SUPER COLLECTION OF PRACTIAL JOKES (NOTE: This contains all 4 parts, concatenated.) From davidv@sco.COM Sat Dec 2 09:53:06 1989 From: davidv@sco.COM (David Vangerov) Subject: Super Collection of Practical Jokes (part 1 of 4) here it is, as promised (and requested), 3500 lines of practical (and not so practical) jokes that folks have played. my thanks to davidbe@sco.com for editing the thing oh so long ago. due to the fact that it got edited, attributions have been lost in this file, but somwhere in the depths of my account i have the orginal headers and what not (360K or so, compared to 170K for this file). enjoy... ------- One joke that we did in residence was the Chinese Fire Drill, I don't quite know why it is called that. Anyway.. The victim is on the pot in the dorm washroom. Everyone grabs a bucket (we used the waste baskets from our rooms) and fills the buckets with water. Take a paper bag and set it on fire, toss it under the door into the stall. Yell fire as everyone tosses the water into the stall. Needless to say the fire as well as the victim get very wet. This one fellow in the house was hit a number of times and took to relieving himself in other locals. We followed him a couple of times and nailed him in many parts of the residence. Later of course we conspired with our victim to get back at the original instigator of the drill. The guy in the stall had a bucket of water, and when the the instigator tossed the bag in we all hit him. ********* It is common for draftsmen to sprinkle SCUMEX (powdered rubber eraser) on tracings prior to doing any drawing on it. This reduces smearing of the pencil marks and such and results in a cleaner tracing. At a former employers we had replaced the Scumex at one draftsmans desk with dried parmesian cheese. It looked about the same. It was extremely interesting watching him draw for a while and then begin to smell the paper. Took the poor dude almost 10 minutes to guess that he had been gigged! ********* I just pulled one on somebody -- I slipped some of those anti- shoplifting strips into the lining of the victim's favorite jacket. I was set to pull another one, but didn't get the chance - to cut out a silhouette of a gun from metal and hide it in a piece of carry-on luggage. ********* Two teachers at my high school started a practical joke war that culminated in a junk mail war of huge proportions. They finally called a truce and got it cleared up and the mail stopped, EXCEPT for the military mail that one had signed the other one up for. He wrote (honestly) that he had graduated from a fine college and was interested in the Marines, Air Force, etc. etc. When I left, about two years after this, he was still getting PHONE CALLS from 2-4 times a month.... they were VERY persistant even over he (loud) objections that he was 45 and not interested in a career change... ********* New secretary (second day on the job) answers telephone as is told in official tones: "This is the phone company. We are testing a new circuit wiring scheme in your offices. Please keep everyone off the phones for the next 10 minutes. We will be verifying the correct wiring of your system by passing HOT STEAM through the wires. Instruct your employees to place their phones on the floor, or, better yet, wrap them in towels to avoid scalding themselves. We will advise you when the tests are complete *click*" After momentary panic, the secretary begins a frenzied "Paul Revere" routine, running from desk to desk while glancing frequently at her watch. Just as the 10 minutes are about up, she bursts into her boss's office (while he is in the midst of an important long-distance call) and, screaming, grabs the receiver from his hand and flings the whole phone under his desk... ********* Tell someone you can pin a glass of water to the wall -- a real glass, not a paper cup, using an ordinary straight pin. Naturally they won't believe, so you set out to prove it. Get a glass of water and a pin. Hold the glass up to the wall and start to pin it up. And then drop the pin. You've got the glass in position just right, so you ask your victim real nice to get the pin for you. When they bend down to pick it up, dump the water on their head. This works especially well when there's a crowd of people watching. It can also be very dangerous for the joker, so be careful if you try it. ********* one time in my undergrad days, it was snowing like mad out. someone decided it was time a make a snowball. then someone else suggested that we should put this snowball in this one guy's room-- nobody liked this guy-- so when the word got around, half the people in our dorm section came out and help! we got this sucker so BIG that it must be at least 4 feet in diameter. it took about 6 person to haul the darn thing up 3 flights of stairs. we got the snowball into this guy's room while he was out, turn off the heat in the room and left all the windows open, so the snowball won't melt too fast. well... the turkey came back 3 hours later and found a HUGH snowball sitting in the middle of his room, and started melting! I still have the picture of the snowball. (if you really wonder how big the snowball is, just imagine a snowball the size of a normal dinning room chair!) ********* This reminds me of a similar stunt we used to enjoy at the dining hall in my undergrad days. The food service used