Good practical jokes

Take some Oreo cookies. Carefully remove the top of each one, and put a small circle of wax paper in between the cookie and the filling. Watch as someone eats them.

If your roommate has posters of scantily clad women up, blow up a picture of their mother's face and tape it over the face on the poster. Very disturbing for the victim.

Put white 'art' paper like the kind used in pep rallies over the outside of a dorm room doorway. You and your friends get up a little early to stand out in the hall and clap and cheer when the roomate who's in on the prank jumps through the paper (like a football game). The next day, repeat the procedure, placing a candy or drink machine behind the paper. When the 2nd roommate (who's not in on it) tries t o burst through the paper for his/her applause, BOOM! S/He will hit the back of the machine and rebound back into the room.

Tape down the button on the receiver of the telephone and call them.

Fill two very large glasses full of water, tell a friend to place their hands on a table (palms down). Put the glass on top of one hand and ask if it hurts, when they say "no," place the other glass on top of his other hand and walk off.

Make the cook of the house mad and peel all the labels off the canned foods in the pantry.

Put baby powder inside a friend's hair dryer.

Glue a quarter to the sidewalk.

Many ideas listed here were gotten from Pranksta's Paradise

In my office there is one chap by the name of Roger, a computer repair technician in our shop who happens to be the brunt of most of our Pranks. He is a nice old fellow who never seems to get upset, this is probably why he is always the target of our unspent juvenile mirth. Prank #1: The Buzzer Thingy
We attached a battery cell from an old Polaroid camera to a device manufactured by another employee. The device emitted a very high pitched electronic whine. The noise was just barely in the audible range. We placed the device behind a bunch of old hardware on the equipment rack near Rogers desk. The noise could not be heard more than a few feet away from the devices resting spot. When audible it was very annoying. We informed everyone else of the prank. When Roger would ask, "Can you hear that noise?" we would respond in the negative and tell him that he was probably just hearing things. This lasted for about three days before Roger started hunting for and eventually found the device. Prank #2: The Loud Zap Noise
This is one of my favorite pranks and will often use it on any handy target. While walking by Rogers desk one day I noticed that he was elbow deep in a partially disassembled monitor. He appeared very tense, and that's understandable; monitors carry quite a punch if not properly discharged first. I crept up behind Roger without his noticing me and loudly yelled "ZAP!". As I predicted he jumped, and was very startled. He claimed I nearly gave him a heart attack. Prank #3: The Monitor Switch
Another employee had come upon a device that plugged into a wall socket and would switch power on and off in response to a silent whistle. The whistle was a small bellows fed device that was operated by squeezing it in the palm of your hand. We attached this device to the power lead for Rogers monitor. While he was at his desk one of us would blow the whistle and Rogers monitor would turn off. This caused him great consternation. He would attempt to fix the problem. At an appropriate time the whistle was blown again and the power was restored. This proved very entertaining for a surprisingly lengthy amount of time. Prank #4: The Speaker Debacle
Roger likes to listen to his music loud. He also listens to an odd assortment of Celtic instrumental and folk music. Most of us don't like it. One Friday while Roger was out of the shop on a call I decided to put a temporary end to it. I found an old stereo cable and clipped the end of the 1/4" miniplug so it would fit flush into the appropriate female receptor jack. I also soldered a short length of very fine wire to the end so that it could be removed. I then placed the jack in the headphones receptor on Rogers desktop speakers. If you haven't caught on yet, this completes a circuit that turns off the speakers. When Roger returned and discovered that his computer wouldn't make any more noises, he became distraught. To our delight he did not discover the dummy plug and began to fiddle with the sound card settings. I found out later that he came in on Saturday and spent all day formatting his workstation and reinstalling Windows. He even went so far as to swap out the soundcard before he thought to exam the speakers and eventually discovered the plug. He has not played his music loud since the incident. Prank #5: The Desk
Roger has the most unique excuses when he calls in sick. "There's ants in my cats food", "My car won't start" and my favorite, "My water has been turned off". It was after the last one that I decided to use his absence for my own benefit. Carefully notating the placement of every object on his desk I removed them, and then turned his desk around 180 degrees. I then placed everything back on his desk in the correct location. It was a simple prank, and those are often the most rewarding. When Roger arrived the next morning he went through his normal morning routine. He placed his bag on the floor next to his desk, turned his computer on and walked down the hall to fill his coffee cup. When he returned he sat in his chair. He only noticed what I had done when he pulled forward and banged his knees against the back of the desk. Then the most spectacular thing happened. The imperturbable Roger became enraged. He wouldn't talk to anyone all morning. I elected to not claim responsibility for the attack.

