Slashdot Mirror
Revenge for the Foil Apartment?
GooseKirk asks: "Just over a year ago, my apartment was completely covered in foil. For some reason, this resulted in global media attention, and ever since, people have been asking me, "what are you doing for revenge?" A few great ideas fell through for various reasons (Ron Jeremy was booked, apparently), and sadly, I currently lack access to an orbital weapons platform, so let me pose this riddle to the great Slashdot collective: if you were going to cook enough popcorn to effectively, and let's say hypothetically, bury a small single-story building, how would you cook it and how would you deliver it, quickly and quietly, say, under cover of darkness? At the least, I think it's an interesting puzzle, and other wacky ideas are certainly welcome... just remember, people, mum's the word, OK?"
Do the only thing worse than covering something with aluminum foil... cover it in saran wrap.
----- "All right. It was a miracle. Can we go now?"
and a big laser... and a real genius....
Decay! Decay! Decay! -Helium
the first thing i'dve done was not post to a news source that is read by hundreds of thousands of geeks per day.
the suprise is the best part of the practical joke.
WTPOUAWYHTTOTWPA
What's the point of using acronyms when you have to type out the whole phrase anyways?
My Dad and his friends actually did this to a guy in college using a surplus WW2 jeep. Back then (early 50s) you could buy these jeeps still in the crate for like $100. I bet that was a fun weekend
Of course, today's cars are a lot more difficult. Though I rate the feasibility of this at about the same level as pointing enough DirectTV dishes at a house full of orville redenbacher.
Maybe fill the place up with thousands of balloons. Only have the occasional balloon full of shaving cream instead of air. When he goes pop-crazy he will get quite the surprise. Rub it in his face and even provide a pin.
Is to sell it to one of the tin foil hat people. there is quite a market for it, just imagine, if your whole apartment is covered in foil, then you can finally take your cap off while at home.
Monstar L
Anything involving popcorn is good. When my house full of crazy geek college students got involved in a prank war with another house full of geek college students, I'd have to say the popcorn prank was the best.
Our war started simply enough. They were the pirate house, they even flew pirate flag from their roof. So one night under cover of darkness we went over and stole it. The responsed by breaking into our house and waking us all up by turn our CD player on full blast and looping A pirates life for me.
Now that is annoying to wake up too.
The hacks on our various websites got pretty boring, as did the WEP cracking, so we decided to step it up a notch.
One of my housemates worked at a movie theater, so we had him bring home all the stale popcorn at the end of the night.
We snuck into their house, filled their whole bathroom with popcorn and went home happy.
We woke up to pictures in our e-mail boxes of the enemy playing NAKED in our wall of popcorn.
So my words of advice to you, popcorn is funny, but make sure you're prepared from strange naked popcorn prancing pictures.
Ewwww, the images are still burned into my mind.
NIPCO makes a liquid (disel) fuel heater that forces air with an electric fan. This can be vented through a metal container, such as a garbage can, containing un-popped popcorn and used like an air-popper. The exhaust, if properly tuned should carry popped kernels (lower density than unpopped) out to a destination. This exhaust, if enough air is applied to prevent jamming, could then be directed through a length of dryer vent tubing (think giant slinky with plastic) to the top of a home.
Good luck!
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Use cardboard to build little boxes 'round the doors and windows so you only have to use a fraction of the amount of popcorn to make it look like you've filled the place.
First, get your hands on a hot-air popcorn popper. Maybe several of them.
Then, modify the popcorn popper so the kernel bin gets refilled via a chute. You can drill a hole in the side of the popper and glue a sheet metal stovepipe in, for example. Then, hook the chute up to a BIG bin of popcorn kernels.
Now, mount an exit chute to the part of the popper where the popcorn collects. Set up the popper so that as popcorn is made, it naturally falls out the exit chute. You might want to create a wheeled mount for the popper, so that it's higher than the place where it's putting the popcorn. Alternately, you could mount an electrical impeller (like a mix of propeller and submarine screw) to manually push the popcorn out. You might want to rig the thing flamethrower-style, so you're holding the exit chute and throwing a stream of popcorn wherever you point it.
Open up the window into which you're going to be inserting the popcorn. Arrange the popcorn delivery device so that the exit chute points in the window, and get ready to shoot the prepared popcorn into the interior. Ensure there's a large supply of unpopped popcorn in the ammo bin.
