekly newsmagazines (Newsweek & Time). They're also predictably conservative, in a basically libertarian way, which means I can compensate for and filter out the biased information, unlike with Time where there simply isn't any information to filter out in the first place.
posted by jiawen at 4:57 AM on January 9, 2006

I set my dog on fire.

Mouse set on fire, burns down house.. Most amusing.
posted by TheDonF at 5:26 AM on January 9, 2006

For added enjoyment, googling Hugh Troy might unearth a few gems. One of his that I vaguely remember reading about was stealing a "JESUS SAVES" sign from a church's lawn and putting it in front of a bank.
posted by alumshubby at 6:04 AM on January 9, 2006

When I lived in Australia, we were staying in a row of townhouses. The townhouses were two floors with flat roofs. There is no entrance to the roof.

During the day, I surreptiously unlocked my neighbor's ground floor bedroom. That night, we snuck while he was at his girlfriend's and emptied his room of all its contents. Then we put everything, bed, dresser, clothes, desk, all up on the roof in the exact fashion he had set up in his room.

It was absolutely priceless, and we got it all on video tape, including his reaction and rage.
posted by Like the Reef at 6:15 AM on January 9, 2006

slimepuppy: That's not even the best prank ever pulled at TKK.

Back in the 1950sThe sailing ship Vasa was being lifted in Sweden. As the Wikipedia article says the process included the ship lying in shallow water for a long while it was being prepared for the final lift. Well, the diving club of the Finnish university purchased a miniature version of the statue of legendary Finnish olympic runner Paavo Nurmi, took a trip to Stockholm and surreptitiously placed the statue on the still submerged ship. The astounding "find" then caused quite a stir until someone realized that it was a copy of the statue.
posted by fred_ashmore at 6:40 AM on January 9, 2006

jiawen, your description of The Economist is almost exactly the one I used to apply to Time. I stopped reading it when I realized I could accurately predict what it would say about any given topic (usually including the puns). Glad to hear am not missing anything.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:41 AM on January 9, 2006

We were going through a rough time in the office, with firings and very low morale. Going in one morning buttcrack early, I put a warning as the desktop background on every computer that the system was being remotely monitored by "BS Systems," with every keystroke being recorded, etc. Then, I put label tape around every computer saying that it had been audited. Everyone, not being very computer savvy, were scared shitless. In the warning, I also said not to click this icon at the center of the page as it would cause immediate memory failure of the system. I also went so far as to rearrange everyone's desk space, that it might look rifled through. I had a very hard time keeping myself composed, as it was very very tense. After a few hours, one colleage obviously couldn't stand not clicking on the icon, which opened a large flashing screen which said "Danger, Security Breach!" She started flipping, when suddenly the big flashing screen reverted to simply, HA HA. I ROFLed, and was almost killed. In that office, BS Systems is now a euphemism.
posted by moonbird at 6:52 AM on January 9, 2006

So, I lived this dorm that had an exposed 6" pipe that crossed the hall about 8' above the floor about halfway down the hall. This one fat ass was in a habit of running down the hall, jumping up, and swinging on the pipe every time he went down the hall. It was annoying after a while because you could hear him comming... footsteps running, jump, swing, loud landing (it was on the second floor), footsteps running. So, finally we greased the pipe so next time he comes running down the hall... footsteps running, jump, swing, pause, even louder landing and him busting his ass. He stopped after that.
posted by puddsharp at 6:56 AM on January 9, 2006

fred_ashmore, I can't believe I forgot about that...
Thanks for refreshing my memory!
posted by slimepuppy at 7:04 AM on January 9, 2006

As with any really good prank, I actually feel a little guilty about this one.

April Fools Day 1999. I was working as a presentation layer developer for a division of a major magazine and internet publisher who shall remain nameless except to say that there was a "Z" and a "D" in the name. We were responsible for maintaining and redesigning a "corporate"-channel online learning site. Security was a constant concern. So we decided to fake a site hack as an April Fools joke on the Director that we all reported up to.

