One of the reason practical jokes are so popular is the intense anticipation. You watch your victim move closer and closer to the trap, or if it’s a setup, you watch them get dragged deeper and deeper into the prank. The only problem with practical jokes is that when they’re over, they’re over. Everyone has a good laugh, and goes on their way.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could keep the joke going? This page is devoted to a slightly more cerebral form of prank that keeps going. It keeps going because it’s victimless: and therefore is safe. In fact, most of these are perfectly legal. They’re just extremely goofy. Read down, and try to picture the expressions on the faces of the poor bastards who stumble into your web of nuttiness.

• When you receive an offer to subscribe to a magazine, and they give you that business reply envelope, stuff it full of expired coupons, a newspaper article clipped completely at random, or those flyers you see at the supermarket entrance, and pop it in the mail. Hint: don’t use anything with your name or address on it. Make the people who open the envelopes at that magazine wonder who on earth you think you are.
• When you go over to a home for a party, ask if you can use the bathroom as soon as you arrive. This works best if there are a lot of people over already, and the bathroom is in a common area. Anyway, go in there, close the door, and start moaning and sobbing. Then, drop a huge chunk of dry ice into the toilet and leave, without flushing. When people hear those noises, and see you walk out of there with a huge cloud of fog billowing out of the toilet, they’ll wonder what on earth is the matter with your diet.
• Ask your kids, nieces, or nephews to draw some silly people. The younger the artists are, the better. Collect two or three of the silliest looking ones, and bring them to work. When no one is looking, place the artwork into the fax machine’s OUT tray, face down. When someone finds them, he or she will wonder who the heck was faxing those out… and to whom.
• Page two people to each other’s pager numbers. Watch as they call each other back and forth wondering what the hell is wrong with the other guy.
• In winter, bring a few snowballs in to work each day, and place them in the office refrigerator’s freezer. Don’t do anything with them: just keep putting them in there to make people wonder what is going on.
• Slip into a public lavatory, and place a frozen fish into a toilet. For hours, people will wonder if it swam up in there and died, but no one will flush it back down.
• Get hold of a regular sheet of paper. Using a laser printer, or very neatly hand-lettering it with a marker, print official-looking letters that read Please Do Not Remove This Sign. Hang it up near any bulletin board, notice kiosk, or actually anywhere you can. See how long it stays up there.
• Find a suggestion box and every few weeks fill it with totally loony suggestions. Or not even suggestions. Write poetry on some of the sheets, or jot down your favorite song titles, or throw in scary comments like“My houseplants are trying to kill me!” That should make the people at the other end look forward to emptying the suggestion boxes each week.
• At work or in school, fill an empty, clean vodka bottle with pure drinking water. Sit back and just chug frequently from it all day.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.