opaque plastic salt and pepper shakers with pop-off tops that could be pried off with a knife blade if you were persistent enough. PREPARATION (in a restroom nearby): (1) Empty salt ( or pepper) from a previously 'acquired' container and fill about 1/3 full with concentrated lemon juice. (2) Place a thin tissue across the opening, poke it down a bit to form a depression, and fill the depression with about a teaspoon of baking soda. (3) Cover (from the inside) the holes of the top with tape of the appropriate color. (4) Replace top on container and trim visible tissue from around the top. Carry the device to dining hall (upright and as stable as is possible... for your own sake). After discretely placing the shaker on your table (only place it near to you... see caveat #1 below), observe the next person to use the salt (pepper). (S)He will shake lightly at first, then harder as nothing comes out. Due to the breakdown of the tissue and the pressure resulting from the classic acid/base reaction, the top will pop off (quite spectacularly) amidst a shower of foam. Your victim (as will as everyone around) should have quite a reaction, since one does not usually observe this type of behavior in a salt (pepper) shaker! CAVEATS: 1. The top will come off with some force. If the holes are sealed well, this will happen on about the second or third shake. Once, though, due to poor sealing, it took about 5 seconds, during which time our victim started looking at the shaker to examine the "foamy stuff coming out" of the holes... we quickly grabbed the shaker >from her to direct the top towards the ceiling before it went off. So, watch carefully! 2. The "foam shower" (lemon juice & soda) may ruin you victim meal... be prepared to pop for another one. 3. Don't do this if your victim or anyone near ground zero is dressed up (this joke will flop at board meetings and the like). ********* This joke has been done 50 (yes, 50) years ago by my father-in-law. First, a little background: He lived in a small village, north-west of Quebec City along the St-Laurent river. In those days, toilets were located outside the house in what we call in good ol' french canadian 'becosse', from 'back house' I think. These are a little wood shack with no floor over a hole in the ground where you ... You can guess. Now, for the joke: He and a friend were thrown out of a party by the doorman. When it was really dark,, the doorman went to investigate what was knocking at the window. They had suspended a rock to the window frame so it hung right it the middle and tied another string to the rock and hid behind the 'becosse' where they pulled that second string to make the rock knock in the window. That's an old trick. The doorman wouldn't fall for that one. So he followed the second string in the dark and soon concluded that they were hidding behind the 'becosse'. He ran toward the merely visible wood structure... But my father-in-law and his friend had taken care of moving the shack six feet ... Boy he fell in the sh*t !! ********* This one hasn't come up despite the presence of UCLA on the net. I'm led to the sad conclusion that the tradition has died. In the mid '70s, just before it was overrun by fanatic Dungeons & Dragons (tm) players, the UCLA Computer Club was host to a long series of "glitter traps." Example: joke subject sits at a desk, pulls out a drawer. A string runs from the back of the drawer, up the wall, into the false ceiling, over to a spot directly over the subject's head, where it triggers the trap: a mousetrap whose action snaps a card away >from its position covering a funnel, releasing a handful of glitter, which flows down the funnel, through its spout, through a hole in the ceiling acoustic tile, onto the subject. It was wonderful to watch: a muffled snapping noise, a quiet "chuff," and the slow, glittery descent of a cloud of brightly colored dust, to settle over the head and shoulders of a club member who by now has assumed an expression of appreciative resignation. Another, more short-lived ploy was to suspend a wooden horseshoe by a string from the ceiling in the corridor, such that the horseshow dangles a couple of inches above the top of an upright broom. Most conventional brooms will stand on their straws with a little coaxing. We attached a sign labeling the horseshow "wood magnet." Quite a few people took it at face value. ********* Another Cow joke I attribute to my 'Ol chemestry prof was the placement of a cow onto the roof. I would presume a fairly storng roof, but once up there it would be hard to hide the fact to the cow that any direction would be down. Another pratical joke involved the use of outhouses. Once the target has established himself you take up the slack on the attached rope which has been measured to set up tremendious harmonics in the structure. When the rope transfers your strumming to the outhouse, it usually falls apart with a most revieling nature.. ********* I was once in a nice family-style restaurant when I observed some kids supergluing the dishes to the table. They also attached the silverware, napkins, salt, pepper, etc. If it wasn't already nailed down, it was now. They stayed long enough to let the glue set, and then paid and left. They watched as the poor busboy tried to get the stuff off of the table. Also funny is supergluing a quarter to the sidewalk. I