Hacker's Secrets 4/Hacker's Secrets 4.iso/revenge/gettinge.doc

Text File | 1995-11-18 | 244KB | 4,399 lines

                           --==**>>THE REFLEX<<**==--

=========
ADDITIVES
=========

  Harmful additives are a formidable weapon against machinery, people, and
processes.  Additives perform one or more of the following:

  1) Corrosion...sulfuric acid, for example, will corrode the gutter, eaves,
     and downspout of a home; dumped salt will mar a building surface or floor
     and kill a lawn.

  2) Contamination...copper salts will rot rubber products; soap in a public or
     corporate fountain will create giant foam.  Or put it in a steam boiler if
     you're more serious about the matter.

  3) Abrasion...introduction of light, coarse materials, such as resins, to
     automotive fuel, or metal filings placed in the gears of industrial
     machinery, will create frictional havoc.

  4) Impurities...adding sugar to gasoline greates harmful carbon from the
     burning sugar, stopping the engine.

  Soaps and detergents make wonderful additions to food and could even be
beneficial if the target happens to be constipated.  If not, then soap-laden
munchies or drinks will really keep him moving.

  During my stay as an invited guest of Uncle Sam I recall some dirty
tricksters' making an action statement against being in KP.  They liberally
coated various pans and cooking vessels with GI soap.  They washed mugs with a
lot of soap, then neglected to rinse them before letting the utensils dry.
Later, when some drinkable potion like milk or coffee was poured into the mug
by some unsuspecting mark, the soap was activated.  Whoosh!

  Soap is also a very effective additive to containers in which food is
prepared.  The secret is to disguise the taste.  Various other additives will
do that and other tricks.

  A horny old pharmacist, Doctor Frank Pittlover, claims there really is a
working aphrodisiac.  His is almost as esoteric as the fake stuff you read
about in men's magazines.  Here's what Doctor Pittlover says:  "It's known as
yohimmbine hydrochloride (C21, H23, O3N2), an obscure sex stimulant that
operates on the central nervous system.  It was the aphrodisiac used by the CIA
in their MK/ULTRA scam." It is not on the Central Substances Act list
--yet--and it is classed as a "veterinary aphrodisiac." That means you can get
it openly from a pharmaceutical supply source.  What you do with it after you
get it is probably your own business.

  There are other references to and uses of additives in many other topical
areas of your revenge...many more than could be indexed here.

  "Take tea and see" is a good advertising slogan that should also alert the
dirty trickster to some additives brought to our attention by herbal-tea
producers.  Two common products of many herbal teas have side effects that the
trickster could define only as delightful.  First, some teas contain the
leaves, flowers, and the bark of senna plant, a tropical shrub related to our
bean plant.  The dried leaves, bark, and flowers of this plant are a mighty
powerful laxative.  Chamomile flowers are also popular in herbal teas.  Related
to ragweed and goldenrod, chamomile can produce severe reactions in people
sensitive to plants of that family.

  The trick in both cases is to obtain extracts of both products and use them
in concentrated enough additive form to create the desired effect.

  Meanwhile, from the other end, Doctor Christopher Garwood Doyle has a
prescription that could really get amark moving.  Syrup of ipecac is a common
purgative, easily available.  Here's how Doctor Goyle uses it.

  "Your mark is with you or your agent somewhere having a few drinks," the
doctor outlines.  "Presumably, the mark is drinking something sweet and heavy,
like rum and Coke.  When the mark goes to the bathroom or is otherwise out of
the area, mix one tablespoon of syrup in ipecac in with the drink.

  "You now have a fifteen-minute waiting--or escaping, if you prefer-- period
for the mixture to get active.  After that, bombs away!  The mark will begin
violent projectile vomiting, which really messes up the nearby environment and
anyone else who happens to be the way.

  "We first did this in medical school, using to get back at a classmate who'd
turned us in to officials for having an after-hours party in our dorm with
women and booze.  They threw the book at us because we were supposed to be
mature medical students.

  "The student who did this fancied himself as a real boozer," Doctor Doyle
explained, "but he really was a hell of a hypocrite about it and really played
pious when he turned us in.  So we figured he who tattles about booze shall
also toss his booze."

  Doctor Doyle reports that this additive will work easily with non-alcoholic
drinks, too.  He says the secret is to select a carrier drink that will hide
the taste and consistency of the syrup.

  Another good remedy for a hotshot is cascara sagrada, made from the dried
root of a thorny shrub found on the American West Coast.  It produces violent
diarrhea.  Once, Joe Kascaba introduced some cascara sagranda into a mark's
orange juice.  The mark was with his girlfriend and her parents in their family
car.  He had the "juiced" orange juice about ten minutes before getting into
the car.

  Kascaba reminisced, "The stuff's fast acting, and we were lucky to have the
girlfriend's brother as our ally, to report the action.  It hit the mark about
six minutes into the trip, and in another minute he didn't even have time to
yell for them to pull over.  He just started letting go with loud, wet,
explosive bursts.

  "This is all in full witness of his girlfriend and her family in a tightly
packed auto.  He couldn't get stopped, either.  They took him to a hospital,
but by then the additive was through his system and the storm had subsided.
That surely is super powerful stuff."

  Kascaba explained why he had taken action this explosive action, saying, "The
guy was a real creep.  He was always trying to make out with other girls, and
since he wasn't very smooth, he used to get them drunk.  This was always with
other girls, of course--his regular girlfriend knew nothing about all of this.

  "Well, one night he pulled this crap on a friend of mine, got her drunk,
messed around...she got this feeling all guilty and emotional, then got sick
--puked, in fact.  He thought he was macho stuff and gave her hell for it.

  "We figured if he was going to act like such a shit...well, I'm sure you
understand...."

  The above trick is suggested to be used in such a place so that your mark can
not easily reach a bathroom within a few minutes after the attack hits.  This
will cause him to literally shit his pants and drip at the heels.

  As a final note, Kascaba says not to use this powerful additive with older
folks, because it weaken them to the point of very seroius medical
complications such as dehyrdration which may kill them.  Have some respect for
the elderly, think of your grandmother!

  The following trick is technically a substitution and not an additive:  I
know of one person who visited her mark's home and emptied the hair conditioner
out of his bottle, then poured Neet hair remover into the conditioner bottle.
She knew that Operation Substitute was a bald success when she saw her mark in
a local store several weeks later, wearing a large scarf on his head.

  Vinegar makes a great substitute for nose drops or in nasal-spray devices.
One especially nasty person also suggested it for use in eye drops.  I'm not
sure about that one though, sight's a precious thing.  You'd better reserve
that one for a very deserving person that shot your dog, wrecked your computer,
busted you for phreaking, etc.


========
AIRLINES
========

  Did an airline ever lose your luggage?  Veteran air traveler Dottie Hunte
suggests you return their favor and make yourself some money.  Here's her scam.
Arrange to have a friend meet you at the terminal gate when you deplane.  Give
your friend your baggage claim checks and have him/her retrieve your bags from
the carousel, then leave the baggage area with your luggage, be sure you get
your claims checks back.  Then you saunter over to the baggage area and spend
half an hour waiting for you bags.  Ask the clerk for some help, then report
your "missing" luggage, showing your claim checks as proof.

  "Very few flights have a clerk that actually check the baggage and collect
the claims checks," she says.  "It's foolish, but they don't."

  She suggests you "make a polite but firm scene and demand satisfaction.
Normally, the airline people will have you fill out a form, and they will
attempt to trace your luggage.  Obviously, they won't find it.  Bug them
some...write them letters.  Soon, you should get a good settlement from the
airline." Don't pull this one on the same airline more than once, Hunte
cautions.

  Leaving the airlines and aiming for individual mark, you can do a lot of
personal damage.  For instance, if you find that your mark is going to use
airline travel and there are only a few travel agents in town, you could call
until you find the correct one and cancel the reservations.  Or if you know the
name of the airline, call their office and cancel the mark's reservations.

  You might try to slip a couple of rounds of pistol ammunition or a
switchblade knife into your mark's pocket just before he goes through the metal
detector at the airport terminal.  You could also slip some drugs into his
pocket at the same time.  Read a book on pickpocketing to note the technique
for doing this.  It's quite easy since you are placing stuff back.

  Bill Cutcheon sometimes poses as a Moonie, Hare Krishna devotee, or other
cultist and goes to airports.  His goal is to act like a completely obnoxious
fool.  He really hams it up, usually getting tossed out after totally grossing
out the passengers.  The heat, of course, falls equally on the cults and on the
airport for letting "them" behave like that.

  Another Cutcheon stunt is to leave accurate-looking but totally bogus hijack
scenario plans, bomb diagrams, or orders for terrorists attacks in airport bars
and restrooms.  This fires up both the rent-a-cops and the real security
people.  The security delays and resultant hassles with passengers create
unhappy people who are angry at airports and airlines.

  Naturally, thew blame for these plans must focus on the original perpetrator
of Cutcheon's problems.  He says, "If some nut group's been hassling me for
money, messing in my neighborhood, or otherwise being obnoxious, I'll leave
evidence to pin the hijack or bomb rap on them.  I got back at a motorcycle
gang by doing this once, after they had sideswiped my truck and refused to pay
damages."

  He also explains that this is a good vengeance grabber against an airport
facility that has offended you.

  Mitch Egan of San Francisco doesn't like cultist panhandlers harassing people
at airports, so he founded the Fellowship to Resist Organized Groups Involved
in Exploitation, or FROGIE.  Egan and his friends use those little metal
clickers shaped like frogs to ward of religious solicitors.

  According to Egan, thousands of people across the country are now armed with
the little metal frogs, and when a religious panhandler approaches, they whip
out the clicker and "Click, click, click!" the pest away.

  "In San Francisco, I saw two hundred people clicking away at a Krishna," Egan
remarked.  "They blew her right out of her socks."

  He adds, "If God wants a dollar from me, he can ask for it.  I'm not against
religion, but I'm fed up with organized beggars."

  Relief is just a click away.

  I knew a chap who became annoyed at a Krishna who followed him out of the
Indianapolis airport, verbally abusing him for not making a contribution.
Having surreptitiously "armed and primed" himself, our hero suddenly stopped,
whipped around, and pissed all over the startled harridan.  After the few
necessary seconds of attack, he calmly replaced himself, zipped up, and walked
away.  A bemused security cop nearby tried to hide his laughter.


=======
ANIMALS
=======

  If your mark is an oily cuss with a credibility problem, you could easily
pull off this stunt suggested by good old country boy Emil Connally.  It
involves a cop, reporters, SPCA folk, and some farm animals.

  According to Connally, here's how it works.  You have two marks.  The prime
one is a farm owner with the credibility problem.  We'll call him Mr.  Big.
The secondary mark is a cop who's made an enemy of you.  In this case, pick one
of your local Attila the Hun cops, because he's a bully and his ego for a bust
will get in the way of his grain-sized brain.

  Call the cop--try for his home phone even if it's unlisted--and tell him you
know about a cock or dog fight that's being held at Mr.  Big's farm.  Explain
you have no morals against animal fighting (build your own macho image) but you
lost big money the last time and you think the fights are fixed.  Mention drugs
and booze, too.  Next, call Mr.  Big and tell him you're an anonymous political
ally who wants to warn him about some people holding dog or cock fights on his
farm.  Call reporters and the SPCA and tell them about the fight.  Tell them
that Mr.  Big and the cop have a payoff relationship.  Give everyone the same
general arrival time...never be too specific.

  If all goes well, all will sort of show up at roughly the same time.  You
might manipulate things so the press and animal lovers show up first.  Even if
a real story doesn't develop, you have scattered some strong seeds of distrust.

  There is a variation if you want a stronger story.  Kill and mutilate a dog
or rooster, then bury it for several days before you set up your animal-fight
scenario at Mr.  Big's place.  Tell the reporters and the SPCA where the
evidence is buried.  It will be fun to hear the two marks talk about these
things to the other parties.  Maybe there's a story here after all.

  Dead animals are so useful.  Don't you agree?  A nefarious lady known only as
Hong Kong Hattie once waited until her mark went to the airport to depart on a
business trip.  Then, using the nefarious methods for which she is so famous,
Hattie got to the mark's car in the airport parking lot and go the lock opened.
She then stuffed a large and very dead groundhog into the glove compartment.
Hattie then locked the car and strolled away.  Reportedly, the mark sold his
car at quite a financial loss just a few days after getting back from his
business trip.

  One of the plagues for newspaper deliverers is barking, biting dogs that
attack both kids and their bicycles.  Tom Frickert, today a newspaper magnate
but once a paperboy, has a solution.

  "A good-quality plastic water pistol filled with freshly squeezed lemon juice
is the ticket," Frickert says with a chuckle.  "You shoot the felanious furball
right in the eyes, and it'll soon stop the canine harassment.

  "I once shot a big, nasty cur with the juice, and he never bothered me
again...used to hide under his masters porch whenever I came down the sidewalk
to deliver the paper."

  If your neighbor's constantly yowling and howling dog bothers you,
congratulations, you're normal.  But unlike most who sit and suffer, you can
call the local SPCA and tell them how the neighbor mistreats the animal.  Hold
your phone near the window so the SPCA can hear the "evidence" right from the
source.

==========
APARTMENTS
==========

  Your mark lives in an apartment?  A squirt or so of Eastman 910 or a similar
type glue into the lock can screw up the mark's trying to get back into the
apartment after an evening on the town.  It's best to save this one until late
evening or on a weekend.  Of course, this same stunt would work on a house, but
an apartment lockout disturbance causes more of a public scene.

  If the mark's apartment is an older building with wooden door frames and you
can work quitly and quickly at night, you can lock him/her in the apartment
from the outside.  Quietly fix a hasp and keeper on the door and frame using
wooden screws.  Then slap a padlock on the new fixture.  It creates a great
deal of frustration if that door is the only way out of the apartment.  Do it
late Saturday night so the discovery is made on Sunday morning when it's
impossible to get help.

  Run a classified ad offering to sublet the mark's apartment.  You can list
either the mark's telephone number or that of his/her landlord.  As usual, make
the contact hour for very early in the morning "because of shift-work
schedule."

  You might want to make a "milk run" to the mark's apartment very early on
several mornings and place a whole bunch of empty booze bottles outside his or
her door.  This works well in ritzy apartments where the neighbors are snobs.
How do you get by the security people?  One way is to pose as a delivery
person, a service person, a building inspector, or someone on a work crew.  You
can also hire an accomplice in the building, or you can bribe the door guard.

  Suppose you are the victim of a nasty landlord who evicts you for no good
reason.  There are lots of legal ways to get your tenant's rights, but there
are also many quasi-legal and illegal ways that are much more fun.  For
example, you could simply "sublet" the place, on your own, to a bunch of
dopers, bikers, drunks, hookers, runaways, or twenty-four-hour party throwers.
Make this extracuricular subletting your going-away surprise.

