I was impressed with NPR last night. Carl Edwards did a story about maple syrup production in Vermont. At first it sounded like any other story until it jumped the shark by saying that maple trees need to be tapped or else they explode.
It was fantastic, I sat in my driveway with the truck running to hear the end of it.
My friends and I printed out sheets of paper that said, “Out of Order.” Then, we stuck them on the bathroom stalls in the girls’ bathrooms and the doors of the boys’ bathrooms. Some people got their lockers duct-taped and the French teacher taped some paper fish to people’s backs. Very lame, indeed.
You know, it would have been interesting if he had just left it- the placebo effect might have contented some people.
Lame? He/she was just following the Poisson d’Avril tradition! Good on him/her, I say.
The sysadmin did a nice one at my office…
sent out an email about new domain password rules going into effect, started out very matter-of-factly and then started getting more and more outrageous. (Change password every day, must be at least 15 characters long, include lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers, and at least one of three different groups of punctuation/symbols.) It ended up with a bit about the things that could not be included in your password… ‘name, birthday, favorite food, mother’s maiden name’… and on and on, ‘changeme, password, april, fools.’
I was only taken in for a split second… I swear!! 
I actually was fired. :mad: Bastards.
My friend who has been rather depressed lately had an away message up:
I AM SOOOOO HAPPPPYYYYYY!!!
My dog had his leg amputated on Wednesday, and was having a tough time of it. So my wife called the vet and let them know the dog was in pain. So he called a prescription into the local pharmacy. My wife thought that was pretty weird and let me know it. It being a people pharmacy and all. When she called to check to see if the prescription was ready, they said, “Oh, is this for the dog”? (remember this, it’s important later)
My job was to pick up the prescription on the way home from work. So I picked it up, then called her.
Her: Hello?
Me: I’m calling you from the backseat of a squad car.
Her: What?!?
Me: Yeah. Thanks alot. I guess the drug I picked up is used in the production of Meth, and the pharmacist thought the whole thing was fishy. So he called the cops.
Her: Dammit! I’m going to call that pharmacist and have him come over and look at our fucking dog, then see what he thinks. What an asshole! No wonder they knew it was for a dog when I called! (At this point, I could hear the conspiracy forming in her head, so I played on it)
Me: Yeah, I guess the cop has been waiting for hours. It’s lucky you and Riley (my 4y.o. son) didn’t come to pick it up.
Her: I can’t believe this! I am so pissed! I’m going to call that pharmacist right now.
Me: Well, the cop is inside talking to him. I guess he’s not quite sure about the law. It was just passed recently, and he was saying that I’m the first person he knows who’s been arrested for this. He’s going to have to check to see if the law has actually been enacted yet. I guess it passed last week sometime. Can you look at a calendar for me real quick?
Her: Yeah, just a sec. Okay.
Me: I guess he needs to know if it’s been enacted yet. What’s today’s date?
Her: Ummm, it’s the first.
Me: What month.
Her: April.
Me: (silence)
Me: (silence)
Me: (silence)
Me: (silence)
Her: You ASSHOLE
Me: Bwaaahahahahahahah!!!
Her: Where are you really?
Me: In the garage. I’ll be right in.
I get her every year. You think she’d learn.
I guess this year isn’t is bad as the time I put the life sized Rudy Boschwitz dummy behind the shower curtain. The day after we watched the Sixth Sense. After she purposely left the curtain open and various lights on the house on. Oh. And did I mention that she was nine months pregnant at the time?
Yeah. You’d think she’d learn.
Where exactly does one get a life sized Rudy Boschwitz dummy? Is there a Life Sized Rudy Boschwitz R Us? Does Walmart carry them?
That was great. I have to admit they had me until they got to the death count, where like 25 people had been decapitated this year alone. “How can I not have heard of this?” I thought, then it dawned on me…
Apparently, exploding maple trees alone wasn’t implausible enough to ring the BS alarm. That’s the hallmark of a great prank to me, when later I realize I bought something that in retrospect is utterly ridiculous.
This was a classic.
My favorite prank was one that I played way back in high school. I borrowed a tape recorder from the library, added bateries and stuck it under the lockers in my English class with a very special tape in it. The tape had mostly silence with random noises every few minutes.
The teacher started class and ten minutes in the first noises started. It sounded like it was comming from out in the hall. He stopped class and stepped out to disipline the troublemakers but there was nobody there. He returned and a few minutes later there were more noises, much to the delight of the class. At the beginning of the tape I had pretty normal sounds, armpit farts, banging metal, that sort of thing. As the tape progressed I put in stranger noises, clips from TV shows, a car horn. The final five minutes of my 45 minute tape (the length of a class) was nothing but piano music. By the time the tape got to that point the teacher was not stopping class and was not getting up to check the hall anymore. He tried to push through but finally he got tired of trying to teach over the music and headed toward the door. By sheer luck the tape ran out just as he got there and once again he found an empty hall.
Amazingly enough, someone was throwing him away! We found him standing in a dumpster. Granted, this was after he lost to Wellstone, so that’s where his political career was too. But I was in college, so he went with my decor. He’s wired for holding a lamp. He’s been to my wedding, and my sisters, while wearing a kilt. And on Christmas, we decorate him with a tangled ball of x-mas lights. (Oh christmas rudy, oh christmas rudy, how brightly glows your right hand) Everyone should have a life sized Rudy.
