http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-cn-canada-military-death-prank,0,2014758.story I heard this on the radio today during lunch service and it threw my whole fuckin' day off. How much of a shitbag do you have to be to pull a sick joke like this? This is right up there with lighting babies on fire and putting them out with a stream of hot piss. FOCUS: Discuss. Give us your gut reaction when you heard the news, and what you think the appropriate punishment should be. ALT. FOCUS: To lighten the mood, share stories of pranks you've pulled in your time. Bonus points for creativity and for pranks that didn't cause serious mental or physical anguish.
I think we can all agree that there's no real funny in pranking someone by calling to tell them a relative has died. However, I am interested in the ALT FOCUS, i.e., your pranking stories. I'm sure I've told this story before, but I forget. Anyway, for my part, I once "hacked" a fairly high-profile ARG by faking a few clues and leaving them in real-life places where I knew (from monitoring the game online) that players would be searching. Since the whole point of an ARG is to blur the line between fantasy and reality, it was not at all clear to the players that this was not a legitimate part of the game. It was fun to watch the whole thing unfold online, although when they started to get the idea that these clues were not "official" clues the monsters came out on Maple Street, and everyone quickly surmised that the clues would lead to a clan of baby-eating satanic rapists.
Not only is it fucking shitty for the families who had this done to them, I feel equally bad for other military families who might read this story, then actually have their loved one die in the war, receive a call about it, and then not be sure if it is real or not. Sickening.
I'm normally opposed to lynch mobs - but if the Prank Caller's details leak and the response involves pitchforks and fire ... I'd understand. I've told both stories before - but a friend of mine had a messy breakup where the guy screwed her for a bunch of money (partly her fault for giving him access, but the guy was a fucking douche) and used it to buy a car. She went to the cops and a lawyer to try and get the money back or some ownership of the asset and basically was SOL. The guy was fucking obsessed with the car - and she was a nurse with lots of access to hyperdermic needles - so we boiled up a few pounds of shrimp and injected the resulting delightful liquid into the joins at the top of the weather seals around the door. He spent months trying to get the smell out, and ended up selling it for scrap. Best prank I've ever witnessed was on an agricultural college. One set of course instructors had a few drinks and came up with the great idea of taking some of the cow intestine from a butchery short course, and stuffing it into the exhaust of one of the other instructors at the college. The victim however, is a vengeful, evil fucking bastard, and was teaching the explosives courses at the time - so he went and found about 300 yards of cow intestine, lined it with det cord and strung it up in the tree line around the clearing where the initial prank aggressors were teaching cattle midwifing. While the instructors, and 50 of their students were all up to the shoulder in cows, checking to see if they were pregnant during a practical part of the class, the bastard/original victim, detonated his treeline surprise, raining lumps of half cooked intestine and fragrant, smoldering cow shit down on all the people in the clearing. The cattle who the students and instructors were shoulder deep in, all promptly shit and pissed themselves when the explosion went off - and by themselves I mean all over the people who had their hands stuffed in them. Which made most of the class vomit, which wasn't an elegant visual - since they had one arm trapped inside a cow. Reasonably serious anguish was caused in both cases - but still awesome.
I haven't been involved with enough pranks, but the most successful one was during Freshman year of high school. One of our friends had taken to wearing this one Catholic girl skirt and we all hated it because she did not look good in it, it made her look really skanky, and she wore it every day (which contributed to the skankiness). We tried to tell her that it wasn't exactly creating a great image for her, but she ignored it. So, with the help of her twin sister, we stole the skirt and kept passing it around our houses so she wouldn't be able to find it. Once she realized it was missing, she naturally assumed we took it, so she asked us to give it back. We denied it. This went on for several weeks and kept escalating in anger and drama. At one point she smacked her sister and basically stopped talking to us. At this point, we figured it had gone far enough, but instead of fessing up, we gave it back to her sister and she hid it behind the washing machine. A few days later, her mom found it, said she was stupid for causing all that drama and she apologized profusely to us for thinking that we would be bitches enough to steal her skirt (which we only accepted after pretending to be angry at her for being angry at us). She still doesn't know what happened. Ah, cattiness. I haven't been the target of many pranks either, but this one was the silliest. I woke up one morning to go to school and discovered a huge bag of cat food in the backseat of my car. I asked my dad why it was there, but he didn't have any idea and I couldn't think of any explanation for it. Long story short, I have a pretty big imagination and can get a little paranoid, so I wound up believing that I had some sort of stalker who knew I had cats and this was a present and sign of his affection. My best friend's mom/neighbor let me believe this for weeks, and even goaded the story on, before she finally confessed that she had for some reason wound up with a bunch of fancy cat food that she didn't want their cat getting used to so she thought it would be funny to leave it in my car and let me get freaked out about it for a while. Thanks.