  Another person I know went to the local animal shelter on several different
days and got a total of fifteen cats for twenty-five dollars.  He bought a
bunch of cat food and a bushel basket of fish, and filled his bathtub with
water for them.  He then nailed every window and door shut from the inside
before crawling out the tiny casement window in the basement.  He had
previously nailed the basement door shut behind him.  Obviously, he had moved
his things out several days previously.  His eviction notice was effective the
next day, but the landlord didn't check on the house for five days.  My God,
what a mistake that man made.  To say that that cat house was an uninhabitable
mess is an understatement.

  Tim Carroll was tossed out of his apartment by the landlady because one of
Tim's many lady friends stayed over for the whole entire evening.  This upset
the old biddy who owened the building, and being a staunch, God-fearing charter
member of the DAR, she canceled his lease and ordered him to leave the
building.

  Displeased with the abitrary and unilateral treatment and the upheaveal
caused by her dubious moral judgement, Tim didn't get angry; he got even.  He
had a trusted friend place a large sign in a hallway window of the landlady's
apartment building.  The seventh-floor window faced a busy business street, and
the sign was quite visible to many hundreds of people.

  The sign read:  TIM CARROLL SUCKS.

  The landlady didn't see the sign, so two days later, Tim's friend positioned
another sign, this time in a sixth-floor-hall window.

  The second sign read:  TIM CARROLL IS A FAG.

  The landlady saw both signs and removed them.  Two days later, she got a
letter from Tim, with a picture enclosed showing her building with the signs
easily visible.  The letter was Tim's complaint about personal slander and
harassment.  He asked her please to desist.

  Sometime early the next morning, in time for rush-hour morning traffic, a new
sign went up in the window:  TIM CARROLL BLOWS DEAD BEARS.

  At 8:30 A.M., the unsuspecting landlady recieved a call from an attorney
friend of Tim's, citing the original slander and warning the woman against
further incidents.  Shaken, she swore her innocence.  Ten minutes after hanging
up, he called back, sounding furious because Tim had just called him about the
latest sign.  Flabbergasted, the old lady swore she would remove it and loudly
proclaim her innocence.

  Another sign went up that afternoon in time for rush-hour the other way:  TIM
CARROLL IS A FLAMING HETEROSEXUAL.

  The landlady got the lawyer's call just after dark, when the sign was no
longer visible.  She was almost in tears because of his threats to sue.  She
begged to just talk to Tim, to tell him none of this was her doing.  The
attorney told her that he had advised his client to have no further discussions
with her.

  The next day's sign read:  FOR A GOOD LAY, CALL TIM CARROLL.

  That evening, a new sign went up.  The landlady, frantic, according to Tim's
friend who was putting up the signs, got to it fifteen minutes after it went
up.  The attorney called her five minutes after she got back to her own
apartment.

  Tim related, "You might feel almost sorry for the old lady, except that she
had told me earlier that she was going to keep my security deposit and that I
would have to forfeit the month's rent I had paid in advance because I had
violated the morality clause in my lease.  The was no such clause.  I found out
she had done this same thing to two other guys a year before and some guys
before that.  She also tossed out a couple because they weren't married.  She'd
come into your room when you were gone and snoop, too.  That bugged me."

  No signs went up for the next three days, although the woman checked the
windows every twenty minutes or so.  On the fourth day, hundreds of passersby,
accustomed to the signs weren't disappointed.

  The new sign read:  TIM CARROLL'S WHOREHOUSE.

  Although it took her an hour to discover and remove it, the lawyer friend of
Tim's didn't call until the next morning, when a new sign was in the window:
WHOREHOUSE UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.  The landlady's telephone number was listed.

  A second sign was placed on the sixth-floor window underneath:  TIM CARROLL
COULDN'T BEAT THE COMPETITION.

  In his best tones, the attorney explained that enough was enough and that on
behalf of his client, Mr.  Carroll, he would be filing an action.  The woman
was distraught.  He told her to have her attorney present for a meeting at
three the following afternoon.  He asked her who her attorney was and said the
meeting should be in his office.  Tim and his attorney postponed this meeting
several times, then told the woman that since she had stopped putting up the
signs, they would hold the suit in limbo for the time.

  Reportedly, she monitored the halls and windows of that building regularly
for five months.  But more importantly, she also left her tenants to their own
moral lives.

=============
ASSASSINATION
=============

  Suppose you have a mark whose ill temper has created problems for you.  Or
perhaps this mark is simply an obnoxious nut whose obsessions have cost you
personally.  A dentist I know spent many unselfish hours working to get
flouride into his community's drinking water as a means of fighting tooth decay
in children.  An apolitical and highly dedicated professional, he was concerned
only with healthcare for the kids in the community.  A hyper, rightwing zealot
jumped on the issue and scared the town council with his insane babble.  He
claimed that flouride was a Communist plot to poison America's drinking water
and minds and that using flouride would lead to LSD as part of the
International Communist Conspiracy.  The timid council voted "no" on flouride.

  Beside himself, the young dentist said he surely would like to get back at
the rightwing firebrand but just didn't know what to do.  Sighing, he gave up
his fight and put his time back into his practice.  The kids never got their
flouride treatment, and as a result he had a lot of business.  It's too bad
that young dentist never met Maurice Bishop.

  In the hypocritical piety following the assassinations of the sixties,
physical security was supposedly tightened to protect the chief executive
chosen by the power brokers who now control the United States.  A former
law-enforcement official with a probable intelligence background offered an
astounding dirty trick related to this topic.  To protect this source's
identity we'll use the cover name of Maurice Bishop.

  Bishop says that the CIA, FBI and Secret Service all keep a list of nut
cases, radicals, and others who threaten political figures.  Often, these
people are jailed, kept under protective custody, or placed under
twenty-four-hour surveillance by autorities when poltical targets are in the
area.  Bishop's idea calls for theatening telegrams to be sent to the
politician in the mark's name.  At the very least this telegram will bring a
visit by one of the government agencies, and perhaps it will result in a bit of
jail time if the mark loses his/her cool as a result of this dirty trick.

  Bishop says this will also work with state officials, bringing a visit from
state police or some other law enforcement official.

============
AUTO DEALERS
============

  If an automobile dealership screws you, on either the car, the deal, or the
service, don't get angry--get even.  Wait outside the showroom until a
prospective customer starts talking to a salesperson about the same type of car
you got.  Walk right up to the customer and tell him you woeful story.  The
idea is to screw up as many sales as you can (it will cost the dealer at least
$5000 for each screw-up).  Be factual, be cool, and act as if you're an honest
citizen trying to save another honest citizen some money and heartache --as you
wish someone had done for you.  Sincere good faith is the thing here, because
the saleman is going to blow his about the second time you pull your act.

  When the manager asks you to leave and you don't, he will probably call the
police.  You had anticipated this earlier and alerted someone at the local
newspaper or television station--probably the action-line reporters.  Smalltown
media usually won't allow reporters to come--car dealers buy lots of ads, and
you don't.  A regional TV station may show up--if you promise a confrontation
with the law.  So when the manager calls the police, you call your TV
reporter--fun and games for the 6:00 P.M.  news.

  If all this doesn't work, wait off the dealer's premises and approach
customers as they leave the showroom.  Tell your story there and then.  Offer
to help them avoid your mistake.  But stay on public property.  And keep after
the action-line reporters.

  If you esculate the attack a bit, show up when the night salespeople are on
duty--they won't recognize you.  Look at new cars; wander around.  Few
salespeople pay much attention to an obvious gawker.  As soon as someone else
or a telephone distracts the salesperson, you can do things to the automobile
right there in the showroom.  A bottle opener is hard on the finish.  See the
file on additives for things you could quickly put into the fuel tank.  If you
could smuggle some in with you, stuff roadkill under a car seat or in the glove
compartment.  Or toss a condom (preferably used) on the front seat.  By the
way, used condoms make wonderful plants in other locations as well, like the
boss's desk, or in a customer's car back in the service shop.

  If you can manage to slip undetected into the service area along with your
bag of sabotage goodies, such as glue, wire cutters, paint, potatoes, M80s,
etc., you can run amok.  Work quietly and quickly.  This sort of guerrilla
warfare can literally wreck a dealer's service reputation.

=====
BANKS
=====

  It could be time to make your bankroll.  According to Townsend Alexander, our
financial intelligence agent, you can make good money buying some very cheap
foreign coins that are the same size as a quarters.  Get a paper coin wrapper.
Wrap a few real quarters on the ends but fill the rest of the roll with the
cheapie import coins.  Wrap the roll and with felt-tip pen write some phony
account number on it to add to authenticity.

  Take the roll of coins into the targeted bank.  If you dress like a business
person and go at a busy time, especially with the account number written on
each roll, and the rolls in a bank sack or your briefcase, the teller will
probably give you ten dollars per roll without checking.

  If you could get a banker to tell the truth, he'd admit that they hate
college-student checking accounts.  There's probably a lot of justification,
since most services like this for college students cost far more than they're
worth in return.  However, that's not our problem.

  Suppose you have a gripe with the bank.  Acting as the bank's ad manager, get
in touch with the student newspaper at the school and arrange to run some ads
with banner headlines reading, STUDENTS WELCOME, plus such services as NO
SERVICE CHARGE, FREE CUSTOM-PRINTED CHECKS, INTEREST ON THE BALANCE, NO MINIMUM
BALANCE, and so on.  Offer to give away free albums or Walkman radios.  The day
after the "bank's" ad runs they will be swamped with unwanted students, who are
going to be very angry at the bank (and probably at the student newspaper).

  Modern banks now have cash machines where you insert your plastic money card
and the machine gives you the money.  If that institution or its machine has
become your target, here's a dairyland delight you could easily employ.  Take
some tough, hard cheese and cut it the same size and shape as your plastic
card.  Insert the cheese "card" into the slot of the machine and leave the
area.  One banker told me it took a service person nine hours to clean the
machine and get it operating again when someone pulled this stunt in Baltimore.

  The bank still giving you trouble, or you didn't give them enough?  It's time
to move things up the scale a notch.  Rent a safe-deposit box under another
name.  Pay cash for a three-month rental.  That's all the time you'll need to
collect on this one.  Go to the market and buy a couple of overripe fish--I'm
sure you'll get a bargain price.  Carry them wrapped in plastic in your
briefcase.  Go directly to your safe deposit box.  In the privacy of the bank's
little cubicle, unwrap the fish and lay the big, stinky suckers right in the
safety deposit box.  Close it, lock it, and store it.  Then carry the fish
wrappers, briefcase, and yourself out of the bank.  In a few days your deposit
will gain their intrest.  You'd better do your real banking at another
institution for a while.  It's quite possible bank officials will have to hire
someone to drill the lock on the targeted safe-deposit box to remove the
contents.

======
BIKERS
======

  You're walking along a pedestrian sidewalk, and along comes a bicyclist,
churning away his/her spare calories on that nonpolluting transportaion device.
Within moments you're an involuntary participant in a game of chicken with that
cyclist, who swerves while you weave.  You finally pass each other in good
dodgeum-car fashion.  Maybe.  Wonderful stuff, adrenaline.

  On the other cheek, maybe you've been blindsided by an irresponsible cyclist
trespassing on your pedestrian walk right of way.

  "No more turning the other cheek," is the war cry of Mel Scafe, an
anticyclist who is fighting back.

  "I've declared war on all two wheelers who trespass into my life," Mel says.
"I'll get the senior citizen bicyclist who forces me off my sidewalk on the
same day I get even with the teenage dirt biker who tears up the hill behind my
home."

  One of Mel's tatics is to toss a length of chain into the spokes of the dirt
bike when it's roaring by.  Instantly, the bike stops going forward while the
rider continues onward until gravity takes over.

  "I've also used a wire cutter to snip the spokes on a bicycle whose owner has
done me a disfavor," Mel relates.  "That'll cause a real collapse in his biking
game."

  Another time he spread a large patch of grease on the path used by dirt
bikers.

  He can't even estimate the pounds of air he's released from captivity in bike
tires.  He's used all the nasty engine additives mentioned in another file for
these machines that disturb his world.

  "I liked that Burt Reynolds movie where the truck driver drove his rig over
all those goddamn motorcycles," Mel grinned.  Turning seriously, he added,
"I've thought about the old World War II trick of stretching piano or barbed
wire across a trail or bikeway, but I think that could be fatal, so I don't
really do it."

  "If there were some way I could totally kill the damn machines and only
embarrass the people a bit I'd surely like to hear about it.  Until then I will
stick to the old standards that have worked for me so far."

  He adds, "I know people may sneer at me for being mean to kiddies on their
bicycles, and I know bicycles are an in thing today.  But maybe if those young
riders learn some manners early and stay the hell off pesestrian walkways, they
might grow up to be decent people."

=====
BOOKS
=====

     Did anyone ever borrow a book from you and not return it?  Our private
library consultant, Roberta Russell, has a suggestion with an air of financial
finality behind it.  For the first step, a printer should make you about three
or four dozen bookplates, all featuring your mark's name and address, plus the
legend, "If this book is lost and you find it and return it, I will pay you
$10 cash."  Your next step is the local Goodwill Industries, a local thrift or
second-hand shop, or a garage sale for books.  Buy two or three dozen used
hardcover books.  You buy them as cheaply as you can, but they'll cost your
mark plenty.  Your next step is to paste on the bookplates and distribute
these books--at the beach, on park benches, in a bus or subway, or in a bar or
restaurant.  The final step is for you to enjoy a good chuckle at your mark's
expense, as people find the "lost" books.

     If your mark has a fine library, you might consider introducing it to
silverfish.  They love good books; in fact they will devour them.  If you feel
this nasty, you probably already know where to get silverfish and their eggs.
This one bothers me, though, since I love good books.  Maybe there's a better
way.  Perhaps you could put an earwig in you mark's bed pillow.

     Why not give your mark the image of a philathropic person?  Donate books
in his/her name to the local library, but without either party's knowledge.
Buy a bunch of really scuzzy porno paperbacks, especially the colorfully
illustrated ones from Denmark--the more grossly hardcore, the better.  Your
printer will produce some paste-in bookplates that say something like this,
"This book donated to the [Name] library by [Mark's name] in loving memory of
all the sweet children of [Town name]."  Paste in the bookplates and sprinkle
the donated books around the local library.  Put some in the children section,
and others in the religion books.

========
CAMPUSES
========

  Not everyone is hibernating on college campuses.  Although it's true that
many students have become docile zombies, lobotimized by lethal doses of
television and the bureaucracy of the educational system, there are a few live
ones.  At an eastern university, a number of students got upset with the rent
gouging of a massive corporation acting as an absentee landlord for private
off-campus dormitories.  After getting nowhere appealing to an untesticled
school administration, and after being ignored by a housing inspector and a
city council belonging to the same social class and clubs as the corporate
landlords, the students held a pizza party.

  The unusual part was the the pizza party was held in the clothes dryers of
the dormitory laundry rooms.  One particpant reported, "We dumped a couple of
really gooey pizzas in each dryer, put in the coins, and turned them on."