This past week I spent 5 days of my Spring Break at a Benedictine monastery. While there, I asked one of the monks if there were any really memorable pranks that had been pulled.

He said that years back there was an older monk, probably in his 70s, that would always kiss his fingers, and then touch the feet of a crucifix that was on the way out of the church. One of the other monks, over quite a long time, gradually raised the crucifix by about 1/4 of an inch every week. The first monk started having to reach higher and higher to touch the crucifix, and finally, became unable to do so. He then walked into a room where the monks were gathering and said in a thin voice "I'm shrinking".

I think this is a great prank for several reasons:

1. No one was really hurt by the prank
2. The prank required tremendous patience. I estimate it would have been nearly a year from start to finish. Granted, a monk has an advantage here, but it's still impressive
3. All the other monks knew about the prank
4. It was done by a monk! Just from the little time I spent there, monks definitely have a sense of humor

Here the other day while my two colleagues where out, I got an idea for a practical joke. We work with user support and PC repair. Like any good(?) IT personnel all our PCs are permanently open(Well, if we are going to hack the PC every day or so it might as well be open...). Anyway, I took a screen grab on our internet PC and modified it with weird colours and put it up in full screen. Then I took a jumper and put it on the 'keylock' pins on the mother board, thus blocking the keyboard and the mouse. And went to lunch, were I meet the other two.

When we came back, they noticed the strange picture. They tried the mouse and the keyboard. When that didn't help they rebooted, to no use. Next one of them checked the keyboard connectors, finding nothing wrong he pulled it out and put it in again. This was when the other one saw that the lights on the keyboard flashed once, as it was plugged in(The keyboard's microcontroller starting up). He thought this meant the keyboard only worked that second(and then was powered down). So he told the other one to plug it in and out continuously while he pressed the enter as fast as he could...

At this time I just couldn't take any more and started laughing.. So they told me to fix it, if it was so simple... I just pulled the jumper and normality was restored.

Afterwards they too thought it was a good joke.

The Best Joke I Ever Pulled on Steve


Grafenwöhr, Germany is home to a large military training area and gunnery range. During my stint in the (US) army, i spent my fair share of time there, as i was assigned to an artillery unit, and it is the only live-fire artillery range in Germany. If you ask a soldier who's been there what he (or she) remembers about the place, chances are better than average he might say "the hogs". If you ask a certain specialist named Steve, who was assigned to my unit, I'd say there is about a 100% chance of receiving that answer. You see, besides being a training area, the whole place is also a nature preserve, and is home to a rather large population of wild boars: a population that Steve got a little closer to than he might have liked.

Nobody in our unit much liked Steve, and he didn't really care for any of us. You see, he was one of those guys who likes to think he's superior to everyone else, while at the same time doing everything in his power to disprove that hypothesis. In other words, he was totally incompetent and didn't even realize it. There were many, many times when his cluelessness caused us grief, or worse, put someone in danger.

One day in Grafenwöhr, after nearly electrocuting one of his fellow soldiers, Steve was feeling pretty unloved. Everyone was pretty mad at him, and we spent most of the day taunting him about his constant screw-ups. When we got a chance that day to set up our sleeping arrangements for later that night, we decided not to set up the tents like we usually did. It was nice weather, and we were going to be moving out the next morning, so we set our cots up in the open. Steve, feeling unappreciated, set his up about 200 meters away from the rest of us. He was pretty close to our temporary garbage dump.

Time came for lunch and it was MRE's, as usual. Mine was corned beef hash, which has a taste that sticks with you for rest of the day. I went around and asked some of the other guys if i could have their peanut butter, a standard issue item with MRE's. Most of them gave it up, as it isn't very good.

After lunch, there was the normal bullshit work, digging holes, putting up camo nets, running commo wire and stuff. It was a few hours until it we got off duty and went to bed. Steve, disheartend from all the crap he'd been taking off the rest of us all day, sulked away to his fortress of solitude without a word to anyone.

It was a couple of hours before we heard Steve's cries of terror. Everyone woke up, kind of startled, and in a few seconds there were a dozen flashlights pointed in the direction of Steve's cot, and a few of us, (including me, of course) ran over to see what was going on. Then everyone just stopped stared for a minute at the sight of the at least 30 wild boars which had surrounded him and were jostling for position to get at the luscious peanut butter I had smeared on the bottom of his cot during a "latrine break" I'd taken shortly after lunch. There were a few more seconds of confusion over my joy at the predicament before the other guys began to comprehend and joined me in hysterical laughter. This all lasted a few more minutes before we decided he'd had enough and chased the boars away. Steve was pretty upset, but if he can't take a joke, well that's his problem. It wasn't the first prank I'd played on him, and it sure wasn't going to be the last, but it did turn out to be the best.