And plug in the extension cord.
Hopefully, hilarity ensues. Remember to collect your gear and close the window!
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
And it took a CRAPLOAD of popcorn to do it. We borrowed several popcorn poppers and had them running every minute we were awake for about a week leading up to the prank.
We air popped the popcorn so that it wouldn't get grease everywhere, but we still got bits of corn all over. A few years after the prank, my friend's CD player quit working. He sent it in for repair, and they sent it back to him saying the problem was that a corn kernal had become lodged in the player somewhere.
IIRC, it takes about 120 pounds of popcorn to fill the passenger compartment of a 1964 Falcon, covering a building would take a heck of a lot more.
Good luck, if you can pull it off, the expression on his face when he sees it will be priceless!
Your only costs are the corn, and bags for each participant. No delivery truck, no fancy heaters, etc.
Here's a story I was told by a classmate and that supposedly happened to a relative of his. It seems that a new neighbor moved into the suburban community this relative lived in. This guy had a big nasty dog he would let loose in the neighborhood. The whole summer the entire neighborhood tried to get this guy to clean up the shit his dog was leaving all over the place but he just ignored them. Finally winter came around and the dog would poop in the snow which was not visible most of the time so people stopped being as annoyed about it. However, come spring, the snow melted and there was dogshit everywhere. So one day the all the neighbors got together with shovels and buckets, gathered up all the dogshit and dumped it on the dog owners doorstep along with a note that very politely promised more of the same. After that the dog was kept on a leish.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
...You're talking about burying the EXTERIOR of the building, not filling the interior volume.
A bit of basic math to calculate the volume required (keep in mind I'm a poli-sci major, not a math geek):
The minimum dimensions you'll be dealing with for a "a small single-story building" would be about 60' x 60' x 15' which gives you an exterior WALL AREA of 54 000 square feet. This is NOT including the roof. Just the exterior WALLS of the building, I'll get to the roof in a second.
For the sake of simplicity, and my own poor math skills, we'll assume your friend has a FLAT roof. That's another 3 600 square feet.
You're now dealing with 57 600 square feet of exterior area to cover with popcorn. Assuming that you want to be able to provide at least 6" of popcorn on top of the whole house and assuming you will have a way to KEEP the popcorn IN PLACE (i.e. not just pile it up) you're looking at 57 600' x 0.5' for a total of 28 800 CUBIC FEET of popcorn.
If you are EXTREMELY liberal in your calculations you can assume that about two bags of microwave popcorn will create one cubic foot of the stuff. Thus, 57 600 bags of microwave popcorn. I'm not quite sure how to calculate how much bulk popcorn you'd need, so I've put it in microwave bag terms to give you a rough idea.
If you actually need to PILE the popcorn up around the walls I suspect it would be reasonable to double this number for an approximate volume requirement. 57 600 CUBIC feet, or 115 200 BAGS of of popcorn is a FUCKING LOT of popcorn...
---------
Now, if you were talking about FILLING his house with popcorn...
---------
We'll assume a basic 1-bedroom single-story residence with kitchen, bathroom, living room, dining room, hallways, NOT including closets, and NOT including garage.
The layout of the house could DRASTICALLY affect the overall volume, so these are excessively rough estimates.
Bedroom: 20' x 20'
Kitchen: 20' x 20'
Living Room: 20' x 20'
Dining Room: 20' x 20'
Bathroom: 15' x 10'
Hallways: 35' x 5'
All Ceilings at 9'
(4)3600 + 1350 + 1575 = 17 325 cubic feet inside the house. Refer to my previous calculations regarding microwave bags / volume and you'll come to about 35 650 BAGS of microwave popcorn to accomplish this.
After all this, I seriously doubt you'll be able to do this on the kind of budget that I'd imagine you're on. Perhaps going for just your friend's bedroom / car / home-office would be a more reasonable thing to try?
