Dear Juli,

Received your query about the frozen chocolate chip cookie dough. You mentioned, quoting you here, "There were 24 cookies when I put them in the freezer last night, and now there is just one and a half-eaten bit of another." I feel somewhat responsible because I will completely admit to having two cookies. Totally and completely-that was me, those two, and believe me, I feel really gross about it. And the fact that you noticed the, again, quoting you here, "sandcastles of cookie crumbs around [my] bed" makes me feel even worse. Now of course, you'd be remiss to conflate my feelings of guilt with actual awareness about having done something wrong. It is one thing to take two cookies, for which I am so sorry, but quite another to take 22 and a half of a bit. It's disrespectful, is what it is, for someone to have eaten the remaining-okay, just, you know what?

Being completely honest here because my therapist/nutritionist [redacted] told me that this would help my [psychological disorder redacted]: I ate the cookies. All of them, except the one and that remaining half a bit. Enclosed is a check for $6.99.

Yours,

Prangstgrüp, active throughout the early and mid-Nads, was the arbitrarily Teutonic prank-committing team out of Columbia University. The members of Prangstgrup have all graduated, and their membership is spread far and very wide. Fortunately, their youthful goings-on have been preserved for posterity both by YouTube and by eponymous stickers that are all over campus, still. Prangstgrüp pranks, for the most part, were confined to a formula: locate where Columbia students acted the most self-serious; recognize that taking college so seriously is inherently comical; and suggest as much, most frequently through the joy of music. READ MORE

From time to time, Juli Weiner will review pranks and their aftermaths. We begin, as all good things should, with an introduction. READ MORE