Nerding Day: Adult Only Practical Jokes

You have to respect a marketing team that knows its potential audience. I don't think any team has ever understood who their intended audience was better than the people selling Adult Only Practical Jokes Guaranteed To Make You Giggle. They managed to squeeze vomit, a toilet, and a man covered in bugs onto one book cover. They knew who would be tempted to purchase this greatest hits of human suffering. The cover wants to say, "If you're cruel, but not creative enough to think of exciting ways to make people suffer, this book is for you," and it nails the tone.

Even the back cover is spot on in tone. It sounds like a haunted house entry waiver. It calls the book evil and warns you that you might have trouble sleeping after reading it. It describes jokes the way H.P. Lovecraft describes ancient terrors. You can't read it without hearing the Crypt Keeper's voice in your head.

And somehow, shockingly, when you get into the book, it actually delivers on a lot of those spooky ass promises. These are not jokes designed to make you giggle. They're a Rorschach test for potential threats. One prank is just calling a 7 Eleven and threatening the clerk:

Yeah, you could have that conversation with a convenience store if you wanted to be arrested. I don't know where the attempt at a joke is in here? I guess name dropping Crocodile Dundee while threatening to rob a convenience store is kind of funny but not funny enough for me to forget the knife threat.

Don't worry; this book isn't all terrifyingly intense threats to minimum wage workers. It's also got a bunch of rehashed jokes involving putting animals in places you wouldn't expect an animal to be. The punchline is, I guess, either injury to you or the animal? Or maybe a surprise animal is funny by itself to someone?

Keep at least five cats in the car…at…at all times? I don't think the cats or the car driver will like that. Chicken in the ceiling has the most potential for comedy but also the most potential for being mauled by chicken talons. I personally never want to go to the ER with a chicken related injury. I don't want to explain to a medical professional who probably went to school for eight years hoping to cure cancer or some shit that I'm bleeding because I tried to put a chicken in the ceiling.

The problem with these pranks is you still own a bunch of animals after the prank is over. You can't rent five cats. Those are your cats now, and you're supposed to own one and a half litter boxes per cat, so good luck fitting seven point five litter boxes in the car where your cats live so that when someone gets in your vehicle after saying, "My God what is that smell," they'll say, "Do you have FIVE cats in your car? As a bit? Truly your mind is so hideously twisted I shall never sleep again knowing of it!"

The most unbelievable thing about this book is that a person who acts this way would have any friends to prank. You can tell whoever wrote it (there's no credited author because whoever wrote it doesn't want to give the FBI any clues) doesn't have a ton of friend experience. They think that if you tell your friend you're drinking your own piss, their reactions will be, "Man, I have GOT to see that."

"Let me get my peepers on some piss drinking," they'll say. "Sure, I'll come over to your house and watch you drink piss. There's nothing I'd rather do on a Saturday night!" Pro tip: if someone accepts an invitation to watch you drink piss, they are not your friend.

The hilarious pranks in this book are divided into chapters by the places you can perform them. There are pranks for work, pranks for a shared home, pranks in public, and, most troublingly, pranks to play on little kids. How dare this book prey on the wide-eyed innocence of a child with its strange series of highly gorilla mask-based pranks.

Some of the spelling in this chapter made me realize the book wasn't written in America. It's Australian, but I checked, and as far as I can tell, there isn't a well known Australian nursery rhyme called "I am the Apeman and have come to get you." Only the maniac who wrote this book would throw that in as if it were a normal song we all sing to our children. In general, there aren't a lot of nursery rhymes that include direct threats to children.

Most of the other pranks in the kid's section are telling children things they wouldn't understand aren't true, like telling them they have a one hundred and fifty dollar library fine or telling them that if they drink too many green drinks, they will turn green. The prank is that their brains haven't fully developed yet, and you've noticed that. Life is the prank.

Every joke is either way too big or way too small. Most kids aren't going to get upset about library fines. They don't have money. They don't have jobs. They are, however, terrified of being kidnapped by a gorilla. What we need is something in between the impending threat of ape murder and a minor inconvenience.

Although the book is divided up into chapters, there are occasions when out of nowhere, the book will forget its stated intent and throw in a random segment unrelated to the chapter or practical jokes in general. In the section called, "Don't get angry, get even," there's suddenly, without warning, a bunch of the meanest things you'll ever read disguised as horoscopes.

Other highlights include Geminis are "the type of person to kill yourself to win a bet" and "you should become a stunt performer with no helmet."  I remember reading an article the other day about how Mr. Bean once said, "every joke has a victim," and I disagree with that strongly but I do feel personally victimized by every joke in this book. I think what I'm saying is the psychopath who wrote this book was Mr. Bean. He's my number one suspect.

A few of the other pranks give a good insight into the mind of the writer, and those pranks are all alcoholism. There's no punchline or even a setup; they're just statements that say, "Hey, you know what rules? Drinking vodka pretty much all the time, constantly, and never stopping."

Who are you even supposed to be pranking with these? They're a grim look into a future where you've pranked all your friends and family away, and the 7 Eleven won’t answer your calls anymore but your irresistible urge to prank must be satisfied. Left with no other choice you must turn to pranking the only person left in your life, yourself.

Why is drinking two bottles of vodka listed under easy to do jokes? That would not be an easy joke for everyone. I don't think I've ever finished half a bottle of vodka. That prank might kill me. Although, to the writer of this book, my untimely death from alcohol poisoning would be a pretty sick prank.

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