Free Republic

Diboll man makes first court appearance Accused 'Prankster' faces felony charges By JESSICA SAVAGEThe Lufkin Daily News Thursday, September 10, 2009 A Diboll man made his first court appearance Wednesday on felony charges related to a Lufkin McDonald's prank call which cost more than $5,000 in damages.James Tyler Markle has been appointed an attorney to represent him on a third-degree felony charge of terroristic threat. He is being held in the county jail on a $10,000 bail. Jessica Savage/The Lufkin Daily News (ENLARGE) James Tyler Markle, 19, is escorted Wednesday morning from the Angelina County Courthouse by sheriff's deputy L....

In a blunder that might top the Baby Shaker app on Apple's App Store, retailing giant Sears.com has been caught offering a Bar-B-Que grill specially designed to roast infants and other human morsels.

It’s looking more and more like the forged “Kenyan birth certificate” released by Orly Taitz on Sunday was a prank by a supporter of President Obama. Politijab points to an anonymous blogger at FearlessBlogging, who has uploaded four photos of the original forgery and a mocking declaration: Fine cotton business paper: $11 Inkjet printer: $35 1940 Royal Model KMM manual typewriter: $10 2 Shilling coin: $1 Pilot Varsity fountain pen: $3 Punkin’ the Birthers: Priceless

How intolerant of them not to listen patiently while the Democrats’ own mob of irate liberal zombies calls in to tell them what Nazis they are.

The Democratic National Committee released a web video yesterday entitled "Enough of the Mob," which suggests that Republicans and their allies are "organizing angry mobs" to "destroy President Obama and stop the change Americans voted for." The video concludes by asking supporters to call the Republican Party and "tell them you've had enough of the mob." The phone number of the Republican National Committee then appears onscreen. Those who call the number are told to press one if they are calling in regard to the DNC video. When they do, they are told to call a different phone number "to...

Sometimes it’s hard to tell what to believe when you read it on the web. The recent “Unknown Lifeform” in North Carolina? Turns out, not a hoax, but also not a monster. But all those rumors about Jeff Goldblum falling to his death in New Zealand? Well, those were a hoax, and a rather tasteless one at that. For hundreds of years, humans have been playing elaborate tricks on each other, but the advent of social tools — from Usenet and email right on up to YouTube () and Twitter () — means that hoaxes are much more easily spread,...

Please, sir, do not throw your toilet out the window, no matter what the stranger on the phone is telling you. If the phone in your hotel room rings unexpectedly at 2 in the morning, you might soon become the next victim of a network of scammers who are causing tens of thousands of dollars in damage at accommodations around the country. Often imitated and deviously duplicated, a group called PrankNET appears to be at the center of a growing trend that has harried hoteliers and restaurateurs for months and is now being investigated by the FBI. During their calls...

NOTE: I post this because my nephew and Godson is thinking he might like to attend Cal Tech and will paying it a visit soon. ================================================= THE GREAT ROSE BOWL HOAX THE LONGEST LIST OF THE LONGEST STUFF AT THE LONGEST DOMAIN NAME AT LONG LAST The Great Rose Bowl Hoax The College Prank that Set the Standard Picture it: The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, January 2, 1961. The game is being played on the 2nd day of the New Year due to the 1st falling on a Sunday. The stadium is at capacity for the college championship battle...

Some Southern Lehigh High School students who camped in the school's courtyard overnight as a senior prank could face trespassing charges and disciplinary action. Brian McLaughlin of Upper Saucon Township police, who is assigned to the school as a resource officer, said 17 boys took part in the Monday night prank. He is investigating whether any others were involved.

Pupils at a school in the US broke into their portable classrooms and placed their chairs and tables on the roof. Aerial footage and mobile phone pictures reveal how much furniture they were able to move in the prank which teachers think occurred overnight at Cypress Creek High School in Orange County, Florida. video@link

Recently a photo of Barnes & Noble book display board was circulated widely over the Internet. The photo showed various books about President Obama around a central photo of a monkey book. Barnes & Noble claims some prankster did this intentionally. The photo shown in this site was the catalyst of this controversy. The photos shows a book on monkeys “Monkey: A Captivating Look at These Fascinating Animals” with a number of books around it focusing on President Obama and his wife Michelle. The book chain Barnes & Noble deny someone deliberately placed the monkey book in the display. They...

