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# The college years
It's been over a decade (1987) so I think it's safe to mention without endangering my friend's well being. This friend had a father who was a VP at Procter & Gamble: he had access to their main warehouse in Honolulu and occasionally fun and odd things were found in the unregistered inventory (why a complete 8mm camcorder rig showed up there we never found out but it proved to be one of the key ingredients in our on-campus entertainment afterwards). He also had access to their packing and shipping center so when it came time to play a prank on an especially offensive campus resident we were given access to the foam peanuts and as many as we could truck away: for the price of a heavy duty truck rental we obtained enough bagged foam peanuts to fill his room with (minus the bags) and it was damned near to the ceiling. The logisitics were tricker than most would think and involved creating a cardboard wall from which the filling would occur in later stages and built up as the peanuts approached the ceiling. The final work involved securely attaching a bunch of strings to each cardboard panel and leading them out the main door. Once the room was filled to our satisfaction we exited, relocked the door and then pulled the strings, collapsing the wall with a satisfying rush of peanuts filling the space. We cleaned up the remaining debris poking out under the doorjamb and awaited the fellow's return. That happened during my second year at the college: new residents moving in were still finding the occasional odd bit of packing foam when I finally cleared out during my fifth year.

Two years later we were being plagued by a really tough case whose skull and skin were much thicker than the norm. Towards his rehabilitation I sacrificed a surplus electrical WWII air raid siren (back when Big 88 was still in the business of selling military surplus at bargain prices) and an old but robust coffee pot timer (60s vintage, all steel, I still miss that most of all). The beds in the dormitory were set up as a stacked series of box frames and were hollow inside with an air passage leading out from beneath the bed platform which was glued in place: you had to bodily lift the frame in order to put anything beneath it and even with the mattress removed it required two people for the task. During one of this fellow's drunken carousals in Waikiki we snuck into his room with a master key that conveniently appeared shortly before and disappeared shortly after the work and secreted the gear beneath the bed frame, running the power cord from the timer beneath the bed frame and into a power outlet which fortunately was right next to the bed where it contacted the wall. We set the timer for a decent return time (approximately 0245) and returned to our third floor viewing spot to survey the pending mayhem. The fellow returned, blasted as per usual and yelling out some tuneless song at the top of his lungs. He could not figure out how to open the large glass doors leading to the lower lobby so with one gigantic kick he blasted the door's full length glass center from its frame as had happened twice before: the glass never broke but he was continually destroying the aluminum locking pieces which held it in. He staggered back to his room, closed the door and doused the lights a little after 0200. As the timer was not especially precise it actually activated shortly after 0230. The siren was of the rotary/chopper type so it took a few seconds to actually start making real noise as it spun up but by the time we could hear the rising wail the lights were on in the target's dormitory room and we could see him through the pebbled glass louvers thrashing about in an attempt to locate the source of the sound. Several other dormitory room lights were on and a bunch of extremely irate students were gathering around his room, pounding on his door and yelling at him to turn the noise off. He eventually started to tear apart the bedframe by which time we were having so much difficulty laughing we retired to our upper floor room and hid deep in the shared bathroom area (two suites shared a single bathroom area in the layout) until we could get ourselves under control. By then the noisemaker had been deactivated and the poor little timer smashed into a jagged ruin as we confirmed later. Everyone who learned about the stunt's origins and reasons afterwards thanked us after the poison pill had transferred to a campus more supportive of rowdy partying versus academics and restrained partying.

One other bit of fun I had with a few other friends over the years there involved a pair of binoculars or spotting scope, a programmable IR remote control and the Tyron infrared remote signal booster. I have been notified that the maker seems aware of the use of this product for similar pranks and has since dramatically reduced its power output, but when it first came out this little enhancement would extend the effectiveness of IR controllers to over a hundred yards. When we were really bored we would scan the dormitories until we spotted one with an active television set or VCR and then use the scope to determine what brand of equipment was in use. It was straightforward at that point to punch in the proper code sequence and then, with the booster in place (it used a 9V battery to power its brute force LEDs) see what mayhem we could cause. Few ever figured out what was going on but the best times we had centered around a special a/v stack set up in the all-girls dorm: they had a large TV, VCR and cable feed box secured to the massive central table with stainless steel straps and the residents there would gather around the screen at night and on weekends to watch their favorite shows or rental tapes. Once we entered the codes for each device we would alter their programming and switch channels on a whim. One particular evening's antics I still remember clearly: I was scanning the screen and said, 'it looks like they're watching St. Elsewhere,' upon which I heard from behind me, 'fuck that: they're watching The A-Team!!!' and bing! the set switched over to the desired channel. The girls would stare at the screen for a few seconds and then attempt to use their remote control to switch back the set. This went back and forth for a few minutes until one of us became bored with that and turned the power off to the set. I rather hope we made a few of those students neurotic: for some odd reason the all-girls dormitory was always whichever dorm received all the remodeling work that year and by year's end it invariably was the most trashed of the buildings on campus. The rest of the dorm residents were not happy with the amazons' behavior.