It got me, too.
Hubby and I were driving to a resturant when, during a lull in conversation, we happened to hear about the exploding trees. We actually discussed why this might happen-- that perhaps tapping the sap leads to higher production by the tree, which builds up when untapped and . . . .
Then I realized what day it was.
I loved the part about the Samoans boiling maple furniture to get out the sap. “Get back to work! And get that person doing the voice-over translation out of here!”
SDMB under nuclear attack!!!
Roommate set my clock several hours ahead of time. I woke up to him getting ready when he got up around 8 (an hour before I had to get up).
Him: Hey, Clay, you hit the snooze button twice before I left and you were still in bed when I got back for lunch… but man… what’d you do last night? I’m back from work and you’re…
Me looking at clock that says 3 pm: OH #*&%!!!
Him: (hystarical laughing)
Later in the day before I left for the week I unplugged my clock and set his an hour ahead. I left a note on the door (small and inside so he probably wouldn’t notice it before he checked the time) asking him what time it was.
Kind of a long one, but it got some yucks…
I recently got promoted at work and have 2 people under me; I’ll call them “S” & “D.” I get in before them, and go to my manager, asking for a month-end report, a big’un. She gives me a 500-sheet stack, and I divide it in two. S & D arrive in and I tell them that when they get settled, come see me; I have to give them a super-high-priority project. They do so, and stare with dismay at the two 250-sheet piles with 30 names per sheet.
I tell them that during the end-of-month processes the night before, some data corruption occured and all the people in the stacks had their 6-digit account numbers altered, and the mess needs straightening out. The corruption was linked to the last name of the primary account holder, and the criteria for fixing things are as follows:
A) If the last name has more E’s than A’s, the first and last numbers of the account have to be transposed.
B) If the name has more A’s than E’s, the last two numbers have to be transposed.
C) If there are more I’s than both A’s & E’s combined, circle the name in red, and we’ll deal with it later.
I stress again how high-priority this assignment was: my uber-manager had phoned me at home the night before, and he wanted it done by noon (at this point, S & D break into loud groans), but I told him that was physically impossible, and that he should expect it at the end of the day, today.
Today being April Fool’s Day.
Five second pause. 
:eek:
S: “You jerk!” :mad:
Ah, the respect and admiration of my co-workers: Who needs it!?!
OMG NurseCarmen-You ROCK!
What other pranks have you pulled on your wife? And has she ever gotten you back? (Yet?)
I gave the kiddo a bowl of gumballs for breakfast instead of cereal. They looked so befuddled for a second!
No. She’s never even tried to get me back really.
Well, taking all the screws off of all the door handles was the product of an electric screwdriver as a gift for christmas. They’d pop right off in her hand. But I guess the worst one was when I had a co-worker call and leave a message on our machine saying “John, I know I’m not supposed to call you at this number, but we have to talk…I’m pregnant”
Now before everyone jumps down my throat for being an asshole, this was after we had a big discussion that very morning about the merits of the day. I figured I would go over the top since she would know it was a prank. At least I thought she would know. I’ll admit that when she was able to laugh at herself for falling for it, she convinced me that this was a girl I should marry. Most of them aren’t planned out, just kind of spur of the moment, like the doggy drug arrest. She knows to keep alert on April 1st, and has shot down a few of my attempts.
NurseCarmen, you are evil. 
That was a perfect setup to remind her of the date.
My best office prank took place at a heavy equipment dealership I worked for. My job entailed going back and forth between the main office and the service department. While I was over there, I typed up a bogus fax in the style that our chief accountant usually sent out. In it, I said that because of the drought, Mrs. Finley (the owner’s wife) didn’t get any oranges from her groves. Therefore, all employees were taking a mandatory cut in pay to help get the orchards back in shape. I sent the fax to the service department and then waited about half an hour before coming back.
These are all good ol’ boy mechanics and one really high strung girl named Kathy who worked in Parts. They were all gathered together in one of the garage bays, looking like they were organizing a lynch mob. I just sautered on by, and Kathy ran out to me and screamed HAVE YOU SEEN THIS @#!%@#^@% FAX??? I started laughing and owned up to the prank. I was going to act like I was ignorant of it, but I couldn’t pull it off. Everybody wound up laughing about it, telling me I did a really good job of making the fax look convincing.
Another good one I pulled off was largely unintentional. A mechanic named Mike had a wife who got into trouble with the law. She was a nurse and had forged her doctor’s signature several times on various prescriptions. Mike told us about how the cops came to pick her up and she kept them waiting while she put on her makeup. Mike said he told them to go ahead and kick down the bathroom door and cuff her.
One day she called for Mike, who was at lunch. I took the message, and wrote it down on one of those WHILE YOU WERE OUT message pads. I put down his wife’s name, the time she called, and for location wrote down “Franklin County Courthouse.” I didn’t think anything more of it.
When he came back, he really DID call the courthouse. He then called home and asked her why she called from the courthouse. She said she didn’t, then asked him if he told everybody at work about her??? He BSed her and said we just play jokes on each other around here, and they got him good. He wasn’t mad at me about it or anything, but I apologized repeatedly because I didn’t think he’d actually call the courthouse.