The British Don't Understand 'Prank War'

Ah, the prank war - what better way to waste time at work than come up with elaborate schemes to make a friend look stupid and / or embarrassed? You and your designated opponent spend countless hours and energy trying to out-prank the other - sending stripper grams, changing the desktop picture on his computer, sending anonymous e-mails strongly recommending a battery of STD tests. The possibilities are endless. And thanks to the Internet, there's always a good idea floating out there.

If there's one thing you don't do during a prank war, you involve the authorities. If you can't come up with an appropriate response to the latest prank, then you are bound by the International Prank War Convention to admit defeat and request a truce. Depending on the circumstances, your defeat may involve purchasing many rounds of beer.

This may seem like common sense to you and me, but to a British man who was obviously in the midst of a prank war, he opted to drop the equivalent of a thermonuclear weapon in the middle of a prank war - he sued his buddy and got the legal system involved. In official prank war terminology, this is called "being a dick."

Here's a brief synopsis of what happened - someone signed Matthew Firsht up for Facebook and changed a couple details - like his sexual orientation. Instead of responding with another prank, Matthew opted to sue the guy. Thanks to the show Friends, we have a textbook example of what the appropriate response should have been in this case (the clip is 9 minutes long):

Ruin Your Friends' Lives

This story was found at Barstoolsports.com.

A San Francisco organization has put up a website that allows a person to send an ANONYMOUS message to sexual partners, informing them that they need to get test for STD's. Go ahead. Read that again. I'm actually surprised that it took this long for a website like this to appear.

In the perfect world - one without people who would abuse this site and send STD-grams to people who do not have STD's - this is a great idea. Unfortunately, we live in the land of shows like Jackass and Punk'd, and I'm willing to bet the number of prank STD-grams will vastly outnumber the number of real STD-grams. Hell, I've already sent 10 prank STD-grams.

Just kidding. I have not sent any STD-grams. I guess looking at the big picture, if the website at least slows down the spread of STD'd, then it's worth the millions of people who are going to be thrown into a mild panic when they get a fake notification.

Nonetheless, for purely educational purposes, click here to go to the STD-notification website. Regardless of how funny it will be, D&F does not condone sending your friends fake STD notifications. And we certainly do not want you to CC their significant others. That is irresponsible....and mean.

Columbus Was an A-Hole

For all you astronomy lovers out there, a lunar eclipse will occur tonight between 0301 and 0351 GMT (that's 10:01pm to 10:51pm Eastern time). According to some science type people, the moon will not totally disappear. Rather, it will turn red. Exciting. I know.

Lunar eclipses are actually regular things and are very predictable. The human race has been predicting them for hundreds of years, which leads us to the reason why Christopher Columbus was an A-hole, besides the fact that he had a vanity plate, wore trucker hats, and called everyone "Sport."

Apparently, when Chris was exploring the New World, he managed to anger the local natives in Jamaica. Evidently, this was before the advent of the Rastafarian movement and rampant weed smoking. Understandably, the natives were much more hostile than today. Columbus and his crew were running low on supplies, and the locals were refusing to help them. The locals may have been upset about all the raping and pillaging, but let's not jump to conclusions.

Anyway, Columbus took out his handy-dandy German astrology almanac (who doesn't have one of those laying around?) and realized that a lunar eclipse was imminent. He called the tribe leaders and told them that if they didn't cooperate, he would make the moon disappear from the sky. Sure enough, the eclipse occurred, and the locals begged Columbus to restore the moon. Chris and company, after laughing at the natives, got their supplies and continued exploring the New World.

So instead of playing nice with the natives, Columbus opted to be an A-hole. I'm not saying I wouldn't have done the same thing - everyone likes a good prank war. It's just I usually prank people who are capable of retaliating or at least understanding that they, in fact, had been pranked and not encountered some powerful witch doctor that can make celestial bodies disappear and reappear. Either way, I'm sure Columbus got his mileage out of the story back in Spain.

And that concludes today's history lesson.

Freak Your Friends Out

Bored? Looking for something to do this afternoon? Well, does D&F have a simple yet fun way to confuse and possibly freak out your friends.

For those of you who did not know, Leah Remini (most recently of The King of Queen's, but I prefer her from the Saved By the Bell days) is a big time Scientologist. In fact, she's so big that she was one of the first people to see the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard (that's Suri Cruise for you non-believers).

Apparently, she wrote this letter as part of some campaign to motivate (read: extort) people into sending The Church of Scientology more money. During the course of the letter, she somehow makes the totally logical jump from 9-11 to the need to further one's "studies" in the Church of Scientology. Right...

Anyway, take the letter, make a fake e-mail address on Hotmail or Yahoo or some other free e-mail site, do some creative cutting and pasting (make sure you change names where applicable), and then start sending that bad boy out to all your friends and loved ones. I suggest using an e-mail address like "sciencetologist_leah@" or "LRH_leah@" You get the idea.

Let us know how it goes!