This is by way of a “Thank you” for your viewership–a really elaborate high-tech prank perpetrated at a German shopping mall. These shoppers got a good scare, but no harm was done and they were able to laugh about it afterward. Some people, you make ’em think a giant spider’s after ’em, and they get kind of… well, cross.
We need a good laugh!
Sometimes the old practical jokes are the best. Watch what happens–no, hear what happens–when this office employee sits down for her lunch.
Alternative: if you don’t have a whoopee cushion, but you do have a table with a lot of people sitting down at it to eat, all you need is a piece of paper that no one saw you bring with you. When the person next to you sits down, rip the paper. She’ll think she split her pants or dress, acute embarrassment–but no harm done. I pulled this on my mother at a Thanksgiving dinner and the whole family got a belly laugh.
I don’t know about you, but after covering dreary nooze all day–and again trying, fruitlessly, to buy some rubbing alcohol–I need a laugh, big-time.
So you go to do your laundry and there’s a giant spider waiting for you on the floor… What would you pay to see someone pull this prank on Nancy Pelosi?
No spiders were injured in the making of this video. No real spiders, at least–some of the toys might be a little bit the worse for wear.
But it gave me a laugh, and I hope it does the same for you.
Women used to have these things called “hair rats” that they put in their hair to achieve certain styles. They went under the hair, I believe. By themselves, they didn’t look quite wholesome.
One day my friend Ellen came out with her mother’s hair rat in her hand. “Look at this!” she cried. “Doesn’t it look like a poo?”
“Wow! It sure does! Let me borrow it for a little while.”
With the hair rat hidden in my pocket, I went back indoors, picked up a comic book, and locked myself in the bathroom. My mother was seated at the dining room table a few steps away, working on her comptometer. (Do those exist anymore? Let me see if I can find a picture.)
I stayed in the bathroom for a while, reading the comic book and occasionally making a loud noise that I hoped would suggest meant that I was having some difficulty. By and by I emerged from the bathroom with the hair rat in my hand. I went up to my mother and held it out for her to see.
“It wouldn’t go down when I flushed,” I said.
The joke had the desired effect. “Aaaagh!” Her reaction was all I could have hoped for. It certainly banished any sense of boredom she might have been experiencing.
And here’s a comptometer like my mother used to have. Invented in 1887, it was an extremely fast mechanical calculator, since superseded by computers. My mother was a skilled comptometer operator, which meant some extra money for the household.
Note: I don’t know why I want to write about practical jokes today. But who am I to shoo away a pleasant memory?
I know it’s too early to be talking Christmas shopping. But there are always birthdays, anniversaries, and other occasions for buying presents for your loved ones.
Here are a few gift ideas that never really caught on.
The Fire Ant Farm. This was just like a regular ant farm, only with ferocious and painfully-stinging fire ants. It was supposed to make the owner look cool. They had to take it off the market because the ants kept getting out and raising hell.
A Special Beer Stein for Weight-Lifters had a 20-pound weight fixed to the bottom so that every time you took a swig of beer, you got your exercise. I’m not sure how this product came to fail. I think it was because sometimes bad things happened if you chanced to drop it.
Toothpaste Sandwich Cookies. If you were afraid that Oreos, for instance, would cause you to develop cavities, replacing the vanilla cream filling with a popular brand of toothpaste was supposed to allow you to enjoy your snack while at the same time passively brushing your teeth. Alas, the taste and the digestion became issues.
Sticky-Soled Shoes. The idea behind these was to let you pick up and remove dirt, dust, and pet hairs from your carpet without having to vacuum. Just walk around as usual, and at the end of the day, simply remove the detritus from the bottoms of your shoes. I am sorry to say they made these shoes way, way, way too sticky, with unfortunate results (including injury to the wearer when he tried to take a step but the shoe wouldn’t budge). Sort of like the classic practical joke of gluing someone’s flip-flops to the floor. Worse, some ill-advised customers attempted to use Sticky Shoes as a way to climb up walls, again resulting in injury.
So there you have it. These products aren’t on the market anymore, but there are probably others just as bad. Let the buyer beware.