Pranks

In My Humble Opinion
21

Ooh ooh ooh I’ve wanted to share this one for a long time: Microsoft Word has an autocorrect feature for mistakes you make frequently. You can add words that you always mistype and it will fix them automatically. At my old job, we’d go into each other’s computer and set it to change our names from “John Doe” to “John ‘Big Penis’ Doe” When they’d type their name in a memo, it would change to the offending choice.

Make sure you only do it to someone who checks their work before sending it somewhere. The best part is when they retype and retype and can’t figure out why it keeps changing.

22

After breaking up with my bad ex-boyfriend I put “for sale” signs on his brand new BMW with his phone number and the amount $1,000

:smiley:

Huzzah!

23

One year I took all of the drawers out of my sister’s dresser, and put them back in upside down. Clothes still in the drawers. It’s really easy to do when you use a piece of cardboard to keep the clothes from falling out until you put the drawer back in. Hilarity ensues.

Another good one: Unbolt the bench seat in a 1990 F150, then turn the seats around backwards and re-bolt them in. Hide every wrench and ratchet you can find. Leave town.

–==the sax man==–

24

One of my all time favorites: Surreptitiously add gasoline to a friend or family member’s car over a period of days, enough so that they go twice as far as normal on a full tank. Wait until they really notice and begin to accept it as a matter of course; sometimes they’ll even brag about it. Then reverse the process, siphoning the tank, so that they only go half as far as normal. Continue for as long as you added gas. It’s pretty perplexing to them if you can manage to keep the secret and in the end, no one’s out any money. I did it to my stepmother and it ticked my dad off when she kept insisting that she was getting 40mpg in a 1983 Lincoln Continental. So much so that he started driving the car to try and prove her wrong. That’s when I started siphoning. Yep, she was wrong, the car only got 10mpg. It still cracks up everyone but him, 17 years later.

25

I sometimes mess with retractable pens that are left in the open. I open them, reverse the cartridge, then close again.

26

Two favorites of mine growing up:

Using a really long string to tie a piece of my sister’s hair to the doorknob of her bedroom while she was asleep. When my mother would come in to wake her in the morning and open the door, it practically scalped her.

I also enjoyed gluing our neigbors’ mailboxes shut.

27

Isn’t there some way to prevent caller ID units from identifying you? I vaguely recall seeing an ad for some box that you plug into your phone line and it prevents caller ID from showing your number. I also heard about pressing *(some 2 digit number) to do the same thing. Anyone know what I’m talking about?

28

Something written on peoples lawns with fertilizer.

Get a cheap leash and collar and tie it to a friends bumper. Toss it all under the car. Write your phone number on the collar. Somebody will talk to them about it eventually. For an enemy, tie the collar on some roadkill first. (no phone number)

Use duct tape and newspaper to cover someones front door. from the top, fill with packing peanuts or snow in winter. They open the door… stuff comes in.

Take an ad in the paper for a neighbor having a yard sale on 6AM Saturday morning. (oldie but goodie).

If it’s hot out, put a few dollops of shortening on your friends car. It’ll melt down it and it’s a mother to clean it off. (I know)

Got a homophobe in the area? Buy them a subscription to a rauncy gay magazine. (postmen talk)

Go to a pet store in the mall and buy a bunch of feeding mice. Let them go in the mall.

Mail a friend a sweet perfumed letter with some perfumed panties. Make sure his SO gets the mail. Give him a day or two then confess. (gotta be careful on that one sometimes)

Impersonate your boss on the phone and call someone in the office telling them angrily that they are screwed and they need to be in his office in 5 minutes with the latest project.

Send new workers out to pick up an ASH Receiver (ash tray), BA-1100-N (balloon)… fell for that one myself and they had me running around for 6 hours, squeegie sharpener, frequency grease, electron lubricant, etc. whatever works.

29

Order several thousand crickets or mealworms from a site such as this one. Release them wherever you think they would have the most desirable effect.
Want to make something smell like B.O.? You want a substance called butyric acid, available in pure form at chemical suppliers. Warning: highly potent as a pure substance.

30

During the dying days of the Eisenhower administration I was attending a little fresh water college in Missouri (an error in judgment that I would just as soon not discuss). A guy down the hall had a Renault Dauphine, an awful rattletrap of a car. It was small enough that four or six strong young men could pick it up and carry it off. If sufficiently enthused or intoxicated, they could carry it up the steps of the library and wedge it between the pillars on either side of the main entrance. That happened a couple of times but I have no idea who may have been involved.

