How to be Annoying in the Computer Lab – Log on, wait a sec, then get a frightened look on your face and scream, "Oh my God! They’ve found me!" and bolt. Laugh uncontrollably for about 3 minutes and then suddenly stop and look suspiciously at everyone who looks at you. When your computer is turned off, complain to the monitor on duty that you can’t get the darned thing to work. After he/she’s turned it on, wait 5 minutes, turn it off again, and repeat the process for a good half hour. Type frantically, often stopping to look at the person next to you evilly. Before anyone else is in the lab, connect each computer to a different screen than the one it’s set up with. Write a program that plays the "Pokemon" theme song and play it at the highest volume possible over and over again. Work normally for a while. Suddenly look amazingly startled by something on the screen and crawl underneath the desk. Ask the person next to you if they know how to tap into top-secret Pentagon files. Use AIM to make passes at people you don’t know. Make a small ritual sacrifice to the computer before you turn it on. Bring a chainsaw, but don’t use it. If anyone asks why you have it, say, "Just in case…" mysteriously. Type on VAX for awhile. Suddenly start cursing for 3 minutes about everything bad about your life. Then stop and continue typing. Enter the lab, undress, and start staring at other people as if they’re crazy while typing. Light candles in a pentagram around your terminal before starting. Ask around for a spare zip disk. Offer $1. Keep asking until someone agrees. Then, pull a disk out of your fly and say, "Oops. Forgot." Every time you press return and there is processing time required, pray, "Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease," and scream "YES!" when it finishes. "Disk fight!" Start making out with the person at the terminal next to you, whether you know them or not. Put a straw in your mouth and put your hands in your pockets. Type by hitting the keys with the straw. If you’re sitting in a swivel chair, spin around singing "The Thong Song" whenever there is processing time required. Draw a picture of a woman (or man) on a piece of paper and tape it to your monitor. Try to seduce it. Act like it hates you and then complain loudly that women (men) are worthless. Try to stick a Nintendo cartridge in the disk drive. When it doesn’t work, get the supervisor. When you start up a PC, ask loudly where the smiling Apple face is. Print out the complete works of Shakespeare, then when it’s all done (two days later) say that all you wanted was a line or two. Sit and stare at the screen, chomping on your nails. After doing this for a while, spit them out at the feet of the person next to you. Stare at the screen, grind your teeth, stop, look at the person next to you. Repeat procedure, making sure you never provoke the person enough to let them blow up, as this releases tension, and it is far more effective to let them linger. If you have long hair, take a typing break, look for split ends, cut them, and deposit them on your neighbor’s keyboard as you leave. Put a large, gold-framed portrait of the British royal family on your desk and loudly proclaim that it inspires you. Come to the lab wearing several layers of socks. Remove shoes and place them on top of the monitor. Remove socks layer by layer and drape them around the monitor. Exclaim sudden haiku about the aesthetic beauty of cotton on plastic. Take the keyboard and sit under the computer. Type up your paper like this. Then go to the lab supervisor and complain about the bad working conditions. Laugh hysterically, shout "You will all perish in a great flood" and continue working. Bring some dry ice and make it look like the computer is smoking. Assign a musical note to every key (ex. the delete key is A flat). Whenever you hit a key, hum its note loudly. Write an entire paper this way. Attempt to eat your computer mouse. Borrow someone else’s keyboard by reaching over, saying "Excuse me, mind if I borrow this for a sec?" unplugging the keyboard, and taking it. Bring in a bunch of magnets and have a ball. When doing calculations, pull out an abacus and say that sometimes the old ways are best. Play Pong for hours on the most powerful computer in the lab. Make a loud noise of hitting the same key over and over again until you see that your neighbor is noticing. Then look at your neighbor’s keyboard. Hit his/her delete key several times, erasing an entire word. While you do this, ask: "Does your delete key work?" Shake your head, and resume hitting the space bar on your keyboard. Keep doing this until you’ve deleted about a page of your neighbor’s document. Then, suddenly exclaim: "Well, whaddya know? I’ve been hitting the space bar this whole time. No wonder it wasn’t deleting! Ha!" Print out your document and leave. Remove your disk from the drive and hide it. Go to the lab monitor and complain that your computer ate your disk. (For special effects, put some glue on or around the disk drive. Claim that the computer is drooling.) Stare at your neighbor’s screen, look really puzzled, burst out laughing and say "You did that?" loudly. Keep laughing, grab your stuff and leave, howling as you go. Point at the screen. Chant in a made-up language while making elaborate hand gestures for a minute or two. Press return or the mouse, then leap back and yell, "COVEEEEERRRRR!" Peek up from under the table, walk back to the computer and say "Oh, good. It worked this time," and calmly start to type again. Keep looking at invisible bugs and trying to swat them. See who’s online. Send a total stranger a talk request. Talk to them like you’ve known them all your lives. Hang up before they get a chance to figure out you’re a total stranger. Bring a small tape player with a tape of really absurd sound effects. Pretend it’s the computer and look really lost. Pull out a pencil. Start writing on the screen. Complain that the lead doesn’t work. Come into the computer lab wearing several extra-stinky species of flowers in your hair. Smile incessantly. Type a sentence, then laugh happily exclaim, "You’re such a marvel!" and kiss the screen. Repeat this after every sentence. As your ecstasy mounts, also hug the keyboard. Finally, hug your neighbor, the computer assistant, and then walk out. Run into the computer lab, shout, "The Apocalypse is here!" then calmly sit down and begin to type. Quietly walk into the computer lab with a Black and Decker chainsaw, rev ‘er up, and then walk up to the nearest person and say, "Give me that computer or you’ll be feeding my pet crocodile for the next week." Two words: Tesla Coil.