The most cruel prank I was ever a part of involved a student who most likely never remembered any of his weekends up until one particular event while in college: every Friday evening he proceeded to become so plastered he was nonfunctional until Sunday afternoon when he would appear at the dining commons looking terrible and mumbling 'never again' or something like that as he slowly put food in his mouth. I contacted an especially lovely cousin and explained the idea for the prank to her, to which she smilingly agreed. A word about this cousin: she has the timeless beauty which makes young women wish they, at 20, had the skin and looks she has at 50; a real Oil of Olay model. She was the star daughter of one of the oldest non-native families in Hawai'i and has the uncanny ability only the old money has to convey the feeling of immense power held in check even while sitting and reading a storybook to children. She proceeded to intercept and distract the target after his last class that Friday afternoon and invited him to dinner, redelivering him to the campus later that evening with a promise to pick him up the next day and visit some other areas of the island. The next day the planned excursion involved a trip to the Bishop Museum, the Honolulu Academy of Arts and finally an afternoon stop at the Botanic Gardens situated on an estate bordering the Pali Highway. It was there that she dropped the bomb on him, likely sitting on one of the antique stone benches scattered around the grounds. She basically told him, 'I'm pregnant, it was definitely you that weekend and daddy says we have to get married.' Apparently the shock was so great he became emotionally catatonic and did not remember any of the rest of the afternoon, including her walking him back to the car and dropping him off on the campus, never to encounter him again. That next Sunday he appeared in the dining commons sober for the first time ever: he still looked like hell and I don't think he ever fully recovered from the shock of that particular prank. I am surprised he did not call her bluff and agree to the proposal.

Thank you for your time.
(, Tue 21 Oct 2003, 23:52, archived)
# Blair Witch
Went to see the Blair Witch Project with a friend and ended up staying over at theirs after having a few at 'Frankie and Benny's' afterwards. They were a little more worse for wear than me. As i had to get up early the next day and knew that they would be sleeping...i stacked a chest of drawers, an armchair and a hoover against their bedroom door and followed all the way up the hallway with stacks of cutlery and general kitchen stuff in crucifixes.
I then left the house.
Needless to say they were seriously spooked when they woke up the next day!
(, Wed 22 Oct 2003, 0:02, archived)
# When I was 15
I used to play pool for a pub side on Monday nights. I didn't get on with the pub captain, who wouldn't select me to play for the side, despite the fact that I used to be pretty much the best player there. I turned up week after week, each time he'd say "Come back next week, you'll get a game".

One week, I'd had enough.

I went to the british pool association's website, copied their logo, and forged a letter from them saying that as I was clearly a more advanced player, he as captain was obliged to pick me otherwise the team would face expulsion from the league.

I posted this to my uncle in London, and got him to post it back to the pub, so that it would have a London postmark.

The captain and landlord both believed it, and after threatening me, the captain wrote back (to the fake address that I specified, as well as a copy to me) about 5 pages of extremely small text about what a crap player I was.

I then wrote back, again pretending to be the British Pool association, saying that I had tape recorded conversations that proved that I was telling the truth. Unless the captain made a complete and full apology the team would be kicked out of the league. He half apologised, but refused to pick me.

Content that I'd made a big enough tit out of him, I then sent him a letter from the British pool association saying that due to a technical error, they had accidently sent several pages of made up bollocks to him, and so he shouldn't have believed any of the previous letters...

He was fucking spare. He then got drunk, challenged me to the best of 3 at pool, I won 2-1. best of 3 became best of 5, which I won 3-1. I left it at that...
(, Wed 22 Oct 2003, 0:21, archived)