Ryan ChartrandWhen you stepped out of your front door this morning and went to class only to discover that the reason everyone was muffling snickers while pointing fingers in your direction was because your roommate had crudely drawn a giant phallic on your forehead, immediate and bittersweet revenge became your No. 1 modus operandi.
Oh, yes. Your roommate is doomed to feel the same shock and embarrassment you felt as you walked around campus advertising a woody on your dome-piece. But you need a game plan.
What you need is to devise a prank so killer and so deviously epic that your roommate will never recover from the wounds of shame and your peers will tout your antics like they were the stuff of legends.
However, if you’re short on creative juices, and in dire need of devilish inspiration for the prank of all pranks, who can you turn to?
Well, we here at the Mustang Daily recently received a nifty little guidebook that could just be an inspiring piece of literature for your lack of prankster talent. It’s called “Prank University,” and right off the bat, it claims to be “the ultimate guide to college’s greatest tradition:” the prank.
Written by John Austin, a college graduate and self-proclaimed prank aficionado, “Prank University” just might be the perfect aid for discovering that one genuinely hilarious or disgusting prank to enrage the hell out your roommate, friends, or if you’re a real jackass, any innocent person your devious heart desires.
“Why show compassion to your roommates when you can terrorize them to the point of insanity,” Austin writes.
And with over one hundred different pranks documented, one could possibly string enough together to infuriate an entire dormitory.
Immediate kudos goes to the layout of the book that makes it quite easy for anyone to understand how the pranks should be choreographed. Equal parts pictures and description-even a complete bonehead could understand the simplistic instructions laid out for any devious deed (“Fill a bag with poop, put it on someone’s porch, then light it, ring the doorbell, then run like hell.”)
The book also includes a checklist at the top of each page for “successful attempts” of every prank and a couple of blank pages at the end entitled the “Prank Journal” so that one could boast a tally sheet and documentation of victims who have suffered the wrath from a variety of gimmicks and gags.
However, boasting about your record of mischief is only as good as the clever and ingenious pranks you pull. So the question that begs to be answered is whether or not the contents of this handbook themselves-the pranks-are enough to consider “Prank University” as the bible of all things dastardly and devious?
Of the one hundred pranks listed within “Prank University” there are definitely some genius shenanigans that will certainly earn you high marks as a master of mischief. Devious deeds such as “wasabi in the toothpaste,” “rain mache,” and the “gay porn screensaver” are a few surefire ways to make your victim a hater for life.
The “frying fish in the motor” prank, where one deposits a raw fish under the hood ensuring that the motor will eventually fry the carcass and make your victim’s vehicle smell worse than a sardine packing plant, is definitely tops.
But where “Prank University” falls well short of ingenuity lies in the majority of the content that describes all too many typical college mischief staples that won’t earn anyone high marks for being a brilliant rascal.
Juvenile escapades such as putting your sleeping roommate’s hand in a warm bowl of water, ding-dong door ditching, or unplugging a computer mouse aren’t going to bring you any notoriety-except for being an annoying prick.
And at times, content such as the “plastic forks in the lawn” escapade (where one takes a shit-load of forks and stabs them into someone’s lawn to make an army of erect utensils) or the “popcorn avalanche” gag (tape a garbage bag to victim’s door, microwave a shit-load of perfectly good buttered popcorn and wastefully dump it into the crevice between the bag and door) make the effort worse than the spoils-the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze.
In addition, the complete absence of some truly insidious pranks, such as leaning a trash can full of farm animal crap on the door of the peer you truly detest, or the ever-noxious delight of the “chicken/milk bomb” (trust me, you want to know) are nowhere to be found.
Let’s just say that if you are truly a bonehead looking for cheap redemption, then there is quite enough of it in “Prank University.” But, not to knock it completely off base, the author of “Prank University” seems to understand that some of these pranks, done individually, are no more than cheap, silly antics. So rather, it is encouraged throughout the book to combine pranks to make awesomely devious concoctions.
So if you need to settle the score in a bad way with your roommate, friend, or just some jerk in general, “Prank University” though certainly not a “prank bible,” has enough content to give anyone enough inspiration to make a rampant cocktail of dorm room delinquency.