Practical Jokes PG3

the dept administrator is somewhat of an msdos jock, and one day, he changed my adviser's rainbow prompt to be something like:

fatal disk error

so everytime the return was pressed, this was displayed... now seeing that we have been having various hardware and software problems, one after the other with the little trash machine rainbow, my adviser was very upset... when he realized that it was a joke, he thought that maybe i had done it... (i don't know why, because i don't normally do this type of thing).

once we had sorted out what had happened, we set up the administrator's account of the vax to behave in a similar, but more frustrating way... i am a bit worried about this, though, because he rarely uses the vax... it has been about two months, and still no screaming... (just redefine some symbols in his login.com... important ones, like:

$ dir*ectory :== type
$ type :== directory
$ show :== logout

An OSU Architecture prof (I'll call him Dr. Jones) had a habit of telling his students to "Go take a flying leap" when they gave dumb answers. One student decided to take the prof to task; the class was taught in a second floor room so the student practiced jumping out the window (with the help of an assistant who would catch his arms as he jumped). The two got this down to an art, and one day provoked the "flying leap" comment from Dr. Jones. The student said, "Okay, if you say so," turned around, and leapt out the window. His partner (who was supposed to grab him but say, "oh God, I missed him !") *did* miss, and the jumper fell and broke his ankle.

No, this is not a cut on stupid practical jokes. The humor follows:

As a result of this episode, the department chairman had to file an accident report. One line of the form requires the DC to outline "What actions will be taken to prevent future recurrences of this accident ?"

The Department Chief answered, "In the future, all of Dr. Jones's courses will be taught in the basement."

Last year I had a job teaching an officeful of secretaries to use their IBM XT. Well, for April Fools Day, I inserted a Pascal program at the beginning of the AUTOEXEC.BAT file (runs on startup). The program essentially said "Hello, Department of Defense Missile Network..." and gave instructions which led to "Missiles Launched", and "congratulations, you have just launched World War III. Say goodbye to everything you love." I slowed down the printing to match 300 baud, so it looked quite threatening. After the "say good-bye message", I had it tell the user to hit RETURN, after which the program said APRIL FOOL and went on to the normal programs.

The results were interesting. The people who were comfortable with the computer loved it. The real computerphobe registered only that this wasn't her database program, and (as usual) demanded key-by-key instruction, ignoring the prefectly good instructions on the screen. No-one really was startled, they didn't have the background.

Get a thin sheet of lead, cut out the outline of a reclining nude (trace from a magazine if you wish), tape it onto an inside wall of your suitcase. If you're really artsy, glue or sew on a cover sheet, such that the deception is non-obvious when the people check it. Other shapes, or messages (taped onto cardboard) work too. Don't do something that suggests a hijack attempt.

A few months ago I was flying down to L.A. from San Francisco with a friend. He had stayed up too late the night before and promptly fell fast asleep as soon as we were airborne. The airline magazines soon paled, so I looked around for some way to entertain myself until we reached L.A. I went up the steward and asked if I could borrow one of the oxygen masks that they use in their little speech just before take-off. He looked puzzled and said that they didn't work and were just for demonstration. I said I didn't care, and much to my surprise, he gave it to me. I took it back to my seat, put it on, and strung the hose to the up just above my head. Then I reached down and shook my friend furiously. As he groggily woke up, I yelled, "Quick, put on your mask, we're falling fast!"

The look on his face was pretty classic! Interestingly enough, he didn't fall back asleep on the plane.

This is a simple, harmless, and hilarious practical joke, that has claimed me as a victim. The setting is a pool hall, bar, or anyplace else with a pool (billiards) table. Place any ball at one end of the table and give your victim the cue ball. Challenge the victim to focus on the cue ball while walking around the pool table three times. At the end of the third time, the victim is to place the cue ball on the table, take a cue stick and hit the cue ball so that it stikes the ball at the other end of the table. This is very difficult to do; not because of a loss of coordination from walking and staring at the ball, but because while the victim is concentrating on the ball, you lick your finger and wipe chalk off the end of the cue stick. The victim will miscue almost every time. It gets funnier, because if the victim is like me, he/she will be determined and try it again.

Speaking of fun practical jokes with a car, I have a couple of interesting ones.

1. Give the victims car an oil change, to 70 wieght oil. This should work very well in places where it gets cold because when it is cold enough, the oil should more resemble a brick the oil, and the car should be unable to crank. I wonder how long it would take even a good mechanic to figure out what has been done.

2. A Classic. Stones in the hubcaps. If done correctly, the driver will hear something rattling in the hupcaps and check to see if it is the wheel nuts, finding nothing, they will continue , only to hear the sound again.

3. When expressway driving becomes boring. This trick is been done with a radar detector and a very fast (looking) car. While driving on the expressway, look for a fast car that looks like it may not have a radar detector. Accelerate hard to about 70 and see if the other car follows. If it does, bring your car up as fast as you feel safe and pretend to be racing him. This should get the other car's driver to start going very fast. Continue this "race" until you come on a turn or hill. After going through the turn, hit your brakes hard and bring the car to exactly 100 mph. The effect is to make every one on the road start doing 100 because they assume that if you are going that fast, youmust have a radar detector, and it must have just gone off. (I hope I don't need to mention the illigalities with this joke, and the need for a radar detector.)

When my girlfriend and I were in our early teens (the age is important) we used to go to the local department store clock department. We would set all the clocks that had alarms to go off within minutes of each other a few minutes later. From a vantage point behind a rack of clothing we always got a chuckle when the alarms started going off and the poor sales clerk was trying to find out which ones were going off! (now, having been a sales clerk for a brief period during my college days, I don't think that would have been particularly funny!)