What the...?

Practical Joke - A playful trick employing some physical practice, in which the victim is placed in an embarrassing or disadvantageous position.

There are three things in this life which, if done with consummate skill, are far greater than any other experience you will ever know. Artistic achievement, sexual communion, and practical jokes. 99% of us lack the inspiration and technical proficiency required for creative genius. 99% of us also lack the emotional tools to love another human properly. Ergo, for the vast mass of humanity, the greatest moment of our lives will be the successful execution of a sublime practical joke.
The perfect practical joke...a seamless synchronization of victim, perpetrator(s), and inspiration.
Often the difference between greatness and genius is attention to detail. Jimmy Kimmel once assigned his parental viewers the task of pretending to have eaten all their children's Halloween candy while they slept, and film the results. You think the Weeping Wall is wet? The best entry was from a perverse parent who had the craftiness to leave nothing but a plastic jack-o-lantern full of empty wrappers.
The greatest filmed practical joke might be in reruns on AFV. Two preteen brothers had been allowed to stay up to watch a chainsaw slasher movie. They were so, um, moved by the experience that they slept in the same bed that night, with all the lights on. In the morning, their father crept into the room. He wore a hockey mask, and had a chainsaw. Mom stood in the hallway, filming. Dad stood a few feet away from his sleeping progeny, and let 'er rip. One of the children literally levitated backwards over the headboard, becoming wedged between window and bed, bringing down the venetian blinds in the process. The other, after possibly voiding his fluids, regained the power of speech and shouted, "What is WRONG with you???"
What indeed.
If that's wrong, i don't want to be right.
My own contributions to the world's greatest practical jokes are modest, although the day is still young. Taking every piece of furniture and accessory out of my brother Dave's bedroom and recreating the room on the back lawn, that was a nice day. There are two, though, that might merit mention in the halls of greatness. The victim of the first was that very same brother.
The scatologically squeamish may want to excuse themselves now.
We all had household chores to attend to, in our youth. My brother was in charge of the litter box. Every day after school, he did his, uh, duty. I always got home before he did. One day, inspiration struck. I ran to the litter box, dropped my trousers, and, uh, did my duty. I carefully covered the fecal foolery with the odor-absorbing sand, burying it deep.
I found a hiding place, and waited.
He got home, and went straight to his chore. Smothering my chortles, i soon heard him say, "What the...?" It's those blessed seconds between discovery and understanding, that are the holy land for the dedicated practical joker.
He was not amused. Not a bit. For years to come, he scowled any time i mentioned that day. I don't know what the record is for time lapsed before a victim acknowledges greatness, but it was fifteen years before he finally said, "Yeah...that was pretty goddamned funny".
But the greatest practical joke i ever perpetrated was a lightning strike among lightning strikes, the result of a confluence of events that confound the imagination. The thing that made it so one-in-a-million perfect?
I didn't actually do it.
For this kind of event to happen, there has to be a combination of primed territory and an act of randomness that beggars belief. The primed territory was my brother John. In this case, primed meant that he was fully aware of my prankful proclivities, and as a regular target, his guard was always somewhat up.
We were visiting the folks. Dad is a hunter, and we had earlier noticed that in the refrigerator, along with hunks of deer corpse, there was a huge container of deer blood. We didn't know what it was for, and as vegetarians, we probably didn't ask.
The elements gather...
One afternoon, we started preparing a meal. John is a griller, so he was on the driveway under the back deck, getting the grill going. I was relaxing on said deck. Hanging off the side of the deck is a hummingbird feeder. The food in said feeder is red sugar water.
Any guesses yet?
As i'm sitting there, i notice some movement with my peripheral vision. A couple seconds later, i hear a shout of revulsion.
Patched it together? Deer blood in the fridge, and a prankster about?
At precisely the moment John is doodling away, the feeder spontaneously comes apart, loosing all its wet, red contents directly onto the waiting brother below. He says time went into slow motion as the liquid poured over him, and that he experienced a few seconds of relative calm as a clear, deliberate thought passed through his mind - "Well. My brother is pouring deer blood on me." Then he shouts loudly enough to bring the whole house running. His rush of disgust and outrage at my "act"...nothing i could have planned would have come close. Years later, sitting at this computer, i have to wait for my laughter to stop before my fingers can continue typing.
So here's to your best practical joke ever...or just the one that will emerge from your warped mind tomorrow. And if you're not a practical joker...
All the better. You're just the kind of person we're looking for.