CULLOWHEE (AP) — Two former students at Western Carolina University have received probation for charges related to their dumping on campus a dead bear with Barack Obama campaign signs on its head. District Court Judge Richlyn Holt sentenced brothers Marvin Caleb Williams of Wilkesboro and Mathew Colton Williams to probation Tuesday after they pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct. The Asheville Citizen-Times reported today that their attorney, Kris Earwood, said the brothers were kicked out of the university and now attend community college. Assistant District Attorney Camila Wright said a campus police investigation revealed no political or racial motivation in...

WBAL-TV has fired a reporter who inserted a graphic phrase in a video for a prank — only to have the doctored version surface on Web sites nationwide. Wanda Draper, director of public affairs for the NBC affiliate, confirmed Tuesday afternoon that technology reporter John Sanders no longer is employed by the station. According to accounts published on the Internet, Sanders admitted inserting a graphic phrase into a video to make it appear that John Gibson of Fox News was denigrating U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. In the faked video, which appeared first on YouTube and later on The Huffington...

Some clever techies confused PETA supporters today by pulling a well-executed prank against their campaign to “re-brand” fish as sea kittens. For at least a couple hours today, the internet was abuzz with the fact that www.SeaKittens.com had an Omaha Steaks ad smack-dab at the top of the page....

It took four years for Google to address the "Google bomb" that was lobbed at former President Bush. But it took the Internet behemoth only a few days to defuse the same attack on President Obama. Four years versus a few days ... Some Googlers are asking why. In 2003, President Bush's detractors successfully gamed the Google search engine by arranging to have countless Web sites link the words "miserable failure" to Bush's official biography on the White House Web site. The result was that when someone typed the search term "miserable failure" into the Google search box, Bush's bio...

Transportation officials in Texas are scrambling to prevent hackers from changing messages on digital road signs after one sign in Austin was altered to read, "Zombies Ahead." Chris Lippincott, director of media relations for the Texas Department of Transportation, confirmed that a portable traffic sign at Lamar Boulevard and West 15th Street, near the University of Texas at Austin, was hacked into during the early hours of Jan. 19. "It was clever, kind of cute, but not what it was intended for," said Lippincott, who saw the sign during his morning commute. "Those signs are deployed for a reason —...

Police investigate explosion in Starbucks in Rhode IslandThe Associated Press Friday January 02, 2009, 9:22 AM Police are investigating a small explosion that led to the evacuation of a Starbucks coffee shop in Providence, R.I. No injuries were reported and police said the only damage was minor charring on the floor. Investigators believe someone set off a homemade incendiary device in a plastic soda bottle as a prank Thursday night, police Maj. Thomas Oates said. About 25 people were in the shop on the city's East Side when the explosion happened. **SNIP**

The Times, which last month mocked Sarah Palin for getting taken in by a French prank…got taken in by a French prank, printing a letter Monday allegedly from Bertrand Delanoe, the Mayor of Paris, calling Caroline Kennedy's bid for a U.S. Senate seat as "appalling" and "not very democratic."

Obama tried to reach across the partisan divide twice yesterday with a phone call to Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Florida, our colleague Anne E. Kornblut reports. And twice, according to her office, she hung up on him. She "thought it was a hoax," an aide to the congresswoman said.

Then Rahm called her. And she hung up on him, too. I hereby offer one of my kidneys in exchange for the audio. Mint condition! Aside from a little Jack Daniel’s damage. In a series of hang-up and follow-up calls that appears to have taken up much of the afternoon, Ros-Lehtinen first received a call on her cell phone, from a Chicago phone number, and was informed by the caller that Obama wished to speak with her. When a man sounding like Obama got on the line, Ros-Lehtinen cut him off, saying, “I’m sorry, but I think this is a...

When a Santa hat was placed on a spire at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, the joke was lost on authorities who had it removed because it was a risk to health and safety. A team of 10 firefighters using two fire engines and a support vehicle with a hydraulic platform spent an hour lowering the seasonal headgear, which had been fastened to a 60ft spire about the college entrance known for centuries as the Gate of Humility. The culprit remains a mystery, but it is thought to be a student playing a practical joke following an end-of-term night out....