  Try cleaning up that one!

  Epilogue:  The corporate landlord and his student tenants settled their
problems shortly after the party, totally to the satisfaction of the young
protestors.

  Professor James Shannon claims that college students of the past had heinous
imaginations.  Today, of course, many students are content merely to move
around enough to prevent roots from forming on their contact surfaces with the
ground.  Professor Shannon suggests that if you have a teacher you don't like,
and he/she lectures from a desk or podium on a raised platform, you move the
stand so its legs are barely balanced on the front edge of the platform.  When
the academic leans forward on the structure ever so slightly, it will come
crashing forward.  With any luck the pedagogue will land on top of it.

  At an eastern university, two looser colleagues filled a humorless and
bookish faculty member's office closet with several large and irritable geese
one evening.  The professor was in the habit of arriving quite early for 8:00
AM class, early enough so that the hasty-tempered birds would just be
awakening.  When he opened the closet door they woke up and became badly
aggressive really fast.  Eyewitness reports left no doubt whose feathers were
ruffled most.

  This will be truly appreciated only by those privy to the pettiness of
academia:  Other colleagues of this same professor sometimes send truly
pedantic, nasty, personal, and vindictive memoranda to various other faculty
members, deans, etc., in the name of their priggish colleagues.

  On one occasion they sent really nasty letters to the parents of a few of
this faculty member's students, giving the poor folks hell for daring to
produce such genetic drift as their kids, much less turning them loose on a
college campus.  The school's PR people had a terrible time getting out from
under that one.  As for the mark, the dumb schmuck had no idea why so many
people disliked him.  But please take his colleagues word for it--he deserves
every bit of it.

=======
CARBIDE
=======

  Having been brought up around hunters and miners, I learned all about carbide
lamps and carbide fishing early.  Working on my grandfather's farm, I learned
about carbide bombs.  Let me explain some things you might find useful.

  When calcium carbide is exposed to air and water it produces a gas that will
kill small animals.  Farmers often pour it down gopher, rat, or groundhog
holes, then dump in some water and put a rock over the hole.  The animal is
gassed to death.

  A lot of poor people used to fish with carbide with the same efficiency with
which legions of GIs fished with hand grenades.  Simply toss a pound or two of
carbide into a can and seal it, but be sure to punch a few holes in the lid.
Toss it into a pond.  The results can play havoc with your mark's fish pond or
fancy goldfish pool or an indoor aquarium.  Water and carbide can produce an
explosion.

  Some of the nastier kids used to place amounts of carbide into the toilets at
our school.  The idea was to place the carbide bomb in the toilet, leave a
lighted cigarette on the seat, and run like hell.  The carbide would combine
with the water to produce a huge cloud of noxious gas, which would explode when
it hit the lighted cigarette the perpetrators left behind.  This little
homemade bomb did more damage than an M80.

  Tim Bell, who later became a Special Forces NCO in Vietnam, explains, "We had
a kid bully whom no one liked--a real prick.  He always went to the john after
fourth period to sneak a smoke.  So two of us went in right after him and laid
a carbide bomb in the water in the next stall.  We were about a hundred feet
down the hall when the damn thing went off."

  At this point, Tim burst into a wild laughter.  I was able to learn, though,
that the bully had his legs burned and cut by flying porcelain, bit his tongue
badly, was knocked violently off the throne, bruising his ribs against the
steel wall of the stall, and was deafened for nearly twenty-four hours, all by
the force of this carbide explosion.  With that kind of background as a high
school kid, it's no wonder Tim Bell made a good Special Forces trooper.

  Are there more adult uses for carbide?  Some sixties semi-terrorists used to
dump a pound or so into the toilets of corporate offices and government
buildings, flush the mess into the system, and walk away briskly.  Enough of
the stuff could get very dangerous, considering the possible backup of gases.
A combination of water and carbide has been fed into the ventilating systems of
various corporate and government buildings, also by semi-terrorists who wish to
harass the resident bureaucrats.

====
CARS
====

     This one's really kiddie Halloween time, but it does work.  A bunch of
old nuts and bolts placed into the wheel well behind the hubcap will make the
mark think his/her car is falling apart.  It's worth some minor harassment, of
course, and works outstandingly well with high-strung nonmechanical typed who
absolutely panic at car noises.

     You can get a little heavier than Halloween by removing a hubcap from
your mark's car wheel and loosening or removing the lug bolts.  Sooner or not
much later, the wheel will simply roll off the car.

     Moving up the escalator of nastiness, you could probably fill your mark's
whole body with adrenaline if you placed a split shot sinker, of the type used
by fishermen, on the accelerator cable of his/her vehicle.  Willy Seamore, a
top mechanic, suggests you extend the cable, then place the lead weight on the
extended portion, which effectively blocks it from returning.  This means the
vehicle's throttle will run wide open.  It's a nasty version of the
jack-rabbit start.

     From choking up to locking up is hardly a quantum experience.  The new
miracle glues are impregnable when squirted into car door keyholes.  Nothing
short of a locksmith can repair this low-risk attack.  If you hit just before
the mark's family vacation, leave the car door locks alone and hit the trunk
lock.  With any luck, they'll never notice until they're miles from home.

     A refinement of simply putting a super glue or epoxy into the car's
various locks is to take any old key that will vaguely locks is to take any
old key that will vaguely fit into the lock cavity, insert it, then twist it
rapidly back and forth until the key breaks off, stuck in the lock.  Now is
the time to squirt glue into the lock.  The job is more permanent and more
costly to repair.

     If you tire of fooling with the locks, you can look elsewhere.  Marshall
Tanner, inventor of muffler bearings, says you can prop some large-headed
nails against the tires of your mark's car, especially if it's parked so it
will have to be backed up to get out of a parking stall in a lot.  The car
moves back and the wheels roll over the nails, puncturing tires.

     If your mark's married, you can have all sorts of sport with his ride.  A
male mark deserves that you slip sexy undergarments usually worn by a sexy
lady under his car's front seat or wedge them carefully into the back seat.
You could tear them a bit.  More than a hint of perfume or flavored douche
will always hype suspicion.  You can escalate this stunt somewhat if you buy
male underwear--get the sexy style in white--and place some lipstick smears
around the fly area.  You can help the campaign along by having a very trusted
lady friend call and ask nervously for the mark.  The younger she sounds, the
better.  Have her call several times.  Use your and the mark's wife's
imagination.

     If the mark is a woman, a pack of condoms carelessly hidden in the car is
always a sure-grow plant.  Several daint handkerchiefs of the type favored by
milady and heavily impregnated with semen can also be stuffed in the car.  As
with the male, a series of appropriately timed telephone calls from a nervous
male will add to the marital festivities between mark and spouse.

     In less carnal surroundings, if you can get to the distributor cap,
remove it and use graphite from a pencil to contact the rotor brushes.  The
charge will run along the graphite, causing the engine to misfire.  This could
cause the mark to dash into his local car butcher and get charged an
outrageous price for an unnecessary tuneup.

     A quick way to disable a car battery is to slip a couple of Alka-Seltzer
tablets or a teaspoonful of baking soda into each battery compartment.  The
antacid will kill the battery's power before you can say "Plop, plop, fizz,
fizz."

     Another camhead nasty is to take a pushpin and jab a few tiny holes
through spark-plug wires.  According to Lee H. Santana, a real straight
shooter in the dirty-tricks department, the pin pricks cause a hellishly
rumpety noise when the car is driven.

     Don't forget additives when working on a mark's car.  The nice thing
about additives is that you don't have to be odd or even to use them.  Many
experts, including some of Uncle Sam's khaki-clad nephews, suggest light
materials, such as crushed cork, as a great additive to the gasoline tanks of
vehicles belonging to people or institutions you don't like.

     One former professional trickster said, "It isn't to exotic, but a
handful of old leaves in the gas tank will bind the damn engine up too."

     Sand is not recommended because of its weight, especially when wet.  It
would sink to the bottom of the tank and not much would be introduced into the
engine, he explained.  The idea is to get the additive to the bearing
surfaces, where the coarse little buggers can kick and scratch up a mechanical
breakdown.  Silicone carbide, emery powder, and fine metal filings will work.
During World War II, our OSS used a mixture of finely ground cork, resins,
carborundums, and metal alloys to muck up an engine.

     Another method that could possibly send a driver off to a service station
would be to pour a gallon of shellac thinner into your targeted vehicle's
gasoline tank.  The alcohol will gather up all the water in the fuel trap, and
when this mixture goes through the fuel line it will cause the vehicle to
snort, stammer, and act as if it has big carb troubles.  By the time the
driver gets the vehicle to a mechanic, the problem has usually departed out
the exhaust pipe.  Done enough times, this one can redline the frustration and
credibility levels of both the driver and the mechanic.

     If you want to use additives in your mark's gasoline tank, yet are
concerned about arousing suspicion in daylight or in an otherwise
high-visibility area, simply adopt a cover prop.

     "Put the harmful additive in a metal gasoline can like they sell in
stores," advises Joey MacJohns, a veteran trickster.  "That way, any potential
witnesses will never really pay attention to what's happening; they'll simply
infer because you have a gas can that you're putting gas in the car."

     And don't forget oil additives.  Styrene, a colorless, oily liquid, is an
organic compound that is one of the two chemicals mixed together to make
hardened fiberglass.  Boat-supply stores and marinas have styrene available
for patching fiberglass boats.  It is also used in body shops and
upholstery-repair places.

     There are substitutes compounds that will do the same job as styrene, so
read the label when purchasing the stuff to make sure you're actually getting
styrene.  Styrene is the only sufficiently effective, commonly available
material that can be put into a car's crankcase to completely break down the
oil and ruin the engine.

     Styrene in the crankcase is far better that sugar in the gas tank because
it can't be seen after being introduced and because only a little does a
thorough job.  If it's used at the rate of one per four quarts of oil, the
treated vehicle will run about a hundred miles before the engine locks up
tight.

     This is a fairly high-risk stunt, but it could be fun if you don't get
nailed doing it, according to Bill Rally.  If you find that your mark is going
alone to a movie you have an hour or so to have some fun with his automobile.
If you're motivated enough to carry off this stunt, no one has to tell you how
to start the mark's car without a key.  After you start it, drive to some very
nice homes with pretty lawns.  But stay fairly near the theater, so you can
get back there in a hurry.  Do donuts, dig out, and otherwise use the car to
make a shambles of lawns, shrubbery, flower beds, etc.  Run over lawn
furniture, hit mailboxes, and try to frighten some old people by coming really
close to them with the car.

     This is a real hit-and-run mission.  Do your dirty driving fast and get
the car back to the theater parking area even faster.  Park it and leave.  If
you've done enough damage, all sorts of police reports will be out on the car.
The second or third question the police will ask the mark is whether he or she
has any witnesses for the movie alibi.

     That can be a real blast.  But if you want another sort of pop, dig
deeply into the potato bin for this one.  My thanks here go to all those great
truck farmers who say a potato jammed into a vehicle's exhaust pipe is not
explosive, but it will cause all sorts of nasty problems.  In one case, the
mark parked his car with the rear end towards his home.  His tormentor jammed
a fresh, hard spud tightly inot the car's exhaust pipe.  The mark started the
car on a cold evening and waited a few moments for the engine to warm.
Meanwhile, the hot gases, unable to escape, built up dangerously behind the
potato....Woom!...KABLOOM!...  With an explosive roar, the gases fired that
big, hot, hard potato right into the metal siding of the mark's home, just
fifteen feet away from the exhaust pipe, which acted as a cannon barrel.  The
holing and denting of the siding cost $150 and a day to repair.

     There are all sorts of other devices that make good muffler bombs.  A
firecracker may be shoved into the vehicle's exhaust pipe, pushing it along
with a stiff wire until the explosive device falls into the muffler.  It takes
only a few moments of driving with today's hot exhaust gases to explode the
firecracker.  Even a fairly small firecracker will cause panic, escpecially if
the driver is paranoid to start with.  If you want to destroy the muffler and
drive the mark's panic into the fantasy of having his/her car really bombed,
substitute an M80 or a shotgun shell for the prankish finger-sized
firecracker.

     If the violence and property destruction of this bothers you or causes
you to grimace, consider this next happy face.  Most mail-order and novelty
stores sell very realistic rubber-faced masks, resembling everything from an
ape man, through a drooling idiot, on down to a Ronald Reagan mask.  Select
one that looks especially gross--like an old man, or the idiot, or Richard
Nixon.  Position is so it looks realistic on the back of your head.  This
leaves your vision unobstructed.  Head for the road in your car.

     Just as another motorist overtakes your vehicle to pass you, lean out the
window.  The effect on the approaching motorist would be interesting to
observe, as that other driver will see a drooling goon looking back, directly
at him, with no apparent concern for the road ahead.  I bet very few cars
actually pass you with this stunt in operation.

     Taking the license plate off a mark's car can be a good shot, even you
don't want to steal the thing for other nefarious purposes.  How many times do
you look to see if the plate is on your car?  A cop has only to look once.  I
bet it would be fun to hear the mark's explanation of where his license plate
has gone.

     Don't you get really happy when some defective excuse for a human
suddenly pulls his/her vehicle out directly in front of yours or cuts you off?
Marty Mullin has a solution in hand.

     A delightful person, Mullin reveals, "I bought a top-quality pellet
pistol, one of those compressed-air guns, which I keep in my car.  You can use
either the cartridge or the pump type--just to be sure you get one with enough
power to penetrate metal.  Get a supply of the .177-caliber pellets, too.
Then, next time some dip pulls out in front of you, pull up behind the dip's
vehicle and get in his/her blind spot.  With a truck or van that's easy
enough.  Then you bring your pellet gun into action.

     "Plunk a shot into the mark's vehicle, the trunk for a car, or the back
of a van or rig.  If it's a big truck you can get in quite a few shots,
because the driver is not likely to hear them.  A van or car will make a
helluva TWHUNK when that pellet hits, so be cautious.

     "There's no discharge noise, because you're not using a firearm.  After
your attack, back off and proceed your business as if nothing has happened.
You probably have not taught the mark a lesson, but you feel better for what
you just did--I guarantee that."

     I asked Mullin about the posibility of hitting a passenger who is riding
in the back of the mark's vehicle.  He replied, "Then, that passenger also has
every right to be furious with the dippy mark for pulling out in front of
you."

========
CB RADIO
========

     Want to send your neighborhood CB nut a message?  This nut is the CB
addict who refuses to filter his/her equipment and thus disrupts TV, stereo,
AM/FM, and other normal communication for blocks.  Usually, these idiots are
about as sensitive to other people's feelings as Idi Amin was to the plight of
the poor.  In both cases a lesson is called for.

     To do this effectively, heed the lesson of Sterling Orco, who says you
must personally interdict the mark's CB antenna.  It would be well to do this
when the mark is away from the home area.  Unfasten the CB coax line from the
mark's antenna.  Then clip two leads of a regular 110-volt line to the CB
coax--one lead to the center conductor, the other lead to the shield.  Small
alligator clips will do nicely.  Then, hop down from your perch near the
antenna and plug the other end of the 110-volt wire into your mark's nearest
outdoor socket.