know its old, but in the city, with the diverse types of people around, it gets really amusing. I watched this old lady whack at it with her cane for about 10 min. cursing...... ********* A few months ago I saw a newspaper clipping which told of a newspaper in Illinois (I think...) which ran a story warning consumers that, on such-and- such day, Illinois Bell would be "blowing the dust out of the phone lines" and that all phone owners should cover the earpiece of their phones with a bag to catch the dust. Bell made them print a retraction, after receiving numerous calls asking what sort of bag to use ... People, they is amazing. ********* When I was in college our RA told us of a good one that (supposedly) some friends had pulled a couple of years earlier. These two guys made up a concoction of all kinds of left overs, semi-pureed it in a blender, and filled a hot water bottle with it. One of them took the hot water bottle, taped it to his stomach inside of his shirt and put a short piece of hose into the top so that it came up to the front of his shirt collar, but not visible. They both went to a local pub and sat at the bar, acting already slightly intoxicated. After having a couple of beers the guy with the hot water bottle says that he is feeling sick a couple of times and "barfs" VERY loudly all over the bar to attract attention. Naturally this causes the patrons to move away from him, all except his buddy, who calmy pulls a fork out of his coat pocket and begins EATING the stuff. ;-) I don't know how true it is, but I'd love to have been there watching faces if it was... ********* I can't resist a few: 1. Once you have stolen a dormmate's room keys, the room is yours to plunder. As a variation, steal the dorm keys but reverse the lock (so the keyhole faces INTO the room); we had a mechanical engineer who got this down to about 20 seconds. Then loudly announce to the victim you own the keys, but "let" them win the race back to their room. PRESTO! Locked inside their own room (with no keys). If you've fixed the phone to continually ring, they get very pliable after about 10 minutes. 2. We connected our secretary's electric typewriter to a variac (can vary the line voltage). At about 40-50 volts (out of the 110) the little ball makes three or four jerky attempts before finally striking a faint imprint. Fairly pathetic looking, actually. 3. Reverse the horizontal yoke leads on terminals (so the text comes out backwards from right to left). This works best on a software team who thinks they have just released the firmware for screen drivers. Besides, hardware people figure it out too quickly. 4. Hand lotion inside of an air hose on the final assembly line is effective, but very vindictive. Use with caution (now, I'm not saying I ever did this, but I "saw" it done once :-) And the standard saran wrap across women's toilets, Karo syrup, flour in the shower, water-filled surgical tubing jammed in a drawer....ah, for the good old days!! ********* One night when you have a few friends around, take turns calling the same phone number, a really obnoxious acquaintance that won't recognize your voices is always a good choice. When the person answers, try to leave a message for John Smith (or any name that sounds real). Insist that you have the right number and even read their number to them. Have a bit of fun here, and stretch this on as long as possible. Repeat several times, once or twice an hour. Let everybody have a turn at calling. Just as the party is breaking up, call one last time. Tell the poor soul answering the phone that you are John Smith, and ask "Are there any messages for me?" This is sure to get a groan. ********* Seven friends once pulled this at my college cafeteria. One put a hot water bottle filled with pea soup down his chest; he sat at the head of a table, with the other six friends sitting along the sides. When the cafeteria was pretty full of people, he made a loud noise (to attract attention), stood up, bent over and squeezed his chest. This caused a huge gush of green liquid to spew all over the table; the other six immediately began to eat this green liquid. I think a lot of food went uneaten that night. ********* Here's one that my roommate and myself did to a residence buddy. One morning (early) we taped together a bunch of sheets of newspaper to cover the victims doorframe. Then taped this big sheet over the doorframe which left a gap of about two or three inches between the sheet and the door. Then we filled the gap with paper balls right to the top of the doorway. When he opened the door he was showered with a barrage of paper balls (makes a nice mess too!) Of course, the door has to swing in for this to work! My roommate was (and is) rather inventive and can be quite nasty. He buttered all of the toilet seats in our wing of the residence (fortunately told me first). He also buttered doorknobs at one point. We wrapped celophane over the toilet bowl then replaced the seat: this one can be really messy! Try this: hang a shower curtain out a window. When the person below reaches out and pulls it in, pour a bucket of water onto the shower curtain. Listen to hear the results. Requires a nosy neighbor below you. Six friends of mine and myself tried a less complicated version of the classic dismantling of a car and putting it back together somewhere stran