I grabbed the page code and creatively modified it. For example, instead of offering a bundle of some newsletter with a subscription, we'd offer a year of Hustler; to have us offering classes on how to write macro viruses (remember macro viruses?) and hack Exchange servers; and lots of other "clever" stuff (we only got started the day before, so I could only get just so clever).

Meanwhile, our manager snuck into the director's office on a pretext and edited his .lmhosts to point the normal site URL to a web on our dev server, where I would be hosting the final result.

Finally, our manager solicited the help of our divisional president and our IT director, and the stage was set. While my boss was in a meeting with our uber-boss, the president stuck his head in and said "[name], I think somebody hacked the site. You'd better take a look at it." He looked. He blanched. He ran down the hall to the IT director's office; IT director had been given an direct link to our dev server and had the page up on screen. They dragged it out until the IT director broke out laughing. I didn't get to see it, but I'm told it was kind of priceless.
posted by lodurr at 7:30 AM on January 9, 2006

I lived in a beach town. Once 3 of us got this 8 or 9 year old kid to go along with us on the following prank.

On a sunday, on the main drag we were driving and this kid pretened to jump out in front of the car and get hit . .he was pretty convincing. . .

We then got out of the car and got him and threw him in the trunk and sped off, letting him out (and giving him a dollar, I think) when we got out of sight of the "witnesses."

OK I was young and dumb. . .it seemed funny at the time. . no other excuse.
posted by Danf at 7:31 AM on January 9, 2006

When I was newly married and working in a management position, I had an intern Naomi, working for me . I invited her to have dinner with my wife (whom she had never met) and I at our house. When I got home I found my wife had also invited her friend Karen to our house for dinner.

Karen arrived before Naomi and I hatched the plot. When Naomi arrived I introduced Karen as My wife and my wife as Karen. The whole meal I called Karen dear and honey. At the end of the meal I said "Karen, I need to talk to you about something and went into the bedroom. My wife followed.

A few minute later Karen speaking as my wife said "Let's go see what they are up to". They went to the open door of the bedroom and found my wife and I slightly undressed and passionately embracing. Naomi freaked and said she was going to quit the internship. We had a great laugh later.
posted by Xurando at 8:34 AM on January 9, 2006

Danf, shit like that can get you arrested, or worse.

Friend of a friend pulled something similar a few years back.
For a film they were doing, they did a mock daylight kidnapping. Two guys in black suits grabbed a guy at a train platform and bundled him into the back of a van and sped off. Small camera, unknowing audience. Great reactions all around. Then someone calls the police and there's a helicopter canvasing the area looking for the abducted man...
They fessed up and got a rather stern written warning (which he apparently has framed on his wall). Waste of police time and effort away from chasing real criminals. Stupid really.

Same with the guys that decided to shoot a scene involving fake guns at a parking structure at Heathrow airport. A wee bit too close to being killed by the armed response unit that showed up.
posted by slimepuppy at 8:39 AM on January 9, 2006

I swear to God I'm going to pistol whip the next guy who says, " Shenanigans."
posted by reverenddrjice at 9:06 AM on January 9, 2006

Hey reverenddrjice, what's the name of that restaurant you like with all the goofy stuff on the wall and the mozzarella sticks?
posted by slimepuppy at 9:25 AM on January 9, 2006

slimepuppy: You're talking about Chotchkies, right? (Don't forget to wear your Flair....)
posted by lodurr at 9:51 AM on January 9, 2006

I founded Scientology. I kinda regret it now.
posted by iron chef morimoto at 12:03 PM on January 9, 2006

Same with the guys that decided to shoot a scene involving fake guns at a parking structure at Heathrow airport. A wee bit too close to being killed by the armed response unit that showed up.

Yeah, when I was in the theater program at a community college in Miami in the early '90s, some of us did a series of Miami Vice spoof videos. One day we were shooting at a Metrorail station. We'd given a couple of our actors toy plastic guns that had been spray-painted to look real (originally they were bright orange; we made them black and silver).