     Next time he/she turns on the CB and hits the transmit button...well,
words fail to describe the results adequately.  One comment--even the repair
people will shake their heads.

     A bit less destructive, but no less nasty, Is the old pin-in-the-coax
trick.  You prick a tiny pin through the plastic outer cable and through the
shield.  Be sure it touches the center conductor.  Then cut the head off the
pin and push it in some more--out of sight.  The plastic should close behind
the pin, making the wound invisible.  Just make sure that the pin
short-circuits the center conductor to the metal outer shield.  Do a couple of
these along the coax between the antenna and the CB set.  It does stuttering
wonders for the transmission.

=========
CHARITIES
=========

     Charity begins at the home of your mark.  You simply volunteer his/her
services to the charity's recruiting chairperson, giving the name and address
of your mark.  These charity drives are so happy to get volunteers these days
that they will rarely verify your call.  That means the first contact the mark
has is when another volunteer shows up at the door with all sorts of campaign
and collection materials.  In many cases, the mark is too embarrassed to
refuse, and you've added to his/her workload.

     If you think that's a dirty trick to pull on a charity, ask them how many
cents out of each dollar go directly to the victims and other people who are
at the bottom of the line for help.  Besides, your mark might turn out to be a
great charity worker.

     You can call in generous pledges in your mark's name during telethons and
other charity drives.

     You can also call in pledges to bothersome telethons, using
double-entendre names.  For example, when one public-TV station held another
of its semiweekly fundraisers, several contributors announced over the air as
pledging financial support included Clint Toris, Seymour Kunt, Connie Lingus.

     Margie Kowalski used to work for the Salvation Army.  She suggests that
you call the local Salvation Army, Goodwill, or whatever charity and report
your mark for stealing out of the organization's pickup boxes.  Report the
mark by his auto license number.  Say you work at one of the stores near the
collection box and you've seen the mark rob the box several times.  You can
also report this "crime" to the police.

======
CHEESE
======

     It's tried and true, but I bet you haven't heard of it since you were a
kid.  This one came from Alabama, the old Limburger-cheese-on-the-muffler-of-a
-new-car trick.  The exhaust manifold works well, too, as a surface for a
cheese spread.  Or you can simply place som of the same substance behind a
radiator in a home or office.  Once it's burned on, the smelly sour effect can
last for weeks, despite robust cleaning efforts.

===========
CHILD ABUSE
===========

     I heard a real horror story recently where a truly evilminded teenager
[Hmmm...] swore to child-abuse officers in her county that her parents beat
her.  They hadn't and didn't.  Never mind; the bureaucrats came bouncing out
of the woodwork, and the harried parents had to appear in court to defend
themselves against the lies of a teenager with mental problems [Hmmm II...].
The parents were looked upon as villians, even though the judge dismissed the
charges as unfounded.  Their attorney (yes, they had to hire one to fight
government persecution) advised them against a jury trial because they'd lose
on the emotionalism of the issue, regardless of the facts.  Nice.

     All this leads up to the fact that you can report your mark as a
child-abuse offender.  Acting as a "concerned neighbor," you can tell the
authorities.  The hassle is unreal.  After you've done this, a few anonymous
letters to the mark's employer about the "child-abuse thing" will help out.

===
CIA
===

     Your mark might have sneaky points you never thought about.  For example,
maybe your mark would make a good CIA employee.  You could easily find out.
Write a letter of application to the agency using your mark's name.  The
agency get hundreds of letters from would-be action agents, such as unemployed
gangsters, karate freaks, ex-soldiers, Walter Mitty types, etc.  I doubt that
they take many of these seriously, but they might be interested in talking
with a highly qualified technical person, such as an analyst, area expert,
journalist with oodles of foreign experience, language expert, or economist.
Advanced college degrees and military service abroad as an officer are fine
credentials for your mark.  Make up a good solid background.  It is probably
illegal for you to make a false application in your mark's name using phony
credentials.

     Send resumes to:  Personnel Representative
                       Central Intelligence Agency
                       Washington, D.C.  20505

     You can also send in an application in your mark's name for a CIA job at
the field office in the nearest city.  Yes, they are listed in the telephone
book.

==============
CLASSIFIED ADS
==============

     Classified advertisements in your local newspaper are inexpensive little
bullets that can cause major wounds to the mark's psyche if properly aimed.
For instance, suppose you had a score to settle with some bitchy neighbors.
You could insert a classified ad to "sell" their automobile.  Price it five
hundred dollars less than market value, instruct callers to call after midnight
(shift work is the explanation you can offer), and explain in the ad that quick
cash is needed for an emergency.  That will bring in the phone calls.

     You can also put your mark's house up for sale.  Again, ask potential
customers to either call or visit at hours that will be very inconvenient to
the mark.

     The "personals" in newspapers can provide even more fun.  Maybe your mark
ought to advertise for "young boy and girl models to pose for 'art' pictures."
You should use his/her home or business telephone here for return calls,
whichever would cause more difficulty for the mark.

     Placing ads is a snap.  Most newspapers let you do it right over the
phone, and most of the ad people I've talked to say they rarely verify a
classified ad.  Take a tip from that and don't make it outlandish.  As with any
practical joke, there has to be a credible amount of reality to the premise for
the sting to work.

     While you're thinking of newspapers, don't foget those sexy tabloids and
their really gross cousins that let readers advertise all sorts of weird sex
things.  I don't know whether any of that is on the level, but it's worth
finding out--in your mark's name, of course.  Maybe you'll be doing him/her a
favor.  But somehow I doubt it--there's no such thing as a free lunch.

     You might help the mark share his new friends' sexual talents.  Place an
ad in one of the target audience magazines--the publication that runs very
explicit and very honest classifieds.  If you're not sure, contact a local
sympathizer and ask him/her for help.

     You might write you ad copy like this:

     "Soft white male aged 35 wants to play with black lady with large
buttocks.  Bi-couples welcomed for Greek and French culture."

     You can really make bondage and S/M optional, depending upon reality, the
publication, its audience, and your mark.  You really ought to study the target
publication before you word the ad.  The kicker is that you will register the
mark as the sponsor of the classified ad.  Read a section of this book that
tells you about using a neighbor's address and the mark's name before you get
started.

     If you decide to run kinky classified ads for your mark in SCREW, BALL,
and whatever, be sure you get some copies of the issue in which the ad runs.
That way you can send originals or Xerox copies to the mark's neighbors,
relatives, business associates, and friends.  Enclose a brief note asking how
they can even admit knowing such a perverted person.  Offer to pray for them.
You could use the name and address of another friend, neighbor, or business
associate as the return address for this note.

     Help your mark out of the closet by running a classified announcement ad
in homosexual publications.  Have her/him grandly and proudly announce that he
or she is gay and has dated and/or married only for cover.  Now, he/she is
coming out and telling the world she/he has taken a lover--and name a friend,
neighbor, or business associate as that lover.  Libelous?  Yes, it is.  Don't
get caught.

     Using classified advertising, Bill Colbeley had an auction for one of his
many marks.  He followed the usual auction format to prepare the newspaper ad,
then ran it when the mark and his family were away for a weekend.  The ad was
one of those "Job transfer--everything must go--fanstastic bargains" types so
normal to an industrial community.  But let Sweet Old Bill tell the rest of his
story:

     "I set the time of the auction for 7:00 A.M., so that just as the sleepy
mark was rolling out of the sack about that hour, he looks out on his yard and
sees about three hundred salesgoers out there trampling all over his lawn,
garden, and flowers.  It took an hour for the mark and the police he called to
get the crowd out of there."

     Although it's not strictly a classified advertisement, the little
index-card notices that people place on bulletin boards in bars, supermarkets,
laundromats, and other public places are great ways to harass your mark.  Just
about anything you can use in a newspaper can be used on these more personal
notices.  But the advantages are, they don't cost anything but the time
required to prepare and post them, and you can be a lot more wordy,
descriptive, and personal than you can with a newspaper advertisement.  Folks
seem to read these very regularly too, as I know from my personal use of this
community advertising medium with legitimate messages.

======
CLERGY
======

     One of the most useful bits of armament in the trickster's arsenal is a
set of clerical garb.  Lenny Bruce proved how financially useful this disguise
is when he panhandled Miami dressed in a religious costume.  But then,
organized religion has known this for years, profitably practicing their old
proverb "Let us prey."

     Obtain and make use of overt religious garb.  It creates a wonderfully
secure and trustworthy image.  Drug marketeers often use priest and nun outfits
when moving dope.  In Ireland, weapons and explosives are smuggled by
kindly-looking middle-aged persons disguised as religious figures.

     Your possibilities are limitless.


=====
COINS
=====

     If consumer attorney Dale Richards is correct, more Americans lose money
to coin-operated vending machines than lose money gambling or paying taxes to
the IRS.  What's also astounding is that so few people rise above simple
vandalism as a response.

     Richards explains, "Many vending companies are quite liberal in their
refund policy.  They don't question most refund requests.  However, getting
refunds is annoying to people, it takes time, and the machines shouldn't cheat
people in the first place."

     People who work for vending companies claim that customer vandalism is why
the machines don't work in the first place.  Critics claim that
vandalism-repair cost is built into the price for the goods and services you
get from coin-operated machines.  I'm not here to adjudicate this debate, but
to pass along some alternative philosophy.

     Abbie Hoffman says that every time you drop a coin down the slot of some
vending machine you are losing money needlessly.  There are many inexpensive
foreign coins that will duplicate the American version and operate vending
equipment.  It may be tough to get some of these coins, because many legitimate
dealers look suspiciously upon attempted purchases of large numbers of cheapie
foreign coins.  You could tell them that you use them for jewelry.  Apparently,
many coins dealers are establishment snitches, so be careful.

     Here, according to Hoffman, are the more useful foreign coins.  The
Icelandic five-auran piece is the most effective substitute for an American
quarter.  They are hard to come by, since they are no longer minted.  The
Uruguayan ten-centisimo coin will also substitute for the U.S.  quarter in a
variety of vendng machines, parking meters, telephones, toll gates,
laundromats, etc.  It does not work in cirgarette machines.  The Danish
five-ore piece works in just about anything but pop and cigarette machines.

     Dime-sized coins include the Malaysian penny, which works in a variety of
machines and devices that take a dime.  Some of the newer vending machines will
reject this dime substitute.  Another ersatz dime is the Trinidad penny.

     You might be able to have friends who travel abroad get you rolls of these
coins for collection purposes or to make jewelry.

=========
COMPUTERS
=========

     The computer won't really be human until it can make a mistake, then cover
up by blaming the error on some other helpless machine.  More than one critic
has pointed out that it is machines, not people, that both run and ruin our
society.  It seems perfectly proper, then, to seek vengeance against these
tyrannical mechanical masters of ours.  Most of us have the advantage when
fighting a machine, because we can reason, we can note shades of gray, and we
can think abstractly, beyond a set program.  Machines cannot do this, unless
some person translates these abstractions into programmed sets of yes or no.

     The classic way of fighting a computer is to punch a few extra holes in
the computer card.  This, of course, screws up the system, and the computer
regurgitates your card.  A supervisor must handle the situation manually, which
costs money and time.  People punch these extra holes in cards using a keypunch
machine at a nearby school, or they simply and carefully cut a keypunch pattern
with an X-acto art knife.

     This sticky trick delights repair people, in addition to you.  Place a
large strip of Scotch tape on several computer cards.  The slippery surface
causes cards to fall off the track and into the bowels of the machine.  A
repair person has to come and perform mechanical surgery on the machine to
remove your fatal paper bullets that felled the machine.  This sort of dirty
trick can tie up equipment for several hours of very, very costly down time.

     Should the opportunity arise that you have a few secure moments with some
reels of computer tapes and you want to screw up whoever or whatever controls
the data on these tapes, you might try passing a portable electromagnet back
and forth across the tapes.  It erases them just the way a bulk eraser cleans
off you audio tapes at home.  In many cases computer-tape records are the only
records kept by many companies and schools.

===========
CONTRACTORS
===========

     Just suppose your new home wasn't quite what the contractor ordered and
promised.  If you're lucky, you'll discover this sad fact before he's done
working on the house.  If not, you'll have to chase him to his next job site.
I once went through that many years ago, and it can be fun.

     Anyway, here's what you do.  Erect a huge sign on your lot that says
something like, BUY THIS UNDER-CONSTRUCTED, POORLY DONE HOME--CHEAP.  Display
the contractor's name and telephone number prominently.  When he comlains, tell
him you wouldn't think of subjecting your family to the horrors of living in
such a poorly constructed dump, and if he buys it you'll take down the sign.
Have a list of things you think are wrong with the house.  You have already
shown him your list if you had to eventually resort to the big sign.  Show him
again.  The heading of the list should state his name, address, and telephone
number along with your general beef about the poor quality of his work,
followed by the specific complaints.  Mimeograph this list so your contractor
will think you're handing them out faster than a politician's calling card.
It's worked well in the past.  You should get your grievances satisfied.

     A man calling himself Hank suggests one for the construction trade.  He
says that if your mark is building anything from concrete and you or your
allies have access to that concrete before it is poured, add concentrated
hydrochloric acid to it.  Hank claims, "I've seen it work--it causes slow but
continual deterioration of the structure from corrosion."

============
CREDIT CARDS
============

     Designed as a credit convenience for consumers and a big profit turner for
business, credit cards are impersonal pieces of plastic whose power potential
can be awesome.  The only way to use a credit card intelligently is to pay off
each month's balance, avoiding the outrageously high interest charges.  But
even paying on time doesn't always guarantee perfection.

     You are dealing with computers when you use credit cards.  God help you if
the computer rings you up as owing more money than you do or if the computer
slaps you with late payment, resulting in an interest charge.  Yes, there are
consumer-protection laws designed to help you.  But as more than a few people
will tell you, there is often a great deal of difference between principal and
principle.

     Kathy Ross had a bad time with magazine-subscription service through which
she ran a credit-card charge.  Not only did her new subscriptions get mixed up
with renewals, but she was charged for items she never ordered.  She followed
the consumer-protection rules, and within seven months she was being billed for
fifty dollars in interest charges alone, still didn't have the subscription
mess straightened out, and was getting dunning letters from the credit-card
company, calling her irresponsible.  Computers didn't understand her human
pleas for logical service.  Kathy never did get justice.  She paid the charges,
finally giving up because "it was easier."

     If you can get the mark's credit-card number, order a huge bunch of
mail-order merchandise for him/her.  Use the telephone to order things too.
The secret here, according to a former security agent for one of the card
companies, is to keep the amount of each individual purchase under forty
dollars, because telephone confirmations are made on greater amounts.  Just
make hundreds of forty-dollar purchases in a short time.