--Nic
The heat generated by a pile of popcorn this big (ever hear of sawdust fires? how about haybails incinerating themselves?) will be large. All it would take is his heating equipment, a hot day, or something left on and you just burned down the guys house.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
i suggest removing the magnetron from a microwave (or purchasing a magnetron, whatever's easier) to pop the kernals. most efficient (i think) would be to put the kernals in his apartment and pop them there. it would take a long time (depending on how you decide to power the magnetron, personal experience advises against batteries) but it would be pretty easy. you can likely get popcorn fairly cheap at costco or whatnot, and google yeilds 50 lbs for $20. prolly best to team up with a few buddies with the magnetrons...
man id like to see that done... lazers are fer wusses, im all about the ray-guns.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
some images of something that happened to a friend of a friend. FYI, air poppers prob won't help out much as they are (obviously) much too slow. - cceddie
Assuming:
100g of popcorn fills 1/4 cubic foot
Popcorn makes a pile at 20 degrees from vertical
House is about 800 square feet
House is a rectangle
Then I get 13.5 METRIC TONS of popcorn! That amount will almost cover the house; leaving the upper corners and roof exposed.
You will have to move the popcorn unpopped, probably by one of those 18-wheelers (although I do not know if they are big enough).
You will have to pop on site. I suggest modifying a gas dryer (removing thermostat, and tilting it back so the opening faces mostly up. You may need more than one, and I hope your friend has a natural gas line to his house already.
Turn off everything in the house so no fire starts. Start popping on the roof.
Filling the house would be much easier: the 18-wheeler should be able to hold all the popcorn (unpopped), the dryer, and the blow-in insulation machine.
If you would like my spreadsheet calculator, I can mail it to you.
Good luck
In order to deliver in the cover of darkness, rent several vans. Remember the logistical problem of this is to fill the volume of a building. You do realize that say a moving van full ballons will probably fill an 18ft by 10 ft by 10 ft space. So if it is a one story building, that is say 1000sq with 10 foot ceilings, you'll need something on the order of 5-6 moving vans full of (popcorn/ballons). To fill it ceiling to floor right for the entire building.
The bonus to this, is if you can find a rental place (in America, it's relatively simple to find, but I don't know about the UK (where I believe you live from the link I was reading) to rent a helim thing to inflate roughly half of them (ceilings) and then an air compressor to inflate the other half (floor).
With an air compressor (a $90USD), or a vacuum you can use as a blower, if making a lot of noise is acceptable, you can just stand outside the house and fill the ballons. The bigger the balloons, the fewer you need. It might be advantagous to find several just huge ballons (think 4-6 feet in diameter) to just fill large volumes to be inflated on site, while pre-inflating the smaller filler ballons to pack the place fairly tight. to make very difficult to move around in. The other problem with this plan, is that anything that is fragile and at a below the height you plan on putting the ballons/popcorn to might get knocked over during the cleanup.
This idea, isn't an original of mine. Some of my older sisters friends did this to my sister for her birthday. They filled her room to about 4 foot high with ballons in her room.
Kirby
While the popcorn idea sounds like fun, logistically speaking, baloons give a bigger bang for your buck.
1. Get an air compressor or 3 from your local equipment rental store.
2. Get a cylinder of helium.
3. Get a funnel.
4. Get some glitter.
5. Get some confetti (I prefer cross-shreded paper).
6. Get some shaving cream.
7. Get shit-tons of cardboard.
The basic theory is to use the air compressors to fill the majority of the baloons. A survey of the house and some simple math will give you a volume. A few test baloons will let you know how many you'll eventually need. Use the cardboard to block off the doors to the various rooms so you can fill them to the top.
The helium makes annoying baloons that are hard to get at.
The glitter and confetti make a fucking mess.
The shaving cream is for real revenge.
The big trick is to only fill a few with the goodies. Make every "pop" a real surprise.
BTW, to make the process more effecient, come up with a better way to seal vice tying. Most party stores have plugs you can use, but it might get expensive.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
First of all you roll up your sleeves, because you are determined to succede or die trying.
;)
You would best:
1. Plan to make the popcorn at the house
2. Fill the house interior
3. Use 2-3 days to get the job done.
4. Get an insider to cooperate.
The logistics of transporting several tens of thousand cubic feet of popped corn is too expensive. Transporting the corn unpopped is much less conspicuous. Same reason for filling the interior. He probably has neighbors who would call the cops, so you need to do this inside the house so everything looks fine from the outside.
Imagine his face when he opens his front door and finds a wall of popcorn. It's no fun if he saw it a mile away and you didn't get to see the reaction.