At the station parking lot, we reviewed Rule #1: "Do NOT take your guns into the station." So what did our handsome, amiable, stupid lead actor do? Not only did he take his gun with him, he walked on to a train with the gun in his hand.

Passengers (including an undercover cop) evidently thought he was holding his female co-star (who boarded immediately in front of him) hostage. Meanwhile, station security had followed our crew upstairs to the platform, wondering what we were up to, and arrived just in time to glimpse Mike walk into the train with gun in hand.

The security guards drew their very real guns, and started running and screaming. The cameraman started shouting, "It's FAKE! It's a FAKE GUN!"

A few second later, our actors walked back off the train with hands in the air, having narrowly averted being shot. By sheer luck, the undercover cop was the father of a friend of ours -- otherwise we probably would have all been arrested. (Those of us who didn't manage to sidle innocently away from the whole debacle, as I was trying to do.)

Good times.

Um, I guess that wasn't a prank. Fun story, tho.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:06 PM on January 9, 2006

What about Czech dream?
posted by deltakaye at 12:10 PM on January 9, 2006

It was traditional that we prank a specific member of our group in college on his birthday (November 16th) every year. One year we used half a dozen rolls of packing saran to envelope his car a couple dozen layers deep. Underneath, over top and around and round. We then sprayed the car with a couple litres of liquified petroleum jelly. Once the solvent evaporated the car was very slick indeed. And it being November in Canada all the outside water had already been turned off.
posted by Mitheral at 2:35 PM on January 9, 2006

slimepuppy: A similar parkbench prank was chronicled in Neil Steinberg's If At All Possible, Involve a Cow. I believe the prank took place in late 1800's/early 1900's.
posted by [hifidigitalboy] at 5:55 PM on January 9, 2006

This is a pretty good prank on Oprah
posted by pekar wood at 7:50 PM on January 9, 2006

Best prank ever?

A bunch of the guys nominated an incompetent drunk to be President of the United States. You wouldn't believe what happened after that!
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 9:11 PM on January 9, 2006

I orchestrated and oversaw the placement of bean dip into the unfortunate first-sleeper's armpit during a birthday sleepover. Nothing very grand about it, but you have to give me points for originality. The best part was when he woke up and yelled (waking up the birthday boy's parents), "who the f- put bean dip in my armpit!?"
posted by blendor at 10:07 PM on January 9, 2006

As an homage to Goober in "The Chocolate War", we unscrewed chairs on the stage in our auditorium for (HS)graduation practice. We entered in rows, alphabetically, and then practiced sitting down in unison. Random chairs collapsed, and the phrase "I busted my ass to graduate" was common for a while.
posted by jsteward at 11:01 PM on January 9, 2006

BREAKING NEWS

"It was fairly graphic. There was an elderly lady sitting across from me and she was giggling behind her book."

She said the announcement concerned a man's endowments and performance and "it was very complimentary."

http://thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,17789466^953,00.html
posted by uncanny hengeman at 6:23 PM on January 10, 2006

The Homeland Security Advisory System Neighborhood Awareness Program (HSASNAP.)
posted by warbaby at 6:30 AM on January 18, 2006

Used to work for a Texas oilman who told of the time his head office sent an intern to work with him in Ohio while the intern's wife arranged for moving the family up.

My boss was with him everywhere they went. If they went to a restaurant and the intern needed to use the bathroom, my boss would get in there first and spray MACE. They'd go home for the night and my boss would sneak to the intern's rental car first and douse the interior with MACE. This went on for two trips to Ohio (and three to a doctor) and finally the guy turned down the transfer and stayed in Texas, lost his down payment on a house, took the For Sale sign down on his own... because he was allergic to something in Ohiob and they couldn't find out what it was.

Yes... my boss was a prick.
posted by hal9k at 8:36 AM on January 18, 2006