     Using the mark's credit-card information to place telephone orders
involves some investigation, according to Robert Schoster, a master
manipulator.  Sometimes, Schuster will simply call the mark's home, pretending
to be a verification clerk at some local credit union or bank.  Schuster gives
the mark's full name and address, then asks the mark or the mark's spouse to
please verify the credit-card numbers.  If it works, and Schuster says it does
ninety-nine percent of the time, you are now ready to order all sorts of goods
and services on behalf of the mark.

     If you don't have his/her credit-card number and you feel honest, don't
steal with it.  Go a step beyond and report the mark's card as stolen.
Pretend you are the mark.  That will cause some upset for the real mark when
he/she tries to use the card a week or so later.

     This is fraud, but one recycled Yippie who is now billed as a professional
psychic for the various supermarket tabloids told me how he applied for and got
various credit cards merely by lying on his application.  Easily getting cards,
he would run the credit to the extreme and beyond on the cards, survive the
corporate dunning letters, then move to a new location without benefit of
forwarding address.  Despite my doubts, several corporations I asked denied
that they passed along these losses to the rest of us in the form of outrageous
intrest charges.

=======================
DELIVERY OF CONSUMABLES
=======================

  For years kids have ripped off beer distributors' trucks, pizza wagons, etc.
The scam is to call the place from a pay phone and give them a fake name in
some high-rise apartment.  Give them the pay-phone number and stick around
there for a while, since some places call back to confirm orders.  When the
truck arrives with the order, and while he is up there trying to find a
nonexistent customer, you could help yourself to what's left in the truck.

  Why would anyone want rip off an innocent beer-delivery truck or pizza wagon?
Fred Littman has one reason, saying "I ordered a pizza at one place locally,
and it was awful.  I spoke with the manager, and he told me to get lost and
refused to give me my money back.  I figured I had some free pizza coming to
make up for that."

  Lefty Gaylor has another reason:  "We swipe beer from only one distributor,
because everyone knows he's a big Mafia type, and they rip off everyone else,
so why not steal from them?"

  Isn't stealing from the Mafia dangerous?

  "Not if you don't get caught, and this one's too dumb to know any better.  He
blames the drivers, and they get mad and figure if they're gonna get blamed,
they might as well steal beer from him.  That way we multiply our efforts."
  Perhaps the Justice Department could find some use for Lefty and his boys.

=============
DIRTY OLD MEN
=============

     If you know some jerk who's a terminal lecher, not just a dirty old man,
but a truly, grossly obnoxious swine, the following is a sure-fire method
that's right on target.  You need either three or four associates, depending on
whether you personally want to go into the field on this one.  One of your
associates must be a comely young lady.

     The drill goes like this.  The mark is told about the young lady.  She is
described as being either an unfaithful wife or a hot-to-trot daughter,
depending on the age and circumstance.  The mark is told she has eyes and
everything else for him, and that if he wants to have a lot of heavy action,
you or an associate will make the introduction.

     As you approach the fateful house on the evening decided upon, you or
your associate, acting as a "guide," must stress that the husband or father is
a fiery and jealous man and that she takes you on as a secret lover because of
insatiable lust, etc.  Build up both the sexual suspense and the thrill of the
forbidden.  You have to get his adrenaline and imagination cooking really well.

     The mark and his guide are at the door and the sweet young thing opens it
and moans out a greeting.  She should be dressed--or undressed--in the
appropriate fashion.  The mark should have just enough time to wet his lips and
survey her architectural lines.  About the time his eyes bug is time for the
next act.

     Instantly, a large man comes roaring around the corner of the house,
bellowing in rage about the honor of his wife or daughter.  The guide screams
in shrill terror, "Run!  Run like hell!  It's the husband [or father]!"

     As the mark and guide start to dash away, a couple of shots are fired, and
the guide falls.  As he falls, he screams to the mark, "Jesus, keep running!
He's killed me!"  Another shot rings out; then all is silent.

     All is not really silent.  The mark's heart is probably thudding against
his chest like a caged elephant.  It's a great idea to carry on with this
scenario for a few days, with you or another conspirator, who has been
undercover, keeping the mark apprised of the guide's condition from the
supposed gunshot wound.  It would also be good to float the rumor that the
father or husband is spending all his time looking for "the other bastard who
got away."

     The mark won't stop his fearful shakes long enough to wonder why the
police haven't arrested the husband or father.  Maybe, when he does come to
this logical question, he will call the police and ask for protection.  This
scam turns a lot of corners before the mark finally realizes that he's been
had.  The police probably won't be as amused as you are, but you'll not know
about that.  The mark will.

     If you know the right street people, and if you're going into dirty tricks
you must know them, you will have trickster access to ladies with social
diseases.  Some of the veterans of the streets will help you out between
treatments for a price.  Younger, less-experienced ladies don't know they have
the diseases, but their pimp or madam does.  Think how much fun it would be if
you could hire one of these venereal versions of Typhoid Mary to dazzle, pick
up, and seduce your mark.  This scam has been pulled off successfully by at
least four people I know personally.  It is not that hard if you plan, bargain,
and buy ahead.

=====
DRUGS
=====

     Once, a very close friend of mine was badly hurt by a former employee who
not only had been stealing from the company, but when the employee left, she
said and did some terrible things that damaged my friend personally and
professionally.  Revenge was the best medicince, and he did extract his dose.

     He waited a year to get even.  It was worth it.  The woman has moved to
another job in a city about two hundred miles away, in the next state.  Having
access to drugs, my friend got a small amount of cocaine and planted it in her
car during a special visit to the other city for just that purpose.  He then
used a pay phone to call police and give them the lady's name.  He told them
that she'd just burned him on a drug deal and that he was turning her in
because of it.

     As this is written, the case is going to court.  Happily for my friend,
this female actually had a bit of marijuana on her person when she got busted
for the planted coke.  Talk about good luck.  The third stroke of luck was that
this bust took place in New York State.  He has followed the case through the
other city's newspaper and through a friend.  He says the police aren't buying
her story of innocence.  The best part is that by now, she can't think of
anyone who would have a motive to hurt her.

     Having drugs around is a very dangerous risk.  But if the stakes are
right, it can become a very serious business for the mark.  You should know
that your call to the police will be recorded.  Disguise you voice mechanically
by using a rerecording tape, or inhale some helium from a balloon just before
you make the call, since it will alter you voice totally.  If you're a good
thespian, try to use a foreign or regional accent.  Speak very softly, also.
Don't stay on the line for more than thirty to forty-five seconds.  Do your
number and hang up.

     An old head like William Harvey would get a chuckle from this, if he were
still with us to enjoy it.  If his mark was straight or naive about dope, Bill
thought it was fun to mail him/her bagfuls of chopped weeds, oregano, etc.,
with some incense sprinkled on for scent.  As an added touch he included one or
two joints rolled using the bogus weed, with a note saying, "Enjoy the samples
on me."

     These materials were mailed to the mark's home address using a slight
variation in the spelling of the name.  Ideally, the mark thought she/he had
been confused as an innocent dupe in a dope deal.  After a day or two, Harvey
had a male with a rough, raspy voice call the mark to ask if some package had
been misdirected to him/her by accident.  The caller suggested that other,
nastier accidents might happen if the mark did anything uncool like calling the
authorities.  Naturally, the mark already had done this.  What would you expect
a mark-type person to do?  After all, that's how people get to be marks.

     As a postgraduate version of this scam, Harvey used to send a package
containing some suspicious-looking white crystalline powder (sometimes with a
touch of brown) using the same bit just described.

=====================
ENVIRONMENTAL RAPISTS
=====================

     If you dislike land rapists, such as big developers, big real estaters,
gas and oil drillers, etc., then your first order of business is to read Edward
Abbey's THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG, twice.  The first time you read for fun and
pleasure; the second reading might be for tactics, as in a manual.  For
example, if you've had unpleasant dealings with utility companies "creating
progress" in your area, for example building roads, drilling gas or oil wells,
stripping coal, deep mining, etc. you know the feelings.  The monkey wrenchers
have an answer.

     Note the advice of one of Abbey's protagonists:

     "Always pull up survey stakes.  Anywhere you find them.  Always.  That's
the first goddamned general order in this monkey wrench business.  Always pull
up survey stakes."

     He should have added that you should always disguise the dirt from the
stake hole, tamp it down, and disguise the scar, so the enemy cannot simply
replace the stake.  A further suggestion would be to move the survey
stakes...perhaps enough that a lawsuit could be instituted against the
environmental rapists.

     According to a Cat operator I shared several lemonades with a few times,
Karo syrup poured into the fuel tank of heavy machinery is enough to deadline
the equipment for a thorough bit of maintenance.

     "It'll turn to solid carbon, that syrup, and seize the engine up tight.
It makes a helluva mess of an engine.  I'd suggest about three to four quarts
per tankful.

     "Now look, though," he cautioned, his eyes glinting hard enough to stare
open clam shells at a hundred yards, "if you did that to my own machine I'd
come after you hard.  But if it was a company machine or if they'd leased my
machine, hell, I'd probably buy you a drink afterward!"

     In the summer of 1978, about 150 angry farmers in Minnesota held a
beer-and-hot-dog party to celebrate the coming of the "bolt weevils."  The
party and the "weevils" cost a utility giant a quarter of a million dollars.

     The farmers were fighting mad over the invasion of the huge utility
conglomerates who were running their power towers and lines across the
countryside, ruining farms and dairy operations.  All legal and moral efforts
to oppose this land rape failed.  That's when the "bolt weevils" came to the
farmers' rescue.

     After beating off state police by using Wrist Rocket slingshots to fire
ball bearings at patrol-car windows, the farmers brought out their wrenchs and
cutting tools.  Soon, after two of the 150-foot-tall, hundred-thousand-dollar
transmission towers lay smashed on the ground, victims of the "bolt weevils."

     A dozen years ago, these farmers were staunch, conservative Americans,
firmly behind "their" government, and they claim that the radicals of the
sixties were right.  That's comforting, at last.

     One farmer says, "The goddamn government's playing red herring, bleating
about Arab terrorists and weathermen and the underground.  Hell, it's the
people -- us, the little people -- they better watch out for.  We're the
revolutionaries, and we're ready to fight.

     "They may finish this power line and others, but the greedy, land-raping
bastards will never keep it in operation.  There's not enough guards for that.
And more people are coming around to our way."

     You could almost hear an echo of "All the power to the people," with not
hint of a pun.

     A major gas company was ripping and raping all over the countryside, using
the national need for natural gas as its excuse for avarice.  One landowner
whose livestock were distupted by the gas-drilling operation decided to get
even, quietly.

     Farmer Dale explained, "I knew a little bit about the state environmental
regulations, so I decided to help the gas company violate as many of them as I
could, even if it mean sacrificing a few things of my own.

     "Late one evening, I kicked over the hose from their fuel tank and opened
the valve.  By morning, the result was nearly seven hundred gallons of diesel
fuel in the stream below my place.  It took members of the sportmen's club
about a mile downstream two hours to get state officials out there to the well
site.  Because of a phone call I'd made earlier, the local newspaper sent a
reporter, too.

     "Later that day, I dumped my barrel of old crankcase oil on the drilling
access road, and you should have seen the foreman's pickup when it hit that
oil.  He slammed through my cornfield.  I acted really wild, raising hell about
first polluting our stream, then wrecking my crops and spilling oil on the
road.  He was shook up to beat hell and blamed his own truckers for leaking
oil.  I billed their company for three-hundred dollars in damages, and he
endorsed the bill for payment right there."

     Farmer Dale did some other things that week, like move and replace those
"Underground Cable" markers used by the power and phone companies to mark
buried wires.  Naturally, the driller's dozer tore up the real wires, creating
further havoc.  He sprayed weed killer on his own crops, within a hundred-yard
radius of the gas well, then raised hell witht the state agricultural people.
He submitted a bill for a thousand dollars for damaging his crops, although the
gas company balked -- at first.

     "Finally I dumped some chemicals in my old well and had the water tested
(he had had the water tested prior to the drilling, of course) by the county.
They reported it had gotten polluted during the time the gas well was being
drilled.  I turned it all over to my attorney at this time."

     His attorney filed to have the drilling permit revoked and also to sue the
company for huge damage settlements.  The case was settled out of court,
allowing the company to finish its rape, yet at a very high price, including
unlimited free gas and a lot of cash for Farmer Dale.

     Another combatant in the never-ending war between the land rapists and
landowners or environmentalists borrowed the old OSS tire-spike idea, married
it to the Malay gate of Indochinese fame, and put some heavy vehicles on the
shelf for a while.  Angered because the well drillers for a natural-gas company
were filling their mammoth water-tank trucks from a trout stream that ran
through his property, a landowner spiked their plans.  He took a two-inch-thick
piece of twelve-inch board and pounded five ten-inch housing spikes through it.
The board was about eighteen inches long.  He did the same thing to another
board.

     The ambush site was the deeply rutted pull-off spot the heavy water trucks
used when they sucked thousands of gallons of good water from the clean stream.
The giant trucks had callously dug deep ruts, which filled with water from
their sloshing loads.  Our combatant placed his spiked boards tips upward, into
the ruts.  He did this on a random schedule over a one-month period, disabling
a total of seven trucks and finally forcing the land rapists and their trucks
to another fill-up point.

     As a postscript, he enjoyed this activity so much that he built dozens of
the spike devices and became a traveling one-man hit squad, placing the traps
whenever he saw evidence of the heavy water-tank trucks.

==========
EXPLOSIVES
==========

     Now that the feds have outlawed fireworks, you'd better save all the M80s
you can find.  Extremely versatile devices, M80s are excellent propellants for
other substances.  For example, this stunt started out as a dorm prank at
Clapper Packer University but soon escalated into more deadly sport, which went
like this.  Put some fresh feces, the looser the bettter, into a large Baggie.
Gently break the glass on a large-wattage lightbulb, but do not disturb the
filament.  Even more gently attach the filament to the fuse of the M80.  Screw
the bulb carefully back into a ceiling socket.  Finally, move the bag of feces
up and around the light fixture.  Be certain the fuse and filament do not touch
the feces, but see that the M80 is into the substance.  Tape the bag to the
ceiling.

     Naturally, all this presupposes you have access to the mark's room or to a
room where the mark is likely to be the one who comes in and turns on the
light.  One cautionary note:  Be sure the light switch is off when you screw in
the bulb.  If it's not, you have about four seconds to avoid getting nasty
coverage from the M80's blast.  Done correctly, this is a spectacular stunt.
As the designer of this one, George Dierk adds, "You don't have to limit your
spatter substance to feces.  Paint, cheap perfume, acid, and CS gas all have
their place."

     Gun powder has a lot of uses in addition to filling up a portion of
cartridges.  If your mark has an outdoor barbecue, you could sprinkle a cup of
old-fashioned black powder around the bottom of the grill.  When the powder
ignites it will do so with a huge, whooshy flash, accompanied by a great white
cloud of smelly smoke.  I would hate to imagine the multiple effects of such a
pyrotechnical display on one of those fancy grills powdered by LP gas.  Wow!

