A Proper Practical Joke

Discussing ethics is as taboo around here as mentioning AIDS in a whorehouse, but must be done for fear of a generation of Americans growing up without senses of humor...or worse, suffering the insurance-funded desensitization to their own desires and senses of justice. The art of the practical joke is dying, and it is up to us to save this bastion of colorful correction before the right-speak crowd and safety police polish this last sharp corner off of youth. Like retards on a short bus, there's an entertaining variety and severity of practical jokes. They break down into "mean" and "not necessarily mean," then further, to "funny," "correctional," and "bizarre." If you've never thought about the many types and forms of pranks, then you've taken life too seriously for too long.

Mean pranks are those you play on people you don't like. I don't advocate fraying brake lines with a rusty metal file in various places so they don't obviously look cut, because that would be a mean prank. So, too, is using a very small needle to poke a hole through most of the condoms in his nightstand.

Now there are other, less hostile jokes to play, and the key is not so much conjuring up a joke - there are a million online suggestions, and any creative bastard with a penchant for tomfoolery can create one - as knowing which to choose. Say your buddy just got engaged, and you like him: Time to put a distant female friend up to a little late-night phone call. If you don't like him? Slip a black thong two sizes smaller than his fiance's into his laundry bin. The "why" behind your choice is critical...

Mean pranks correct injustices, send messages, or even scores. Deadbeat dad fuck you over for eighteen years, and now you know where he lives? You don't need Prozac and therapy, you need some dirty deeds done dirt cheap. The attention whore across the office get upward-mobilized to a better job before you? Time to fight! The jokes warranted here are the kind that knock people down to where they belong, which is often below the lid of a dumpster.

Be sure that your joke meets the requirements of, first and foremost, being warranted. Do they really deserve to have every biker gang in SoCal looking for them? Next, can you be fingered in the execution of the joke? Don't use materials that you have special access to, hit them in a place where you normally go, or perform in a manner attributable to you in any way. It might be easy to raid the closet for old mimeograph machine ink, but if you have the only key to the closet, guess who's going to top the suspect list. Third, make sure that the message you want to send is clear: if they don't get what they did wrong in the first place, they aren't going to be corrected by an obtuse rouse. The punishment should fit, and pertain to, the crime.

Now there are the purely fun jokes you play on friends: porning (where you clip pictures out of porno magazines and then put them in obtuse places, such as inside shoes, under shelves, inside books, under food in the fridge), plastic-wrapping their car, etc. These are often played for the sake of playing them, and little more - you want a laugh, you get a laugh, and the retaliation you get will be at least as entertaining as the hassle it creates. Everyone wins. Mainly, you neither get fired, nor start mean spirited feuds.

The ethical component comes in the balance of joke severity vs. warrant. Does the victim deserve to suffer what you're going to do? If so, proceed as such. If not, move down the scale until the has it coming" line intersects the "joke severity" line. Then look at what you've chosen...such as for the asshole who makes fun of your girlfriend, putting his home phone number in a gay personals ad online with the tag "I work evenings, so call between 1am and 6am." Bonus points to you if you add references to BDSM, or his address.

For a less severe measure, take out a yard sale ad for his address. Plug things like "Moving sale: Must sell Play Station and all games, Merle Haggard tapes, Harley '74 accessories..." and things of that nature. List items that appeal to the ardent grandmothers, biker gangs, teenagers, militant vegans, and other interesting people no sane person wants mixing together on their front lawn. Then give the address, and say "Sale starts at 6am." Let him deal with the fallout of that hostile crowd milling on his lawn.

Some of the best jokes, though, are framed to nail two guilty parties at once. Do you have two coworkers whose only connection is their loathing of you? Get them to hate each other, by playing a joke on one, then planting scraps of the leftover material in the other's territory. Let your initial victim "discover" the evidence, and then enact the other half of your vengeance for you.

The punishment must fit the crime. The joke needs to send a clear message. You need to get away clean. Fallout to innocents should be minimized in favor of channeling the damage towards other targets. This is all given, of course, purely for academic and research purposes...

Now, off to buy some decoy panties and call the classified department...