Sarah Palin unwittingly took a prank call Saturday from a Canadian comedian posing as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and telling her she would make a good president someday."Maybe in eight years," replies a laughing Palin.The Republican vice presidential nominee discusses politics, the perils of hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney, and Sarkozy's "beautiful wife," in a recording of the call released Saturday and set to air Monday on a Quebec radio station.

Two well-known Canadian pranksters tricked Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin into thinking she was on the phone today with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The conversation, captured on a Montreal radio program, was, in a word, embarrassing. (Politico's Ben Smith was among the first to pick up on reports from The Canadian Press.) The fake Sarkozy buttered Palin up by telling her he hoped she would become president some day. "Haha, maybe in eight years," Palin replied. Then the conversation turned to helicopter hunting, with a mention of Vice President Dick Cheney's infamous bad shot. "One of my favorite activities...

MONTREAL — A Quebec comedy duo notorious for prank calls to celebrities and heads of state has reached Sarah Palin, convincing the Republican vice-presidential nominee she was speaking with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. In the interview, which lasts about six minutes, Ms. Palin and the pranksters discuss politics, pundits, and the dangers of hunting with Vice-President Dick Cheney. The Masked Avengers, who have a regular show on Montreal radio station CKOI, intend to air the full interview on the eve of the U.S. elections. The well-known duo of Sebastien Trudel and Marc-Antoine Audette have also tricked Rolling Stones singer Mick...

A flyer advising Republicans to cast their election ballots Nov. 4 – and Democrats on Nov. 5 – has been distributed throughout several Hampton Roads communities in Virginia. The notice is dated Oct. 24 and features a Virginia State Board of Elections logo and state seal, the Virginian-Pilot reported.

WARREN — A pair of teenage boys thought they were playing a prank by knocking down a John McCain campaign sign Saturday afternoon and yelling, “This is for Obama” to the homeowner. But the homeowner, Kenneth Rowles, 50, was sitting on the front porch and didn’t think it was funny, especially since this was the second time vandals had damaged his campaign signs. Rowles went into his 1237 Dover St. home in Warren Township, got a .22-caliber rifle and went back to the porch to confront the boys at about 2 p.m. Rowles said he fired the rifle three times...

FLOWER MOUND, Texas -- Two high school students are facing charges after they ran across the football field during a game Friday night at Flower Mound High School. The two were dressed in costumes -- one was a banana and the other a gorilla. If YouTube is any indication, it's a common prank at schools and colleges and the video often ends up on the Internet. In this case, the kids in the costumes ended up in jail. Sean Kight, 18, and Curtis Patton, 17, both Flower Mound High School students, are charged with trespassing on school grounds, a misdemeanor....

Oh dear CNN professional "dignity" ruffled... LOL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERtDaAtkvhQ&feature=related

CHARLOTTE (MCT) — The host of a Charlotte FM radio station that sent a staff member aboard a Charlotte-Mecklenburg school bus as part of a prank Monday said this morning that the incident was never meant to be malicious. "We thought it was pretty entertaining," said Brotha' Fred, host of the Morning Mayhem on WIBT (96.1 FM). "We try to entertain in a way that some people will think was funny and some won't." "But we had no malicious intent." A staff member from the show, Jase Edward "Cubby" Squires, 26, was charged with causing a disturbance on a school...

AIDE'S MISTAKE REVEALS OBAMA'S VP PICK EARLY (PULLED FROM CNN) It's Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana. Original link is dead. This is a screenshot courtesy of roses of sharon.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - A judge has ordered a 19-year-old man to write an apology to an upstate city in New York for dressing as a 6-foot penis at a high school graduation. A Saratoga Springs judge also ordered Calvin Morett to pay to have the apology published in a local newspaper. The sentence also calls for Morett to pay court fees and perform 24 hours of community service. Morett had pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. A video of Morett's ....