     Don't let your imagination rest with the cookout grill.  Remember
fireplaces, wood stoves, ovens, etc.  The experts suggest you use black powder
rather than the more modern smokeless powders.  Black powder really works!

     If you can't get a regular smoke-bomb device, a smoke grenade, or
something real from the military, make your own.  According to Doctor Abraham
Hoffman, the noted chemist, you combine four parts sugar to six-parts saltpeter
(potassium nitrate).  You heat this mixture over a very low flame until it
starts to blend into a plastic substance.  When it begins to gel, remove it
from the heat and allow it to cool.  He suggests you stick a few wooden match
heads into the mass while it's still pliable.  You also add a fuse at this
point.  The smoke device is nonexplosive and nonflammable.  But a pound of this
mixture will produce enough thick smoke to cover a city block.  Watch which way
the wind blows.

     John E Warrenburger likes to mess up people's nervous systems.  One of his
favorite nonlethal tricks involving nonexplosives is a good bit of cardiac
theater.

     John says, "I bundle a few of those road flares -- the ones in the red
jackets -- together and wrap them with black plastic tape.  Connect this with
some coiled wiring to a ticking alarm clock and place it so your mark will get
the full visual and aural effect."

     Applause, applause, John.  Only God and the mark's launderer will know how
dastardly the frightening effect of the bogus bomb is on the mark's nervous
system.

=======
FILLERS
=======

     Trickster Aynesworth Belin is thrilled with the recent introduction of the
super-foam products.  These are urethane-and-resin compounds, usually in a
spray can, which billow out and expand into a mass at least thirty times the
original volume.  They harden quickly, often within five minutes.  Another
version is a two-part liquid that when mixed does even more astounding things.
One quart will give you the equal of 150 pounds of plaster.

     A gallon of super foam will make eight cubic feet of the ultrastrong
material, which is water, erosion, and corrosion proof, as well as heat and
cold resistant.  The irony is that these products have been marketed by major
corporations for various legitimate filler jobs.  They rely on advertising and
societal brainwashing to make certain the lulled citizens use the product only
for its duly intended purpose.  If there was ever a product that belongs in the
arsenal of the dirty trickster, this one is it.  I took an informal survey of
fifteen hardware stores in my area.  All had the product in stock.  Yet one
clerk told me, "Most [buyers] are young kids...got no good use in mind."

     I bet some of them have a very good use to mind.  What can I say but, "Try
it, you'll like it," even if the mark won't?


=======
FORGERY
=======

     Forgery is a fine art form, very useful to the trickster.  During World
War II, for example, the British Security Coordination often forged
letterheads, documents, and official cables to thwart Hitler's efforts in the
early dark days of 1939 through 1941.  Some of their efforts were spectacular,
especially in South America, working covertly with sympathetic American
officials, officially neutral at that time.  Some of their tactics are highly
adaptable to today's dirty trickster.  Full details are yours for the reading
in A MAN CALLED INTREPID.  Another excellent reference is THE NEW PAPER TRIP,
which will give you everything you need to know about forging to get even.


============
GARAGE SALES
============

     Ever have a garage sale?  Ever been to one?  They're incredible, and they
seem to bring out the most in worst people.  Even I, a thick-skinned, terminal
misanthrope, was awed at the gall of some people who demand to see your entire
house or who pound on your door at 6:00 A.M. to get a "head start" on a garage
sale you announced in the paper starting at 9:00 A.M.  Getting the message?

     Let's have a garage sale at your mark's residence.  Or let's have it in
your mark's name but at the neighbor's address.  List all sorts of outlandish
bargains and tell people you have guns, old china, glassware, and dozens of
inexpensive antiques.  You want obnoxious gawkers, not buyers.  Remember that!
Naturally, the mark and/or the neighbor will know nothing of this until the
first knock on the door at 6:00 A.M.

     "I used to get all sorts of odd-hour calls from home-remodeling-and-repair
salespeople at this one local company," recalls Jim Kenslogger.  "I must have
called them a half dozen times to ask that my name and number be removed from
their files.  No luck.  So I decided to change my luck.

     "I learned who their chief executive was and pulled the bogus-garage-sale
number on him, complete with newspaper ad.  Then I started calling his home at
odd hours, asking if he were the party having the garage sale.  He was really
out of sorts after about a week of this.

     "I stopped, and about ten days later I got another routine sales call from
his company.  I called right back, asked to speak to that executive, and told
him I was damn tired of being bothered by his salespeople and could he get them
to stop calling me.  He pledged he would and told me wearily, 'Buddy, I know
just how you feel.  I'll surely take care of it for you.'  I had no trouble
after that, so neither did he."

=====
GASES
=====

     A serious dirty trickster should have a supply of ammonium sulfide.  This
liquid is loads cheaper to buy than milk, booze, or gasoline.  It smells so
awful that no one, not even the most terminal of coke sniffers, can stand to be
around it once it has been brought into play.  It may be sprayed or vaporized.
Using this stuff as a base, Kurt Saxon offers a very effective formula for
making your own stinkum in his book THE POOR MAN'S JAMES BOND.  The stuff is so
potent that it should have to be registered somehow with someone.  Phew.  But
it's easy to make, and as long as it's harassing your mark's glands, what do
you care?

     A little leave-behind hostess present can be a small, uncapped bottle of
butyric acid.  Propped near the door you're closing, it will be knocked over
when the mark enters the room.  Phew.

      Crowd-dispersal devices are also good choices for the trickster's
arsenal.  These include spray cannisters, gas grenades, pens, and other
chemical-dispensing weapons.  Many of these items may be purchased over the
counter in some states.  They're generally sold under a variety of trade names
and generally contain CS gas, which is a military version of tear gas.  If you
obtain it without undue risk, MACE is an excellent choice.  Many manuals tell
you how to make your own MACE.

     You can buy many of these materials by mail order.  Check current shipping
regulations and any laws against these devices in your own area first, of
course.  One of the best mail-order companies in this business is American
Colonial Armament, P.O. Box F, Chicago Ridge, Illinois 60415.  If you are or
can appear to be a law-enforcement official you can have access to a veritable
smorgasbord of sophisticated gas weapons by getting a catalog from the F.
Morton Pitt Company, at 1444 S. San Gabriel Blvd., San Gabriel, California
91776.  Finally, if you prefer to brew up your own gases, get a copy of Kurt
Saxon's classic book THE POOR MAN'S JAMES BOND.  He tells you how to do it all
in your own kitchen workshop.  You can get his book from Atlan Formularies,
P.O. Box 438, Eureka, California 95501.

     From Elmer Bill, our gardening editor, comes the charming advice that
spray cans of Raid and other insecticides provide you with an improvised
defensive weapon.  The stuff burns the eyes badly and will fire an eight- to
ten-foot spray.

     This buffet of gaseous ideas is method only.  The rationale behind why you
would use such tactics is your own business, of course.  But at times when
people or institutions have done you dirty -- a dose or so of noxious gas may
help set the record straight for you.

========
GRAFFITI
========

     Contrary to popular belief, some people -- usually the creepy ones you
want for this stunt -- do call names and numbers found in bar restrooms.
Harvey Rankin and Festerwald Ray proved this premise in their study SCRAWL ON
THE WALL.  What you learn from them is that you should write you mark's
spouse's first name and phone number and a boldly stated sexual attraction (use
your imagination) in every restroom of every bar in town.  Biker and jock bars
are usually the best.

     As a follow-up, you can tune in your tape deck to a pop country song, call
the number yourself, and sound drunk.  If you're lucky, the mark will answer.
Tell the mark why you're calling and where you got the name and number.  It is
hoped that you'll be the only ringer among a large crowd of real callers.

     Commercial graffiti are available in a form known as billboards and
posters.  You could have posters or billboards printed to announce your mark's
coming out of the homosexual closet.  Or your bogus billboard could announce a
conservative political candidate's personal advocacy of gun control, gay
rights, blacks, Chicanos, abortion, etc.  Your political candidate may actually
support busing.  If so, you billboard for him should indicate his violent
opposition to it.  And so on.

     Bumper stickers are another form of graffiti.  You can get bogus ones
printed in the same manner as billboards and posters.   Or you can use
legitimate purposes, such as slapping strongly adhesive bumper stickers that
champion your political canidate -- mark to the painted rear-deck surfaces of
automobiles in a shopping-mall lot.  It might be fun sometime to sit around
thinking up other creatively rotten things you could do with bumper stickers to
get even with someone.

     For example, you could get bumper stickers printed that say, GAY IS
GREAT...TRY IT, and place these on the automobiles of local bikers, right
wingers, clergy, and others who feel threatened by homosexuals.  You could get
bumper stickers that say, HONK IF YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE TOO, and put them on the
autos of marks whom you feel are qualified.  BAN HANDGUNS or HUNT HUNTERS
bumper stickers go great on the property of redneck gun nuts.  Or put NRA
FOREVER! and JUST TRY TO TAKE MY GUN AWAY! on the property of the simple and
misguided wimps who really think gun control serves any useful purpose.

     Other fun bumper stickers can say things like, BEER DRINKERS GET MORE
HEAD; SUCK MY TAILPIPE; HONK IF YOU'RE HORNY; HOORAY FOR THE KKK; or
DEUTSCHLAND UBER ALLES.  Stickers featuring swastikas or Soviet flags can also
be used creatively.

========
HIGHWAYS
========

     An activist can have fun on the roadway, too.  Can you imagine the damage
possible if one were to substitute a road sign that read, GROSS WEIGHT 15 TONS,
for the original sign on a bridge that read GROSS LOAD 5 TONS?  One protesting
employee did this at his employer's Ohio plant and had materials shipments shut
down for eight days.

     In World War II, it was common for enemy agents on all sides to turn road
signs so as to misdirect military convoys, screwing up operations.  The same
tactic could be used today, even if your only enemy is some governmental branch
or agency.

     In the annals of highway history no one has seen the equal of the many low
points of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, traditionally a
repository for political hacks, Mafia underlings, patronage hogtroughers, and
the terminally incompetent.  M. Harvey Shopp, a veteran political trickster,
has all sorts of suggestions for highway fun such as painting sawhorses to look
like official blockades and using them to close highways, bridges, etc.

     Another of Shopp's ideas is to produce bogus DETOUR signs and place them
at strategic locations where they will be sure to screw up highway traffic.

     The road woes of Allen McDonald illustrate the rationale behind these
moves.  Whenever the county in which he lived did road repair to the bridge
near his home, they always parked their equipment in his yard.  When county
road scrapers went by, they piled a line of debris high enough to close his
driveway.  In winter, they also closed his own freshly shoveled driveway, this
time with ice-hard snow and frozen slush.  All calls to county officials were
answered with only the uncaring and operationally impotent cluckings of the
tongue.

     "I decided to return some of the favors," McDonald said.  "I began to turn
road and other directional signs around.  I stole a couple of BRIDGE OUT signs
in another county and placed them in front of perfectly good bridges in our
county.  I once called the local radio station and announced several road
repairs that would mandate detours -- telling them I was a county road super,
of course -- which really screwed up local traffic for a couple of days.

     "The upshot is that the county got a lot of nasty calls and even more bad
media publicity, and the county commisioners agreed to investigate these
problems 'caused' by the road people.  Naturally, in the midst of all this I
also brought up my beefs about their conduct, offering to testify at the
hearings.  All abuses against my property quickly stopped.  So I stopped my
counter-abuse program."

     Check the "Joggers" section of this book to learn about the OSS tire
spikes of World War II infamy.

=====
HOMES
=====

     All sorts of things have homes -- snails, snakes, groundhogs, weasels,
Japanese beetles, even marks.  One vengeful way of getting even with a mark is
to destroy the moat to the castle of his/her home.  The idea is to hit close to
home, for both physical and the psychological destruction involved.

     One example started at the apartment of Pat Konely.  Because the landlord
refused to make needed roof repairs, seceral rainstorms flooded Konely's
apartment, damaging personal property.  The landlord also refused to pay
damages, and Konely didn't have the money to fight the landlord's attorney.

     Pat Konely admits the response wasn't very funny, but it did put a damper
on the mark's day and his own home.  It worked because the mark's front door
had one of those mail slots cut in it.  Konely says that this stunt works
wonders when the mark is not aware of what's going on until the poor drip
really gets the message.  Here's what Konely suggests.  Hook a hose, ideally
the mark's, to the outdoor faucet.  Unscrew the power nozzle so you have the
bare hose.  Carry it to the mail slot and quietly fit the bare hose end through
the slot and into the house.  Got the picture?  Good.  Konely says you just
turn on the faucet and hope the mark has slow reactions.  Most tricksters would
agree that it's hardly sporting to do this when the mark is away from home.

     "That would be like shooting puppies in a barrel," Konely snorts.  "At
least tip the barrel over and give them a running start, so to speak."

     If your mark hates cats, be sure to place dead fish in obscure and
unpleasant places around his/her abode.  Do this at night.  If you want feline
audio accompaniment, tie a large dead fish from a tree limb or pole just out of
the reach of the neighborhood cats.  The nearer to the mark's bedroom window,
the better.

     The modern epoxy glues are a miracle to many and a menace to others.  The
latter is exemplified by the exasperation of a person who's just discovered
that someone has squirted a load of strong glue into her/his door lock.
(Liquid solder works too.)

     You know all those vents in the back and top of a television set?  If you
ever pour a bunch of iron filings down in there, some interesting things will
happen to the mark's set the next time it is turned on.

     How about some party humor?  If your mark doesn't know you're getting back
at him yet, you might even find yourself a guest in the target home.  You could
start off your festivities by quieting yourself away from the crowd, locating
the family freezer, and either turning the unit down greatly, pulling the plug
(unless it's equipped with a safety signal unit), or switching it to defrost.

     A trickster by the name of Micki related how she once came bearing gifts
for the mark's family freezer.  She had matched the hostess's freezer wrapping
paper and style perfectly.  Then, nestled among the nice beef roasts, steaks,
hamburgers, and chickens belonging to the mark, Micki added her own packages of
frozen roadkill -- dead cats, small dogs, groundhogs, and crows.

     Happy eating, all you mystery-meat fans.

     While doing your tour of the targeted facilities don't forget to dump some
fierglass or insulation dust into the mark's washing machine.  It will be
picked up by the clothes, ideally undergarments.  Within half an hour of
getting dressed, a person wearing clothing impregnated by the fiberglass or
insulation dust will wish he/she weren't.  It creates terrible itching that
takes two or three days to disappear.  The best part is that no one ever thinks
to blame the rash on sabotaged clothing.  Repeated doses of this stunt are
enough to make a strong mark crumble.  A continual supply of "product" is
assured if you mix the nasty dust in with the laundry detergent.

