Office pranks are a bit of a thing here. Well, at least in IT. Last year Matt took charge and put together a quartet of pranks that got the attention of the London Daily Mirror.

This video is from a May 2002 prank that put a golf cart with fuzzy dice and bobble headed Jesus in Cliffy’s office along with a Vote Bush sign and other things. He was mad, to be sure. Zach, Matt, Jon, and Al did all the heavy lifting, I simply offered (not like I had a choice) my golf cart to the cause (Zach would quickly point out that I’d basically abandoned it at his house).

Colophon: Why am I publishing this video only now? Because the new iMovie 08 rocks. Really. The source material was shot on my old Sony Clie, but until now I didn’t really have tools that would make editing it down easy enough to be worth the effort (it’s still five minutes, I know).

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Matt tells us the office pranks he masterminded a couple weeks ago got reported in Saturday’s Daily Mirror (scan above):

JOKER Matt Batchelder had the last laugh after he was left out of an office conference trip.

Alone at his desk for a week, the snubbed computer geek dreamed up a series of pranks to greet his boss and three colleagues as they returned… on April Fool’s Day.

First he “ovenwrapped” all the chairs in 1,100 sq ft of tin foil.

He also plastered 5,300 post-it notes over every available work surface. Then he painstakingly arranged 578 plastic cups on the office floor. And finally, he filled the place with 280 balloons.

Married Matt, a whizkid web engineer, was the talk of the campus at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, where he works in the admin department.

An insider said: “We don’t know if his bosses saw the funny side – or if he’s been fired.”

Nobody here knows who the “insider” is, and Matt’s bummed that he didn’t get his blog mentioned, but the coverage is still sweet. And, now we can officially call Matt the office nerd.

Can anybody send a copy?

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Those looking for this year’s April Fools gags should look at the office pranking from last week (pictured above). This blog will henceforth be very serious. Not.

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When Ken, Zach, Dan, and Dee all went off to a conference without Matt, Al, Cliff, Tim, Laurianne, and me (but especially Matt), they had to assume something would happen in their absence. Something.

And it did. To each one of them in turn.

1,100 square feet of tinfoil covered everything in Ken’s office. 5,300 Post-It notes were tiled over everything in Zach’s. 575 cups (many had water in them) covered Dan’s floor and desk. And 280 balloons filled Dee’s cube.

*disclaimer: As Matt was quick to say, “all work was done after hours or during our lunch break on Friday. No work resources were used (save for half a role of tape and a little bit of electricity).”

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Engadget calls it “skull-shattering fun” and Gizmodo labeled it “ear shrapnel.” It’s available at Paladone.com and Boy’s Stuff, though nobody seems to have yet found a domestic supplier. From the catalog page:

The Sonic Grenade features three different levels of the most noxious sound since the last Westlife album. To launch, pull the pin and throw it towards your target. After 20 seconds, the sonic explosion occurs, giving even the deepest sleeper a wake-up call like they’ve never had before. You can only stop the sirens by replacing the pin, and if you take that out of the room, lazy bones will have to get up and come and grab it off you – mission accomplished.

File this next to the Annoises CD.
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