Alt-Focus I think the scariest/cruellest/funniest was to get back at a friend's roomate for shaving one of his eyebrows off. My friends simply wanted to beat the shit out of him (he was ROYALY pissed, but who would't be), but I had better plans: we bought an empty Geri gas can and filled it with lukewarm water. While he was sleeping, we put on ski masks and snuck into his room. Flicking on the lights, we began dumping the water in the gas can all over him, and he awakes to what looks like two masked men dumping gasoline all over him, one holding a road flare ready to ignite. You want to make a grown man cry? Try this. Actually, don't try this.
During my first semester of college I was part of a prank in which a few friends and I each pissed into a cup and then poured the urine onto a lunch tray we stole from the cafeteria. We then froze the urine and slid the tray (upside down) under the door of a guy who lived on our floor while he was home for the weekend. As the urine melted, it created a huge pool of urine on the floor of his dorm room and soaked into the carpet. I spent days drinking coffee and such so that my urine would be especially rancid. Why would we do such a thing? The guy we did this to had been very loud and drunk at a dorm party (it was our first semester) which resulted in a few of my friends getting tickets.
Alt focus: A month ago I went back to my parents' place for my birthday. It was pretty late when I arrived, so most of the rooms were in the dark. I go to the guest room, open the light, and see one of the most awesome things I've ever seen: the walls, the ceiling, the floor, the bed and the desks are covered in plastic, there's a set of knives on the bed and there are pictures of ''victims'' (animals I've eaten) on the wall. It looked exactly like a kill room in Dexter, it was amazing. I don't react much when I'm surprised or scared, but it still took me a good 5 seconds with my mouth wide open like a dumbass to figure out what the fuck was happening. My sister did it to get even for the time I filled her bedroom from floor to ceiling with hundreds of balloons for her birthday. I didn't tell the wife about the prank yet since I plan on doing it to her, except this time I'll find a friend to tape me on the table, put blood all over the place and fake him trying to kill me. She's a sucker for pranks like this, it should be fun.
I have a buddy that's actually down there with the afgan mission. Like, i can understand people being unhappy about the mission ( especially with Harper being a jackass extending it when most canadians don't want it extended), but calling these guy's families is downright scummy. Pranking me ( a friend) might have been a little more tasteful instead of families with kids, that's what i'm thinkin. As for Alt focus, once i terrified this girl i knew from ever coming back to my place. The story of "F's dirty bedroom" remains infamous to this day as the only time i really really got someone ( and was a case of the joke really taking a life of it's own).
Focus: I can't even imagine what those poor families went through with those calls. I hope they catch the bastards. However, the military did step in and tell everyone that those kinds of messages are never conveyed by telephone, so hopefully if anyone else gets a call, they'll know not to think it's legit. Alt Focus: For awhile, we had a group of office pranksters who would fill offices with balloons, or duct tape everything to your desk, or whatnot. One of the pranksters was the boss's 19-year-old son, who was working in the office for the summer. He figured he was invincible - but we proved otherwise. We got a bunch of pamphlets about unplanned pregnancy and the options available, put them into a FedEx envelope and had our admin assistant put together a label to make it look like it had been shipped from Planned Parenthood. We drew up a nice little letter to "Mr. Jack Smith" (the son), saying that, per his request, the nurse had sent the following information, and that if he had any other questions, he should contact her directly. The FedEx package was addressed to "Mr. Smith", and was placed in the boss("Mr. John Smith", the father)'s mailbox. So, the dad opened the envelope (thinking it was for him), read the letter and lost his shit. The kid was eating lunch and his dad came in, red in the face, threw the letter and pamphlets down on the desk, and said "Jack, you'd better not be in any goddamned trouble", and stormed off. Apparently it was the most awkward car ride home ever. It took weeks before his dad realized that it was a prank.
I'm not sure. When I pull the prank, I usually mail an official looking letter. I even have a sweet stamp to put on it.