31

there used to be this wonderful site called laughnet but for some reason it got erased from the web or something… it had this webpage that had a whole LIST of pranks… i think i copy/pasted it somewhere on this computer but i’m not sure… but i remember this good one:
ok, it’s a recipe for snap powder:
snap powder is a pressure-sensitive explosive (sort of like nitroglycerin, but waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay less destructive) I always wanted to make it but i never could get the ingredients: iodine crystals and ammonium hydroxide. mix them together until it makes a brown sludge and let dry. you can sprinkle it around, but i don’t know what it does, though… never tried it. so go easy!

:slight_smile: have fun…

32

Mini-Explosion Part One: Use canned air (like that used to blow dust off computers or camera equipment) held upside down to partially fill a small plastic film canister with the FREON-like liquid. Put the cap on and turn the canister cap-side-down (this freezes the cap on). After a few minutes, the warming fluid creates enough pressure to pop the canister into the air. For fun, add small particles for a shrapnel-like effect (ie: Cherrios, dried beans, eraser crumbs, etc.). My favorite cansiter to use is Polaroid Film coater canisters, because they are smaller, and seem to take more pressure before blowing = bigger POP!

After terrifing/amusing a coworker with this stunt, he wanted to know how to do it. I showed him the correct way.

Part Two: I suggested that the coworker try it for himself. I handed him the canister and A SPECIALLY PREPARED can of air. I had previously drilled a small hole in the back of the nozzle, so that when pressed, the air (or FREEZING LIQUID) would spray right onto the user’s fingers. It took him a long time to get enough liquid into the canister, and a lot dripped off his fingers which frustrated him - because it worked so neatly for me. This froze his thumb and finger very well.

Part Three: After 20 minutes of him whining about his cold digits, I showed him the specially prepared nozzle. He vowed never to have anything to do with me again and promptly quit his job. I never saw him again. Tsk.

33

What, no one TP’s any more??? Get a few rolls of toilet paper, a carfull for friends, and drive to the victims house. Jump out, toss the TP around so that great big long streamers of toilet paper go everywhere. Jump back in the car and drive off. You can really make a mess of someone’s yard in under a minute.

34

I can’t believe nobody mentioned putting Saran wrap on the toilet seat yet. Make sure you put it on the bowl, not the cover, because it’s easy to notice on the cover.

If you want to pull a prank at work, set keyboard settings to Dvorak. A coworker and I did this to my boss’s computer April Fools Day two years ago (this coworker happened to be the tech guy) and when my boss called him he chastised the boss for probably pouring a beer on the keyboard and that he’d have to pay 300 bucks for a new one. He then gave my boss a replacement, and when that one acted up again my friend told him he couldn’t use any computers for the rest of the day because he kept on ruining the keyboards. We let him file for an hour (filing being the most menial task we could think of) until we broke down and told him. The three of us were beet red, my friend and I do to the hilarity of the situation, the boss because of anger. The lesson of the story: the tech guy can be your best friend. They command so much respect and power they probably abuse it all the time.

Also, in college chemistry we made contact explosives. Whip up a few of those if you want, but remember they’re incredibly sensitive and only use a pinch. I’m not a chemist, so you should consult one of those first.

35

i’ve always wanted to go to someones house the day before they get home from vacation, and put crime scene tape all around it. and maybe a couple of dead body outlines on the ground.
sadly, someone did this a couple weeks ago in a nearby town, and got arrested for it. cops have no sense of humor.
when my sister got maried, my boyfriend and i went to her house and filled her bath tub up with real hot water and a case of jello. it didn’t set up real ood, but was stilla bitch to clean.
of course you could sprinkle a little sugar on the ground by someones gas tank. then drop an empty sugar sack nearby. gets 'em every time.
or you could take a squirt bottle of bleach and write appropriate messages on their front lawn.
or superglue the little tire nipple caps on. (can’t think what their called)
repaint their car with water based paint?

i spent alot of time during my last divorce thinking this stuff up. never did any. well, never did most. it was theraputic.

36

Dump a generous amount of palmolive dishwashing soap into a mall fountain. or any fountain for that matter…

If you live with roommates, take a pipe wrench and TIGHTEN the mayonaise or peanut butter jars or both, hide wrench…

Take about three or four battery powered alarm clocks. set them to go off every 2 hours or so through the night. Stash them in different places in the adversary’s bedroom…

37

Tried and true pranks

-Remake someone’s bed by tucking the top sheet into the top of the bed, fold it and remake the bed leaving a small pocket to climb into. Very funny when roomie is too sleepy to figure out the problem.