It was probably the most ingenious student prank of all time. In June 1958, Cambridge awoke to see a car perched at the apex of an inaccessible rooftop, looking as if it were driving across the skyline. The spectacle made headlines around the world and left police, firefighters and civil defence units battling for nearly a week to hoist the vehicle back down before giving in and taking it to pieces with blowtorches. The shadowy group of engineering students who executed the stunt were never identified and the mystery of how they did it has baffled successive undergraduates and provided...

Brooklyn teen Quashon Burton thought bringing a laxative-laced cake to school would be "funny" - but he's not laughing now.   After two teachers were sickened and he was hit with an assault charge, the senior is worried his whole future is collapsing like a half-baked souffle. "I'm pretty scared," Burton told the Daily News Thursday outside his home in Brownsville.  "I didn't mean to have this whole thing blow out of proportion. I thought it would be a senior prank that everyone would think is funny." Burton, 17, and pals Tiara Peoples and Kenny Ramirez got the idea to...

This is hilarious. I cant believe they get by with this stuff over there. LINK

CHARLESTON, Ore. — It turns out the fate of Charlie the Tuna of Charleston, Ore., was sorry indeed. The 8-foot Monterey cypress sculpture that used to greet visitors to the coastal fishing town was filleted by two young men who stole it as a prank and then, panicked they would be found out, took chain saws to it. Not that Charlie would have lasted much longer anyway, the town learned, what with the way bugs and rot had hollowed out his innards. The statue stood beside the South Slough Bridge into Charleston until Mark Santos and Marvin Terry Jr. swiped...

Three seniors at Bloomington Kennedy High School will not be allowed to walk in their graduation ceremony after driving to school with confederate flags flying from their trucks. Seventy-five other students showed up at the school Wednesday morning to protest the action taken by the school against Justin Thompson, Joey Snyder and another student. "I figured, you know, we’re seniors, it’s the last day of school…we didn’t mean any offense by it," Thompson said. Added Snyder: "We didn’t look at it as racist or anything." But school officials feel that flying a confederate flag violates the school’s student conduct policy....

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. (WCCO) ― Flying the Confederate flag has long been controversial in Southern states but now it's causing a heated debate at Kennedy High School in Bloomington, Minn. Three seniors who displayed the flag will not be allowed to attend their graduation ceremony Wednesday evening. "It was sitting like that in the parking lot," said Justin Thompson, as he held a Confederate flag that was hanging from a pole inside a pick-up truck bed. On Tuesday, three seniors, each with a rebel flag on the back of their pick-ups, parked at Kennedy High School. "I'm just a country type...

BERKELEY _ CodePink should be turning red. That seems to be the consensus of many who were on the receiving end of a bogus announcement Tuesday by the radical anti-war group that the embattled U.S. Marine Corps recruiting center in Berkeley was caving to the pressure of weekly protests and leaving town. ``If you want to be taken seriously as an organization of serious protest, then you don't play jokes _ even on April Fools' Day,'' said Robin Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, who has written about the politics of language. CodePink and other...

Have a few pranksters in the workplace to watch out for on April Fool's Day? You may want to be prepared before you become the laughing stock of your office.

An Arlington man was in stable condition yesterday in Inova Fairfax Hospital after reaching into his luggage and being bitten by a snake. Officials have not determined how the reptile — preliminarily identified as a juvenile canebrake rattlesnake — got into the luggage. The man, identified by authorities only as a coach at Yorktown High School, told fire and rescue personnel that he felt a sharp pain upon reaching into his luggage after returning from a team trip to South Carolina. Upon seeing the nearly foot-long snake, the man quickly slammed shut the luggage with the snake inside, said Chief...

Last week, Stanford University reported thousands of students for illegally downloading music, many of whom will now have to pay thousands of dollars for violating copyright laws. OK, so actually the university did no such thing - but thousands of students panicked nonetheless. On Monday, the Stanford Chaparral, the university's humor magazine, published in its annual "Fake Daily" an article warning students about a new campus policy on copyright infringements. The accompanying Web site received nearly 24,000 hits from students checking to see if they were in imminent danger of being sued, said co-editor and Stanford senior Anthony Scodary. "Under...