What a horrible human being. I hope he doesn't have a family so no one has to be embarrassed for bringing this man into the world. Alt-Focus: In college, I had a roommate who would be on the phone with her boyfriend until all hours of the night either having phone sex or crying uncontrollably and screaming into the receiver because they were fighting. This wouldn't have been a huge problem, but she was using the house line that we all paid for instead of her cell phone which only she has to pay for. After politely asking her to stop time and time again, we finally decided to just destroy the phone. We put the battery of the cordless phone into the microwave for a few seconds, then put it back on the charger. A few hours later, she comes back and finds that the phone doesn't work. She asked me if I knew what was going on, and I convinced her that if you leave a cordless phone on the charger for too long, the battery overcharges. She still used her cell phone to call him, but the calls her much less frequent and didn't last nearly as long into the night.
Alt focus - When I was in college in the mid 90s, there were no cell phones and caller ID was a fairly new thing so most people did not have it. Our dorm had a speaker phone outside the main entrance so you could call your roommate to let you in if you forgot your key and it was after the doors locked for the night. One of my friends had caller ID, so we had the number to the external phone. We could dial it and talk to passers by on the street, including making fun of their clothes or whatever. Some of the looks we got were funny because people weren't able to readily figure out what was going on. There was one particular nerdy dude that seemed to walk by often. He would get mad and yell things back into the external phone, which only made us make fun of him more. One November night, one of the guys in our group dumped a bucket of ice cold water onto him from the 4th floor balcony. The guy was obviously pissed when this happened, and stormed up the stairs. There were only a few people left up at 1am on a Tuesday night, and he accused us of dumping the water on him. We denied it, and told him who we thought did it. He goes and knocks on that guy's door to give him a piece of his mind. What he didn't know was that the guy who's door he was knocking on was about 5'5" 125lbs, but a 3rd degree black belt and a little unstable. The black belt is not happy about being woken up and threatens the wet guy until he finally leaves. When we told him the real story he thought it was hilarious.
So about 30 years ago, my mom and her cousin (who are more like sisters) were planning a grand tour of Spain. They are about to book the tickets when my mom finds out she is pregnant with my sister, so the trip is called off. So about 4 years later, the two of them plan another trip to Spain, bigger and grander than the last. Then, it turns out that she is pregnant with me. So the trip gets canceled. So last year they are planning a trip to Spain yet again for summer 2010. Then they find out I was getting married. Trip called off. So they have finally planned on early June, 2011. So over Thanksgiving my mom was up here visiting, and after a few glasses of wine, and some encouragement, she called up her cousin and said: "Jägerette is pregnant, and is due in early June". I am surprised the screaming from the other end didn't break my mother's ear drum.
?! Remember kids, don't try this at home. Try it at someone else's home. Dang, that story would've been a lot cooler if you replaced "the phone doesn't work." with "the house is on fire."
I'm a sucker for a good prank, and freshman year of college provided the testing grounds for a wide variety of assaults. Unfortunately, the school was highly religious (catholic), so most of them didn't go over too well. My roommate, my RA, and myself frequently pushed the limits of what we could get away with... - "Broke" into all-girls dorm, past curfew when all the guys were supposed to be out. Ran into a few ladies and security, while I was carrying a black duffle bag with what was clearly a phallic-shaped object zipped inside, but somehow managed to talk our way to our target's room. We set up our rig, knocked on the door, and then got the hell out of dodge. When our target opened her door, our rig was set in motion, and a spongebob pinata with a 3-foot long inflatable dildo protruding from its crotch swung down from the ceiling and nailed her in the face. - En route to the above dorm, we came across some construction on campus, stole the caution tape, and on a whim decided to put it across the the entrance to one of the main academic buildings. We thought no one was that stupid to actually heed to the obviously amateur tape job (and besides, there were other "open" entrances, that was just the main one). We were wrong, as more than a few classes were canceled the following day because apparently people are like sheep. - One of our friends had a very nerdy and socially awkward roommate. We bribed this roommate for access into the room while said friend was out, with a $10 game stop card. Took the friend's bed + frame, all of his clothes, all of his furniture, tv, everything, and set it up in the dorm lobby. - Set off a stink bomb in someone's room during finals. Not surprisingly that didn't go over well, because she was a bitch, and claimed something about "emotional distress." I think I'm still on judiciary probation at that college actually. - Met my first college girlfriend after I cut up some trash bags and taped them to the outside of her door frame (doors stupidly opened inward). Then I filled the gap with the cheapest shit I could find. When she opened it, a 7-foot cascade of generic-brand cereal landed upon her. - Actually broke into one of the rival dorms with two "companies" of 12 people each. Tied all the doors together, then sounded off air horns. I somehow some of the victims got loose and started swinging basically anything they could find at us -- potted trees, chairs, baseball bats (this was an athlete dorm, and we didn't plan). They were PISSED, and and at that point our best escape plans went to shit. End result was a bunch of us retreating into one of the bathrooms on the second story. Some dude opened one of the windows, lowered himself down a bit, and jumped. When we saw he made it relatively ok, we all started bailing out. Well, I fell onto the edge of some concrete thing, and my ankle still hasn't been the same. - At our house we use well water, that happens to contain some kind of mineral (I think iron) that makes it stink real bad if it's stagnant. This is the reason we don't use our sink sprayer, as the water sits stagnant in the pipes when not in use. Cue me putting scotch tape on the handle. At this point anyone who has spent any time at our house as smelled like sulfur dog shit at least once. It's a past time, really. - This prank on my wife still remains my proudest achievement. - I'm always a big fan of the whole thing where you change someone's computer mouse to left handed (or right handed for the lefties). Then, take a screenshot of someone's desktop, set that as their background, then hide the task bar and put all the "real" icons in some innocuous folder. But, that's also overdone, and kind of middle school.