     Every real kid knows what sulfur smells like when burned -- horribly
rotten eggs.  Once, some of my peergroup delinquents put some three pounds of
it in a nasty neighbor's furnace, after somehow gaining entry to the basement.
The house had to be aired out for nearly forty-eight hours.  It was awesome.
If you want some fireworks with your sulfur-in-the-furnace gimmick, throw in a
mixture of potassium permanganate and sugar.  It will flare, smoke grandly,
and, with the sulfur present, stink all the more.

     Here is one of Leon Specre's recipe for ill humor.  He hopes you dig it.

     Your mark (and family if there is one) is away for at least the weekend,
and you know about it enough ahead that you can hire a backhoe operator.  Also,
rent a pickup truck and tape a cardboard sign to its door with some vague
identification on it about a landscaping business.  Smear the license plate
with mud or borrow another plate for a short while.

     You should arrive at the mark's house about half an hour before the
backhoe.  Naturally, you used the mark's name when you engaged the backhoe and
you told the operator you'd have a landscape contractor (you) there to meet
him.  The neighbors should think everything is in order if you act as if you
know what you're doing.

     Don't give the backhoe operator a good look at you, and use some disguise
kit if possible.  The premise is that the mark wants to add a basement room
somewhere on the house.  You must tell the backhoe operator exactly where to
excavate.  In most suburban areas, underground utility lines are indicated with
aboveground markers.  You can pick up gas lines and water lines from the
meters.  Pick an area clear of utility lines and pipes and lay out some string
and stakes.  Do all this before your operator arrives.  Tell him your client,
the mark, wants that area excavated and to bill the mark directly.  Further,
tell him that you have to leave to pick up your foreman and crew and that
you'll be back in about twenty minutes.  Ideally, you'll never see the backhoe
operator again.

     As Frank Foge points out, "My chemistry teacher always said there'd be a
practical use for these high school science courses someday."  She was right.
Do you remember what termites look like?  Good.  If not, any insect book will
tell you.  Or visit your local Orkin man and tell him you need to obtain some
termite eggs for an experiment.  Or get them from a science-supply house.

     I bet you already know the experiment.  It's called how fast can the
little eggs hatch into hungry termites and devour the mark's house?  There's no
trick here; you just infest your mark's home with the little buggers.  They'll
do the rest.  This last one was prompted by a frustrated renter whose landlady
refused to have the cockroaches and other pests exterminated from an apartment.
A serious illness to an infant child, traced directly to the landlady's
refusal to follow sanitary laws, triggered the nasty "bugging" by the renter.

=======
HOOKERS
=======

     In many cities independent business people have set up a personal service
whose employees make housecalls.  These paid friends come in all sexes and meet
all tastes.  It might be fun to invite one of these hedonistic harlots to
"your" house.  Use the mark's name and a neighbor's address.  Try to pick the
most upright, puritan neighbor you can find to receive this sexual good
Samaritan -- a professional virgin or librarian; something on that order.

     Not all prostitutes carry the Good Housekeeping Seal; some carry venereal
diseases.  These are fairly common among streetwalkers, the bargain basement of
hookerdom.  If you or a trusted friend in law enforcement, medicine, or social
service can locate one of these carnal carriers and your mark has a weakness
for ladies, hire her and let her pick up your mark.  Nature, as they say, will
take care of the rest.

     I'm certain your vengeful imagination will have no trouble matching a
deserving mark with a paid friend who might give him/her more than bargained
for.  I know a couple of people who set up a cop this way.  The cop was
especially hypocritical and nasty about honest working girls:  He'd fully and
freely sample the services before busting and totally prosecuting the servicer.
He got his, so to speak.

======
HOTELS
======

     Suppose you are staying at a hotel and get into a bad beef over the poor
quality of the meal you get in their restaurant.  After trying to be
reasonable, here is how Ralph Charell, a champion-class advocate for the little
guy, handled it.  Seeing absolutely no satisfaction and no end of snobbish
treatment, Charell took the following steps.  He requested a deposit box in the
hotel safe and placed the offending rib roast, which he felt was of poor
quality, in the box and locked it.  The box had two separate locks and two
separate keys.  One was held by the hotel, the other by Charell.

     "At this point, the hotel management has absolutely no idea what I'd
placed in the box," Ralph Charell explained.  "I told them it was valuable
evidence in a possible legal action I was considering against an organization
with whom I was having a disagreement about the quality of one of their
products."

     In a short time, someone at the desk caught the disagreeable odor of decay
coming from the area of the safe.  Within another short time, Charell was
called by the manager and asked to clear whatever was in the box out of the
box.  Charell explained about the "evidence" in this legal action.  The hotel
manager threatened to force open the box anyway.  Charell reminded him of the
laws against destroying evidence, then explained the whole situation.

     "What do you want from me, Mr. Charell?" was the manager's beaten reply.

     Ralph Charell then reported the details of the dinner he and his party had
had at the hotel.  It takes a real expert like Ralph Charell to turn a trick
into something positive for all sides.

     In Homer City, Pennsylvania, a group of the locals told about the time a
fellow had a room at a nearby boardinghouse.  He was the pompous sort of
smartass who just begged to be dirty tricked.  The locals went to a junkyard
and brought a huge gang plow.  It was in pieces and was relatively easy for
these husky lads to put in the mark's rooms.  They assembled it and welded the
pieces together with a small, portable machine.  They and their machine left.
There was a great deal of consternation on the part of the mark and the
landlord, who parted company faster than the room and the plow.  Automobiles
and other bits of large machinery work equally well in rooms and apartments
today.

     A collegiate trick reported by Whitney Clapper called for hiding small
dead things, such as mice, sparrows, or moles, in out-of-the-way places in the
marks rented room.  Good secret places include light fixtures, inside switch
boxes, unused overcoat pockets, and inside appliances.  Within a few days, the
mark will be aware that something is wrong.  A few more days, and he'll be
sure.  Left unattended, this stunt will provide the mark with a mass of pet
maggots to raise.

===================
INSURANCE COMPANIES
===================

     In the intelligence business, access to insurace company files is regarded
as an operational goldmine.  A former executive explains, "These files
contained detailed analysis of actual and potential weaknesses, trouble spots,
and other problems of any sort facing clients.  Insurance companies stand to
lose millions of dollars in the event of an actionable accident or difficulty,
such as the Three Mile Island fiasco.  Obviously, these very thorough and
detailed investigative data would be of immense interest to a saboteur.  In
other words, these companies want to know the details by which anything and
everything could go wrong with a client.  These data are like a printer on
sabotage."

     Getting access to these reports and data may not be so easy for the
nonprofessional.  But if you have enough dedication and imagination you will
find a method.  The kids who blackbagged the FBI offices in Media,
Pennsylvania, were nonprofessionals, and look what they pulled off!  They
managed to liberate entire files of illegal domestic espionage, which later
blew apart COINTELPRO, the blackest eye Hoover's FBI ever suffered.

     Now let's get to the insurance companies themselves.  Suppose you get
turned down for insurance and you want to know why.  By law, the insurance
company must show you the file it has on you.  Suppose you learn that all sorts
of misinformation and other lies are in there.  There are organizations and
lawyers that deal in just that sort of thing, and a load of simultaneous
lawsuits for such things as invasion of privacy and slander would be great.

     Deborah Bodenhead hates junk mail, especially mail-order insurance
hustles.  So she answers these requests with affirmative orders; "I'll buy,"
she tells them.  Then she runs salespeople and clerks through all sorts of
scheduled, broken, rebroken, etc., appointments.  She settles finally on a
policy, then waits for the second billing to cancel.  Why the second billing?

     "They rarely send out the policy before the first billing," Deborah
explains.  "I want them to go to the expense of preparing and processing the
policy.  I usually get a second bill with a polite dunning letter.  That's when
I cancel.  It drives the salespeople to anguish every time.  Usually when they
whine and ask me why, I just tell them I really hate mail-order advertising and
just decided to cancel on a matter of principle about junk mail."

     I asked an insurance agent about this stunt, and he cursed people like
Deborah, saying these people drove our rates up.  I asked him if it wasn't
really the companies' own obnoxious marketing techniques that drove up rates!
He cursed me, too.

     Don't ever pity or sorrow for insurance companies.  They make more profit
in an hour than any of us make in salary in a year.

===
IRS
===


    Mark Mertz knows a few special things about the Internal Revenue Service --
it can be used to furnish a hard time for your mark.  Mertz knows his way
around government agencies, and here's one of his IRS offerings.

    "You'll need your mark's Social Security number and some other obvious
personal data.  Once you get those data you're on your way.

     "Call a regional IRS office and 'confess' that you have cheated on your
income tax, you conscience has bothered you, and you want to make things right
by this great nation.  Make an appointment with an auditor, using your mark's
name, Social Security number, address, etc."

     The kicker comes when the mark doesn't show up to keep the appointment,
for obvious reasons.  The IRS will send a visitor around to talk with the mark,
and chances are he will be audited, regardless of his explanations.

     So much for using IRS to hassle your mark.  Many more folks would prefer
the IRS were the mark.  As in dealing with any large bureaucracy and its
people, many of the stunts mentioned in other chapters may be brought to play
against the IRS.  However, there are a few specefic tricks that may be used to
bring rain on the IRS picnic.

     You could start by picking up a bunch of blank returns and filing them in
the names of your least favorite people.  I have been assured by a former IRS
field auditor that someone will have to make an effort to verify each return.

     With the help of your printer and your newly found forgery skills, prepare
some financial documents indicating that some person or corporation has
received some substantial income.  Make copies of copies several times until
you have a fifth- or sixth-generation copy that is not too clean but is still
easily sharp enough to read.  The idea is to make it look like copies of a
purloined original.  Call an IRS office from a phone booth and tell them you
are an honest employee of the mark and you think he is evading taxes.  Offer to
send the IRS person the papers.  Get off the phone very quickly, then send the
papers.  If the IRS gets nasty they may find themselves in court.  I got this
idea from a man who worked for a company that did fight IRS in court and won
big -- through an honest IRS error.  Think what could happen to IRS if you fed
them a dishonest error!

================
THOMAS JEFFERSON
================

     A quote by Thomas Jefferson can be used to confuse your friends or critics
if they question your activities as a dirty trickster.  A very sharp man who
would be as upset with things in America as you are, Jefferson is quoted as
saying, "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."

     Let the authoritarians and their domestic gestapo choke on that one.  It's
enough to make them thump a few Bibles.  What would be Thomas Jefferson's views
on revolution, anarchy, busing, the draft, marijuana, and excessive taxation?

=======
JOGGERS
=======

     Overweight and overwrought motorists drive by in their Detroit Dinosaurs,
pass a jogger, and mutter, "Damn stupid schmuck."  It's the human way to hate
what and whom you don't understand.  Joggers are often thought of as nuts,
oddballs, and kooks to be dealt with.

     Marty Jones, a landowner, is more specific, saying, "They run across a
corner of my property, using a path I put in for my own use.  I posted the
land, but they ignored the postings.  I have tried to talk to them, but they
may or may not even stop to listen.  If they stop they keep running in place
while I'm raising hell about trespass.  I think most joggers are rude,
self-centered, and selfish.  I was thinking about hiding in the bushes and
ambushing them with my kid's BB gun."

     For a variety of reasons, many people don't like joggers.  Some folks even
actively plot against joggers, using cars and motorcycles, then arming
themselves with boards, pies, and other objects with which to strike the
runners.  There are less barbaric ways, however.

     Tire spikes are a World War II relic.  During the hostilities, they were
dumped from low-flying aircraft onto enemy airfields and main transportation
roadways, where they caused havoc.  Your use may not be so widespread, but with
equally exasperating results.  The tire spike is a simply made piece of
one-eighth-inch-thick steel cut in the form of a four-pointed star.  Its
purpose is to puncture rubber tires.  The original wartime models were three
inches in diameter and had four points at forty-five-degree angles.  One of the
points always stuck upward, ready to impale a vehicle tire.  Even today, there
are many uses for tire spikes.

     One anti-jogger has already suggested that these spikes be reduced in size
and dropped strategically near the running habitat of these long-range exercise
buffs.  The purpose, I presume, is to penetrate the expensive bottom of
expensive jogging footwear and, perhaps, the expensive foot of the jogger.  One
critic called this tactic "a really sick pain in the metatarsus."

     Ultrathin piano wire strung shin high on a pathway is excruciatingly
nasty.  That's another World War II stunt redrafted for this book by Colonel
Jake Mothra.  Many military manuals offer equipment and directions, he adds.

     Another contribution to joggermania would be to sprinkle marbles on their
special little pathways.  Another nasty trickster, Hidell Crafard, told me
about an acquaintance at the Hunt Sporting Club in Dallas who actually put
ground glass into the running shoe of a bitter enemy.  Perhaps that's where
filet of sole originated.

     There aren't many counteractivities a jogger can use in retaliation.  Once
is to carry MACE for obvious use.  Another tactic is to carry cans of
garish-hued spray paint.  These can be directed against attackers' automobiles.

===========
LAUNDROMATS
===========

     In addition to the dryer for a pizza oven, as outlined in another section
of this book, you can use laundromats to harass an individual mark, or the
business itself can be your mark.  It is not very hard, for example, to dump
several packets of dye into someone's wash, ruining his/her clothing.  Doing
this at random will bring grief to the owners of the laundromat.  One
antisocial chap used to put small piles of moistened rust particles in the
dryer used by his mark so the mark's clothing would have large rust stains.
Roadkill may also be used to good advantage in these operations.

     Additives that are positive ingredients for a good time at the laundromat
includes raw eggs, fish, peanut butter, and fiberglass.  If your mark is the
operator of the business, you will find a variety of his/her ancillary services
to bugger, including vending machines, customer seats, and restrooms.  Small
nails or staples driven partly into seats, and restrooms.  Small nails or
staples driven partly into chairs make good items for customers to snag
themselves and their clothing on, for example.  And vending machines can be
made to steal money from patrons.

====
LAWN
====

     Our outdoor correspondent, Lother Gout, came up with a scheme to hassle
your mark's lawn.  It's a simple matter of spilling quantities of tomcat lure
on the targeted lawn.  The urine of Felix Domesticus will do wonders for the
lawn and the mark's disposition.

     There are also a number of commercial lawn-care products that may used to
good advantage by the serious dirty trickster.  One stunt is to select a large,
open chunk of you mark's lawn.  Using concentrated weed killer, you spell
socially offensive words on the lawn with the defoliant.  The grass dies, and a
nasty word or legend is spelled out for all the neighbors to see.  This works
best on a slight slope facing a street for maximum exposure.  Salt or vinegar
will work almost as well as commercial vegetation killer.  If you're the sort
of fun person who's read this far, I'm certain you'll need no suggestions as to
what to say in your little message.

     Serious defoliation is one of the many techniques our Vietnam experiences
made available to the dirty trickster.  Defoliation is the most potent way to
get back at dastardly people who also have unreasonable pride in their lawns
and ornamentals.  These are usually the type of fussy people who also own
small, yipping, bitchy dogs the size of rats -- more on that later.