It would probably be a good idea to do it while he's away for a weekend or some such time. That would give you plenty of time to set up your gear and pop the corn. This creates a need for an insider who knows his travel plans, a brother or mutual friend. I'm guessing that you already have a copy of the house key to get in...
I'm guessing that both a hot air popper and a microwave are too slow and/or messy.
I think a 200 litre oil drum as a pot (maybe cut in half) over a gas heater in the back yard is best.
You will need to have an efficient way of emptying the popcorn and putting more corn into the pot without the popcorn burning in the meantime.
Some sort of air suction device could be used to empty the popcorn from the pot. Something like the insulation blower someone else mentioned. That way you also have an efficient delivery system you could use to fill every crevice of every room with popcorn. Perhaps a leaf blower and wheelbarrow is sufficient (cheaper).
The unpopped corn should be heavy enough to stay at the bottom where it will eventually pop and be sucked out. I will leave it up to you to figure out what to do with the kernels that don't pop...
There you have it, a complete, DOABLE, plan.
Hope you post the pictures for our amusement...
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
When I was in college, a group of guys saved newspapers for the entire semester. At the end of the semester, they carefully took the newspapers sheet by sheet, crumpled it in a ball and threw it in a room. As far as I can remember, it took less that 8 hrs to fill a room the size of the inside of an 18 wheeler's trailer. The best part was afterwards. The victim just shoved the newspaper out the door into the hall. Just like outhouses, the shiat flows down, even when you are on the 3rd floor of a dorm. There were 2 sets of stairs with extra landings 1/2 between each floor. The newspaper covered each of the landings enough to, unfortunatly, protect the heads of the dumb-as^h^h^h^h^h^h guys swan-diving head-first from landing to landing. Another neat feature was that everyone was coated in a fine black dust and we sneezed black for a few days.
I would recommend those spiffy face masks that you see asian people wearing in the news all the time and some latex gloves. This is so that you stay your normal color and don't sneeze black crap all over the victim when they are trying to figure out if you had anything to do with it or not.
Ever see the experiment (Mr Wizard, I think) with hundreds of mousetraps, all with rubber balls on the flippy bit to demonstrate chain reactions?
:) You might want to be nice & put safety goggles where they will be entering...
I've seen Mousetraps 4/$1 at the dollar stores before - with a couple thousand mousetraps, you could rig the building to just go horribly wrong
Much of this would require access to the home in question.
:) And you can put everything back just like it was with fairly minimal effort - the paint being the biggest issue. But hey, maybe they needed to paint the living room anyway.
Needed: 1 Actor/ess the mark doesn't know as the 'Host'
1 Cameraman (needs professional *looking* gear)
1 Sound guy (boom with a dustbunny-looking mike on it)
1 Producer. Optional, but would add to the realism.
1 Designer. Optional, but could be a very fun part for someone to play. Coked out, drunken, wearing thrift store castoffs, whatever.
While the mark is at work/out of town/whatever, do a 'remodel' on the living room. Carefully remove & store all their furniture. Proceed to create the 'Gallery of Ill-Advised DIY'. Watch a lot of the designer shows on HGTV & such for inspiration.
Produce a godawful paint scheme - bonus points for poor application of same. Find the absolute cheapest fire-sale irregular $.12 per yard vinyl sheet flooring you can. Bonus for Avocado or Gold. Put it down before painting, it'll even protect the (real) floor!
Produce a large variety of craft projects (could be done far in advance). I'm thinking of branches from the backyard hot-glued together into a shapeless "Sculpture". Make lamps out of things that shouldn't be - Keyboards, a 7 watt night light that weighs 80 lbs (dead monitor?), that sort of thing.
Find consignment shop furniture that looks as much like theirs as possible. Paint it. Apply glitter. Do whatever nasty things you can think of to 'improve' it. Make them think it's the *original* furniture beneath the burlap-and-pinecone treatment.
When they come home, the camera, sound, and host ambush the mark. Have signs for your imaginary show "Ambush Home Makeover!" or "Dirt Cheap DIY" - have a network 'affiliated' with it - DIY, BBC47, Public access. Think Low, low, low budget. The host actor would have to be good, introducing them to the show & concept, talking about all the work their friend (you) put in to it...before doing the big reveal.
The best part is that you get the reaction on film if you keep them from guessing the truth