We used to do that in college to a kid we couldn't stand (Got so drunk he shit in my room and wiped his ass on the carpet, which he slept on). But first we pennied him in and instead of cereal we emptied the garbage cans from the lounge in it. We also duck taped him to the floor (while he was passed out) and he pissed himself. Pennied him in his room while a friend of his was visiting and poured piss under his door. Them pounding on the door the next day yelling for help as we left to eat was amusing.
Continuous with my last post which was a horrible prank, this was my favourite (Yes I was an asshole, but believe me I took more lumps than I gave): The OTHER roomate from the previous post was hemophobic (terrified of the sight of blood) so one night when he was obliterated drunk passed out in bed, my friend, the roomate from the gas prank and I finger-painted his full name over and over and over all over the walls and ceiling of his room from tubes of that fake Halloween vampire blood (it looks pretty real). It was repulsive looking. It looked like the bathroom murder scene from Shocker. Then we quietly exited flicked on the lights, and waited for the screams. About twenty minutes later, they came.
The next time someone used the microwave, it was my fuck-tard friend Brad, who I constantly bitch about. He put a honey bun in there until it burned so hard that the smoke alarm went off. He then brought over the microwave from his house because he fucked ours up. ... but I'm sure that honey bun would have tasted like ass.
This prank may not seem like a big deal to anyone else (especially given some of the previous posts), but it will always stand out to me. There are two things about me that made this prank work: first, I am terrified of horror movies. Picture the wimpiest 6 year old that you can and then multiply that times 10. I couldn't sleep for 2 weeks after watching Ernest Scared Stupid. Second, I love everything about going to the movies. The overpriced candy, the previews, all of it. For awhile I was that obnoxious friend that insists you arrive at least 20 minutes early so that you don't miss anything and reminds people incessantly to turn off their cellphones. A few years ago, I hadn't had the chance to go to the movies for awhile and when a friend told me that there was a romantic comedy she wanted to see, I was excited. I hadn't heard of it, but she said that her boyfriend had bailed and that she had an extra ticket. It sounded pretty formulaic, she mentioned something about engagement parties and wedding high jinks, but she offered to comp my junior mints and I was sold. She only told me about the movie an hour before it started so, given my obsession with being early, I didn't bother to check its previews or reviews. When we arrive at the theater and take our seats, I start noticing that the crowd is a little different than for your traditional rom-com. My friend reminds me to turn off my phone and I start noticing that people seem a bit more energetic. Being a complete idiot, I only start thinking that this may be a better movie than I thought, even if the title was as cheesy as "The Ring." After the first 10 seconds, I realize that this is not a romantic comedy, that there will be no engagement parties, weddings, or high jinks of any kind. I spend the next hour and a half shaking and screaming, I have no idea why I didn't just walk out except that my friend drove and the idea of being alone after that first ten seconds seemed worse than just sitting it through. After the movie was over, my friend turned to me. I don't know what I would have said, probably something laced with profanity, but at that moment, my phone started ringing. I went into complete and utter hysterics. My friend looks at me condescendingly "c'mon klky, you must have just forgotten to turn it off this time." She grabs it before I see who's calling, opens it, and puts it on speaker phone. A raspy voice says "Seven Days." I just lose it, completely and utterly lose it. I run like an idiot out of the movie theater, freaking out. The rest of the movie goers are looking at me in horror and an usher is trying to calm me down. Once my friend realizes that I'm dry heaving from abject terror, she explains that she had turned on my phone during the last few minutes and that her and another friend had coordinated the call. Ugh, some prank...I still have nightmares about that scene where she crawls out of the well "shudder."