March 29, 2010

Pranks, apocryphal and otherwise

I’ve been posting a bit about pranks of various kinds, mainly geeky ones. But so far I’ve only covered real pranks, rather than the much funnier imaginary ones.

The classic of that genre, of course, is a certain database-oriented xkcd comic strip. (If you haven’t instantly guessed what I’m talking about, you must see that strip.) And in a similar vein, I further offer six examples of xkcd’sMy Hobbystrips. (The last two are not for the sexually squeamish, but the others are pretty G-rated.)

One thing I just learned about xkcd — if you mouse over the strip, you get another joke. Some are almost as funny as the main strip. So even if you have already seen the database-classic xkcd linked above, you might want to revisit it. 😉

In a very different vein is Dadhacker’s list of real or imaginary past shenanigans, (Edit: The original link is fried, but here’s a partial replacement) which starts:

I am not permitted to replace a coworker’s reference books (including his Knuth, Sedgewick, and C++ reference manuals) with several linear feet of steamy hardback romance novels.

I will not name my variables after nasty tropical diseases, or executives who are under indictment for fraud.

Elevators are not toys, nor should they ever be wired into the corporate net.

Funny and vaguely prankish (and not for the language-squeamish) is this non-xkcd comic about NoSQL. And finally (definitely also for the non-squeamish), see the first long comment in this Reddit thread, which seems to have successfully pranked a whole lot of readers.

Comments

3 Responses to “Pranks, apocryphal and otherwise”

  1. April Fool’s Day highlights | Text Technologies on April 1st, 2010 6:48 am

    […] A companion roundup of other, even funnier pranks […]

  2. Google funniest joke of the year (that I’ve noticed so far) | Text Technologies on April 1st, 2010 10:57 am

    […] A companion roundup of other, even funnier pranks […]

  3. Oracle for possible takeover of REvolution Computing « DECISION STATS on April 1st, 2010 4:28 pm

    […] Computing is a featured portfolio company of North Bridge Venture Partners, a leading investor in open source […]

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