CHURCH HILL, Tenn. - Investigators are searching for whomever poured deer urine into an air conditioning unit at a school in eastern Tennessee. About a dozen students became ill after the prank at Volunteer High School in Church Hill. Firefighters were sent to the school Monday after the odor became overpowering in one classroom, and paramedics treated students who complained of headache and nausea. Church Hill Police Chief Mark Johnson says the stunt could result in a vandalism charge. Deer urine is sold by the bottle to be used to attract the animals for hunting.

More in-depth article at this link: www.charlotte.com/local/story/472742.html CHARLOTTE (AP) — Five high school students in Charlotte face punishment for creating an online message board that falsely accused a teacher of being a pedophile. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools officials said one of the students faces a misdemeanor cyberstalking charge for creating the site. The other four will face school punishment for distributing inappropriate information about school personnel. School district law enforcement officer Kenny Lynch said the prank postings included "derogatory and offensive comments" about a teacher and photos taken without the teacher's consent. One of the students included a link to a fake...

Just before the Michigan Primary this week, I (Matt Romney) decided to take a some pressure off my dad with a little comic relief. Those that know him recognize that he loves a good practical joke. I tried to figure out when he'd be breaking for food so I could videotape the call. Have a look:Click here for video.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Pig fetuses believed stolen from a biology lab at a Des Moines high school were found impaled on car antennas at a rival school's parking lot in West Des Moines. The incident was discovered on Tuesday at Dowling Catholic High School. The pig fetuses were believed stolen from Roosevelt High School. They were on about 15 cars, along with a pound of biology-class crawfish that were smeared on hoods and windshields. "You could smell the formaldehyde from a block away," Dowling Assistant Principal Ron Meyers said.

Sacked for sheep sex prank   Baa-baric ... sheep  By THOMAS WHITAKER Published: Today   TWO British oil workers have been sacked after simulating sex with sheep due to be slaughtered for a Muslim festival. The animals were being killed for 30 foreign workers to celebrate Eid Al Adhha in the Algerian oil town Hassi Messaoud. The men, who have not been named, were reported by stunned restaurant workers and guards — then sacked by their employer, US industrial giant Schlumberger. They were accused of “sheep violation”. A spokesman for the company — which provides services to oil firms...

Dispatch for the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office received a call June 12, 2006, by a man claiming to be Jim Proulx of Alvarado. The caller said he was high on hallucinogenic drugs and had killed several family members with an AK-47 submachine gun. He threatened to kill remaining family members unless he was given $50,000 and safe passage out of the country. Sheriff’s deputies and Cleburne police, including the police SWAT team, surrounded Proulx’s home about 1 a.m. Proulx hadn’t shot anyone and had no hostages, officials soon discovered. Instead, he was sound asleep when officers arrived. It was a...

Two teachers have been suspended from a newly-opened school in Folkestone after mobile phone footage showed them tying up a student in a lesson. The 16-year-old sixth-former was left writhing on the floor surrounded by other students while he was restrained with cable in the middle of an engineering class. Pupils used their mobile phones to record the "prank" at Folkestone Academy which opened in September as part of the Government's pioneering city academies, part-funded by big business. Its principal, John Patterson, said the incident was referred by the school for investigation by Kent Police and social services. Action was...

Ah, the day of mobile video ubiquity is almost upon us. You can’t even tie up a student with an electricity cable, allegedly humiliate him in front of his peers and taunt him a few times without the footage being transmitted around the globe and (one imagines) Youtubed before you can say the phrase ‘BEG FOR MERCY’. Have a read… Link: Academy teachers suspended for tying up pupil in class | Schools special reports | EducationGuardian.co.uk Two teachers have been suspended after mobile phone footage showed a 16-year-old pupil being tied up with electrical tape and taunted in front of...

BOSTON — State officials are investigating complaints that at least two teenagers were given electric shock treatments at a residential center for people with special needs because someone telephoned fake orders to the staff. Initial investigations showed that a former student at the Judge Rotenberg Education Center called in the orders on Aug. 26, Cindy Campbell, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Early Education and Care, said Monday. Center officials reported the incident the following day, she said. "There is still an ongoing criminal investigation," said the school's senior counsel, Ernest Corrigan. "We are working very closely with investigators."...