Tuesday is April Fool's Day, and boy, does Sam Bartlett have some ideas for you. The Bloomington resident's new book, "The Best of Stuntology" (Workman Publishing, $12.95), is a compendium of pranks, tricks and stunts that will, as the jacket promises, "amuse and annoy your friends."

Each stunt is illustrated via amusing black-and-white cartoons, making it a snap for you to replicate the hilarious hijinks in your own living room or office.

"I don't like pranks unless they're truly absurdist," says Bartlett. "The best pranks alter people's minds but don't hurt them in any way -- other than maybe getting them wet ....."

When did you first realize the joys of practical jokes?

My earliest memory of this sort of thing was with my cousins visiting us and putting peanut butter in one of our toothpaste tubes. I squeezed it out onto my toothbrush and it was all brown and I ran to show it to my mother, thinking the toothpaste had gone bad. My uncle, who'd instigated the joke, was laughing so hard it looked like he was crying.

I actually have a long history of being the victim when it comes to this sort of thing.

Which of the pranks, tricks and challenges in your book are the biggest hits with people?

There are many ridiculous techniques taught in the book that I've seen people learn to their great satisfaction, but the stunts that send people laughing really hard are the bouillon shower (where you put a bouillon cube in a shower head) and the ketchup/Coke reversal (you stick the end of someone's drinking straw into a little package of ketchup, then stick it back into their drink so they drink ketchup instead of Coke.

What are the tricks to pulling off a really good prank?

The ultimate stunts have many stages, and with each one the victim is convinced that what just happened is the (final) prank. In the book, I describe a classic: The room rearrangement stunt. You go into someone's messy room and take careful notes on the placement of everything, maybe even photos.

Then rearrange every single item in the room. Alphabetize books, stack clothes according to color, line up shoes, whatever. Wait for your victim to see what you've done and be amazed. Wait for them to leave, and rearrange the room again. Move furniture, pictures on walls, make a new kind of bizarre order. Let the victim return, be amazed and then leave again. Finally, you put the room back into its original mess, using your notes to get every single mess item in its old place. This is like a do-it-yourself episode of "The Twilight Zone."

- Kelly Kendall / The Indianapolis Star