Practical joke

A practical joke is "practical" because it consists of someone doing something that is physical, in contrast to a verbal or written joke. For example, the joker who is setting up and conducting the practical joke might hang a bucket of water above a doorway and rig the bucket using pulleys so when the door opens the bucket dumps the water. The joker would then wait for the victim to walk through the doorway and be drenched by the bucket of water. Objects can feature in practical jokes, like fake vomit, chewing-gum bugs, exploding cigars, stink bombs, costumes, whoopee cushions, and Chinese finger traps. A practical joke can be as long as a person desires. It does not have to be short-lived.

Practical jokes often occur in offices, usually to surprise co-workers. Examples include covering computer accessories with Jell-O, wrapping a desk with Christmas paper or aluminium foil or filling it with balloons.[5] Practical jokes also commonly occur during sleepovers, when teens play pranks on their friends as they come into the home, enter a room or even as they sleep.

American humorist H. Allen Smith wrote a 320-page book in 1953 called The Compleat Practical Joker[6] that contains numerous examples of practical jokes. The book became a best seller - not only in the United States but also in Japan.[7] Moira Marsh has written an entire volume about practical jokes.[2] - she found that in the USA males perpetrate such gags more often than females.

One practical joke - recalled as his favorite by the playwright Charles MacArthur - concerns the American painter and bohemian character Waldo Peirce. While living in Paris in the 1920s, Peirce "made a gift of a very big turtle to the woman who was the concierge of his building". The woman doted on the turtle and lavished care on it. A few days later Peirce substituted a somewhat larger turtle for the original one. This continued for some time, with the surreptitious introduction of larger and larger turtles into the woman's apartment. The concierge, beside herself with happiness, displayed her miraculous turtle to the entire neighborhood. Peirce then began to sneak in and replace the turtle with smaller and smaller ones, to her bewildered distress.[8] This prank became the storyline behind Roald Dahl's 1990 novel Esio Trot.

A hack in progress in Lobby 7 at MIT

Shimer College students pushing a VW Beetle into a campus building

Successful modern pranks often take advantage of the modernization of tools and techniques. In Canada, engineering students have a reputation for annual pranks; at the University of British Columbia these usually involve leaving a Volkswagen Beetle in an unexpected location (such as suspended from the Golden Gate Bridge[9] or from the Lions Gate Bridge[10]). Engineering students at Cambridge University in England undertook a similar prank, placing an Austin 7 car on top of the University's Senate House building.[11] Pranks can also adapt to the political context of their era.[12] Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have a particular reputation for their "hacks".[13]

Not unlike the stone louse of Germany, the jackalope in the American West has become an institutionalized practical joke perennially perpetrated by ruralites (as a class) on tourists, most of whom have never heard of the decades-old myth.[14]

The 2003 TV movie Windy City Heat consists of an elaborate practical joke on the film's star, Perry Caravallo, who is led to believe that he is starring in a faux action film, Windy City Heat, where the filming (which is ostensibly for the film's DVD extras) actually documents a long chain of pranks and jokes performed at Caravallo's expense.[15]

In the UK, a group that calls itself Trollstation, plays pranks on people including police officers and government employees. They record their escapades and upload them to Youtube. In one such video, one of the groups actors poses as a palace guard. Some of actors have been fined or charged. [16]