-Similarly, sew up a few of his socks halfway down with matching thread. Put them back where you found them.

-Sew pockets shut.

-Write messages on bedroom ceilings in glow in the dark paint.

-Mix water and flour into a paste and use it to glue bowls, plates and cups onto the counter. (Don’t do it to wood.) You can dissolve it later with warm water.

-Send one saucy secret admirer letter to someone and don’t ever say anything. Too many letters will get you caught, though.

-Flour or sugar in a sleeping bag. (Cruel if it’s the first day of a ten day trip.)

-Put a few cotton balls inside the toes of shoes.

-(Truly mean) Put all of someone’s undies in the freezer in the middle of the night. (Underwire takes forever to warm up.)

-Mutter under your breath agitatedly in a crowded elevator.

-Hand out flowers on a corner and tell people to pray for world peace.

-Start up a conversation with someone you’ve never met by saying, “Boy, it’s been a while…” Don’t ever let them ask you where you know each other from. But ask general questions like, “So how did things turn out for you after school?” Act like they should know what you’re talking about at all times.

-In the middle of a group of friends talking, turn to the person next to you and examine their scalp closely. At first just look, then try brushing their hair once. Be sure to say, “Oh, sorry. It was nothing.” Then after a moment look at them with new concentration and grab their heads and start preening them like an ape (Don’t be afraid to use teeth). Hysterical to every but the victim.

-Moon doggie. (Great with an audience, especially if you’ve already done this to them) In the middle of a conversation with someone, stop them and say, “Wait, did you hear something? (Pause to listen.) No, sorry. Must be hearing things. Go on.” Let them talk for another 10- 15 seconds. “No, wait. There it is again. Did you hear that?” They usually say no. “Oh, sorry. Must just be me. Continue.” They talk a little more. Sit upright, “Wait, now you can’t tell me you didn’t hear that.” Have the conversation about how they didn’t hear anything. “I’m sorry. I was sure I hear something.” (Spook them if you can by looking a certain direction and making them look.) “No wait, there it is - (Scream) Moon Doggie!” and then you dog pile them. Tons of fun.

Hey, you have to do something in college when you don’t drink.

38

How would you like it if every time you typed ‘boards.straightdope.com’ in your browser, or clicked on a link to boards.straightdope.com you ended up at http://www.teletubbies.com ? It is a very easy prank on a Windows PC.

Open the file C:\windows\hosts with notepad. This file is sort like a mini DNS server. You can associate any IP address with any host name.

To do the prank you need 2 things. The host name of the site your victim will try to go to (boards.straightdope.com), and the IP address of the site you want them to end up at (194.205.172.174). You can find the IP address by pinging the site.

Add this to the hosts file:


194.205.172.174 boards.straightdope.com

Restart the PC.

Make sure you don’t leave it like that, you don’t want the victim to go insane.

It is probably not a good idea to to redirect common sites to porn sites on other people’s computers. Espescially work or school computers. :smiley:

39

[hijack]

Hey, mblackwell, how do you ping a site?

[/hijack]

40

sewalk, that was great! Wish I had the time an energy to pull off one like that.

Some I have seen done:

Roommate goes away on trip. Take spare car key, go to the airport and move there car one or two sections over, but approximatley the same space.

Back when our answering machines had the little tapes inside, some fellow employees went around to a bunch of different peoples desks, put all the outgoing message tapes in a paper bag, shook them up, and then redistributed them randomly. It took several days for some people to realize that their phone had someone else’s name answering it. This was an April Fool’s prank. Modern day corollary: with cubicles at work it can be fairly simple to swap people’s phone lines.

The next year they sent an official memo out from security to people saying that they had found “personal calls” in their phone logs and should report to security right away. But the phone number that they gave was from some brand new employee who had no idea what was going on.

An old one, leave an empty purse in the middle of the street but attach some thin fishing line. When someone tries to pick up the purse reel the purse away from them.

Also old, bake a large sponge into the center of a birthday cake, especially for old people’s birthdays.

Inspired by a recent column in SI: Get the Jumbotron at your local sports arena to put up on the board something like, “Sue, will you marry me?” Make sure they know where you will be sitting so the camera guy can capture the surprised fiancee’s expression. When you see that your image is splashed on the screen, have the woman smack the hell out of the guy, then continue whacking on him will he crawls away in shame. Guaranteed to make Sports Center highlights and possibly end this practice once and for all.