     This time we're going to take out everything that grows.  There are many
commercial products available that will kill anything growing.  Look on the
label to see that it says the stuff is nonselective and/or that it makes the
soil barren.  You just load up your sprayer -- or the mark's, if you can get to
it -- and fire away.  Like a good guerilla, pick out what he loves most and hit
it first and heaviest.  Don't leave a single blade or stem standing.  No
prisoners.  Be cautious, though, that you stay upwind from the spray.  At night
you can't tell how much of the gunk you are inhaling or getting on your skin.
We have enough Agent Orange victims without adding you to the list.

     Reinhard Ray, a former special-operations man for the U.S. navy, suggests
a selective use of the weed killer in a psychological battle against a mark who
is a true worrier, fringing on paranoia.  You apply the solution fairly heavily
around the mark's natural or LP gas meter; then, broadcasting a bit more
lightly, you follow the fuel line directly to the mark's house.  A final,
heavier dose would be appropriate at the jointure of home and line.  Within a
few days the frightened mark will be convinced that his entire gas system is
leaking badly.  Obviously, this is effective only if your mark's house uses
natural or LP gas.  But you could also do this to a water-supply line coming
into the house or a buried electric line.

     A related scam would be to spray the stuff in a circle around the house.
Then, on bogus official letterhead you've either duplicated or had printed,
send the mark a letter from the Nuclear Regulatory Commision explaining how
they've just discovered some long lost records revealing that the mark's home
was built over a former repository for nuclear wastes.  I'm sure your
imagination can embellish the rest of the letter's content to convince the mark
that he, his family, and home are now radiation victims.  Obviously, you can't
use this if the mark's house is more than twenty years old, because nuclear
waste dumps weren't built much before then.

=======
LAWYERS
=======

     Punxy Phil Ferrick decided to get back at a dishonorable attorney who
decided to try hoodwinking the public by becoming a politician.  Ferrick got
hold of the attorney's legal letterhead and got it duplicated by a printer who
was equally outraged at this crook's trying to capitalize his larceny by
becoming an elected thing.

     Using the letterhead for starters, Ferrick sent out blatant dunning
letters over the mark's signature demanding campaign contributions from
politically sensitive people.  Another mailing was a group of threatening
letters to local civic, church, and charity groups about their winked-at
illegal bingo and 50/50 fundraisers.  In the bogus letter, the lawyer
threatened action.

     The bogus mailings made the local newspaper when the lawyer -- who had
been a big booster, campaigner, organizer, etc., for Nixon in '68 and '72 --
complained of the dirty tricks.  The newspaper treated the story straight:  The
attorney's denials only aroused more suspicion.  And no one ever suspected
Ferrick...until now.

     Another scheme is this:  Get a blank deed of trust, fill in your mark's
name and address, use your notary seal, and you have a legitimate-looking phony
document.  File it at the courthouse, and you have an action in the works
against your mark.  It means the mark has defaulted on a mortgage or some other
promissory note and that "you" are filing against it.  "You" can be an attorney
if you wish when "you" sign this form.  Days of frustration, anger, and
bureaucratic disbelief directed at the mark will follow before things are
straightened out.  Don't get caught doing this one.  The best point here is
that no one ever does things like this illegally, so the bureaucrats will never
suspect it as a dirty trick.

     But there's more.  If you have access to a law library or law-library
materials, you can play games with the mark's mind, claims Oswald Helms, an
observer of the legal scene.  He suggests, "Law libraries have standardized
legal-practice forms, form books, and routine stationary forms that lawyers,
clerks, judges, and the like use to help draft legal letters and proper legal
forms.  A dummy form or letter, photostated with some dummy legal notices,
using, for example, arrest warrants, summonses, condemnations, search warrants,
etc., can often pass for the real thing.  It will shake the mark very much.

     "The secret behind this," Helms explains, "is that real legal people
sometimes use the Xerox machine and routine forms, too.  It saves time and
money.  It will easily fool the target and will probably force his or her
attorney to at least follow it up."

     Time and money, time and money.  Good torting.

==============
LICENSE PLATES
==============

     There are many sophisticated and clever ways to obtain additional
vehicular license plates that aren't registered in your real name.  However,
it's not necessary to fool around with all that esoterica.  Be like a street
punk and simply steal what you need.  A bad guy who needs a plate simply
removes one from someone's car or truck.  That simple.  This is also highly
illegal.  But if you're careful and use a bit of common sense, can you think of
a simpler and safer way of getting the extra plates you need for dirty tricks?

=======
MA BELL
=======

    Did you ever see those office signs that say, THINK?  In one
telephone-company office I visited, I saw signs saying, SNEER.

     People have been messing with Ma Bell for as long as that corporate
dictator has been monopolizing telephone service.  For years stories have been
circulated about using strips of Scotch tape on coins, which allows their use
again and again in pay telephones.  Do you know what a number-fourteen washer
will accomplish in a pay telephone?

     The Yippies and other groups have developed marvelously ingenious ways of
sabotaging telephone-company operations.  Some of their literature is sheer
technological genius, almost as if it were written by a Bell Laboratoris
dropout.  I once spoke with a radical who had become a "mole," an agent of his
political beliefs who secreted himself away in five years of deep cover working
as a technician for Illinois Bell.  His purpose was to learn about the
technical side of the company so he could later control or destroy telephonic
communication.

     Gordon Alexander presents an alternative manner, simple but novel in these
complex days.  A professional dirty trickster for more than twenty years,
Alexander uses the dangerous but simple method of physically cutting telephone
lines.  If you are looking for instructions on how to safely cut Ma Bell's
lines here, forget it.  Unless you know what you are doing and have the proper
equipment you could easily light up like an insect hitting an electric bug
trap.  I said it was simple; I didn't say it was easy or safe.

     Lee Jenner, an accountant, suggests that you overpay your telephone bill
if you're alienated from Ma Bell.  He says, "Overpay by a constant seventeen
cents a month.  Make it consistent.  Then, after a few months, underpay by
seventeen cents.  Start another pattern for a while of overpayment; then
underpay again.  It drives them nuts."

     Jenner continues, "The local telephone company had screwed a client of
mine and refused even give him the time of day.  He started this seventeen-cent
bit, and before the year was out he had the manager of the local company
begging him to stop.  It worked totally to his satisfaction."

     Meanwhile, on other battlefield fronts, Bell-hater Leo Garry says you
should have your printer make a bunch of OUT OF ORDER signs with the local Ma
Bell's logo on them.  Hang them on every public telephone you find.  Speaking
of pay telephones, only punks and idiots damage them.  Much as you may hate
them, they're the only game in town.  If you've ever needed a pay phone in an
emergency, you know what I mean.

     You can play games with your local service representative (Ma Belltalk for
salesperson) by ordering phones and equipment for marks or ordering service
shutoffs.  Always make these type of calls from a pay phone, for obvious
reasons.

     Bandit calling may have been developed by the Yippies.  Certainly they are
among its champions, both as practitioners and as cheerleaders.  Aside from the
blue boxes, which make free calls for you, there is a tactic that can be used
by the nontechnical wizard and doesn't cost you anything.  It's the use of the
bogus credit-card numbers, and it works like this.

     Always use a pay telephone and not always the same one.  Next, you need a
credit-card number.  Here is where knowledge of Ma Bell's codes comes in.  For
that information check OVERTHROW, a tabloid published by the Youth
International Party.  A subscription cost you ten dollars a year, but each
issue contains all sorts of other dirty tricks, as well as an updated listing
of not only Ma Bell's codes, but also the complete credit-card numbers for many
corporations, public utilities, and government agencies.  To order a
subscription, send ten dollars to Overthrow, P.O. Box 392, Canal Street
Station, New York, N.Y. 10013.  It's a good investment, according to most
readers.

     After you get credit-card codes or numbers, the Yippies claim, the rest of
bandit calling is simple.  You simply dial the long distance operator from your
pay phone and sound very, very businesslike when you say, "This is a credit
card call, and my number is [give the operator the credit-card number].  I want
to call [give the operator only the number of the party you are calling]."  Be
sure you can tell a suspicious operator the area code from which the card was
supposedly issued.  If the operator wants to know who holds the card, either
make up a legitimate-sounding company name or use the name of the agency or
company whose card number it really is, depending upon the circumstance.  It
helps if your party at the other end of the call knows what's happening.

     Talk straight and businesslike for the first five minutes, as a snoopy
operator -- that's the way Ma Bell trains them -- might stay on the line that
long to listen in.  Avoid sensitive subjects like your name, politics, drugs,
or dirty tricks since you never know who is recording calls these days.  Break
off the call within twelve minutes.  Obviously, your callee should act very
dumb when Ma Bell's security people do come to investigate a month or so after
the fraud is discovered.  And don't let them intimidate you or your friends,
either.  They're good at that -- many of them are former federal or state
police.

     One Bell employee told me that their security people utilize warrantless
wiretaps, blackmail, and physical surveillance to catch persons suspected of
making bandit calls.  The employee also told me these tactics are used against
persons who even publicize such practices.  I consider myself warned.  So
should you.  Ma Bell can be one nasty mother.

     By the time you read this, though, the game may be up.  In Washington
state, the Supreme Court there upheld the conviction of a newspaper for
publishing the telephone company's secret codes.  The telephone company, which
has both security and propaganda sections that rival the government's, was
working furiously behind the scenes to influence the verdict.

     Abbie Hoffman suggested this next trick, so if it doesn't work, call him.
Restrict Hoffman's idea to corporate, utility, or institutional telephone
systems.  Cut the female end off an ordinary extension cord.  Unscrew the
mouthpiece on the telephone in any one office.  You will see a terminal for a
red wire and one for a black wire.  Attach one of the wires from the extension
cord to the red and one to the black.  Finally, plug the extension cord into a
power socket.

     According to Hoffman, you are sending 120 volts of electricity back
through equipment designed for six volts.  He says this will knock out
thousands of other telephones and the main switchboard, "if all goes right."
Even if his numbers are somewhat exaggerated, you've had a good day.

====
MAIL
====

     The Ku Klux Klan has some interesting strategies for spreading terror.
One of these is to collect from regional newspapers clippings of unsolved
arsons (or robberies, rapes, burglaries, assaults, etc.).  If you need to
fatten the file, include clips from national publications too.  Place the clips
in a manila envelope and tape it to an old gasoline can (or ax, bra, shotgun
shell, jimmy bar, etc.), which you leave on your mark's home or office
doorstep.

     David Williams is the pen name of a Texas state legislator who spends his
working hours as a freelance writer.  He told about Jim Boren (pen name of a
friend), whose great idea for practical joking was to send single-entendre
postal cards bearing personal, sexual, or medical messages to William's home.

     "Since I met Jim Boren, I hide from my postman," Williams notes.

     Williams is not Boren's only victim.  Many of his friends suffer from
postal cards such as the bogus Playboy Towers Memo that pointed out, "Davie
boy, thanks for taking care of my friend while she was in Austin.  I was
envious when she told me how things went down.  Love, Elvira."

     Or this hotel postcard came from Hong Kong, addressed to Williams via his
pen name at his real address:  "She's no longer at the topless bar.  But her
sister at the massage parlor thinks she went to Seoul.  I can pursue it at the
embassy, but will have to disclose your personal interest.  Please advise."

     It is signed by J. Harley, identified by a return address as "Harley's
Detective Agency" in New Orleans.  There is no Harley, no agency, no nothing at
the return addresses.

     Jim also sends cards to people's wives.  One said:  "Sorry, couldn't make
it this time.  My wife came along."

     One of Harley's better efforts at postal assassination was this gem, sent
from Toronto:  "Thanks for your help with the bail money.  You done better by
me than President Nixon did by his boys for doing about the same thing.  If I
get the book thrown at me later, I'll ride it out, but I want a written
agreement on the money and I don't want you saying ugly things about me in the
papers if they learn about your personal role in this."

     From Cleveland, Jim Boren sent David Williams this postcard:  "The cops
found your name and address in one of the girls' diaries.  They may be in touch
soon.  -- A friend."

     This next stunt is also accomplished through the mail.  Posing as a
medical researcher, Elmer Surehe says, you can probably con some crablice eggs
from a supply house, for a price, of course.  The eggs are inserted with an
innocuous business letter into an envelope addressed personally to the mark.
When the mark opens and unfolds the letter, the lice eggs drop onto his/her
clothing and surroundings.

     It would make sense that nothing in this letter connect back to you, of
course.  Some people have used the name and return address of another mark.
The resulting confusion will ensure that two marks are unhappy.

     A critic felt that this tactic would be unfair because an innocent
secretary, business associate, or spouse might intercept the letter and receive
the dose.  Two observations -- first, people shouldn't read personal mail
addressed to other people; and second, sometimes the innocent must scratch
along with the guilty.

     A pulled-punch version of the lice-eggs letter is to use itching powder
instead.  It's easily available from novelty stores, or you can make your own
following the directions printed in some of the formula books available.
Sneezing powder is another alternative.

     A suggestion for a nastier ingredient came in from a former agent of the
American intelligence community who got paid a lot of money for planning and
implementing things like this.  He suggests a chemical tear-gas powder heavily
laced into an envelope, noting, "It will clear a mailroom or an office in
minutes."

==========
MAIL DROPS
==========

     These are essential if you're going to carry on any sort of correspondence
with a mark or with suppliers of services and equipment.  Depending upon the
circumstances, you will need either a postal box or a regular street-address
mail drop.  Post-office boxes may be obtained in any name, although you will
have to present some identification documenting your "identity."

     If your scam is a short-termer, pick an apartment with many little boxes.
Choose an empty one, claim it for the duration, and have it checked daily.  Put
in your little name card and use that exact address on your returns.  The
mail-delivery person doesn't know or care who comes and goes.  Or you can have
a very cool and trusted friend front their address as you as a mail drop.
However, this person must be prepared and capable of carrying off a very
plausible denial.  You'd better think this one through before involving another
person.  Deniability can be a tough rap for an amateur.

========
MARRIAGE
========

     Marriage (catch)

     Carol Sludge and a friend decided they should stage manage an entire
wedding for a mark.  So they did.  She handled the gown and bridesmaids'
goodies, and he did the satorial bit for the men.  They got invitations and
arranged for a church, a reception hall, a caterer, and an orchestra.  They did
it all in the name of the mark and his fictious spouse to be.  They chose a
time when the mark was on vacation to send out invitations for the Sunday the
mark was due back in town.  Everyone showed up for the ceremony -- everyone but
the "bride and groom."  Guests were somewhat miffed, and merchants and others
descended upon the mark at his place of business Monday morning, wanting to be
paid for goods and services.

     Beyond that, what do you turn to after the old standard buns of wrecking
the marriage ceremony have been batted around the bachelor-party table?  Here
are some quickie suggestions, brought to you by the Reverend Robby Gayer:

     1.  Hire a woebegone lady with a young child to troop into the reception
and confront the groom-mark with the question of his continued child-support
payments.

     2.  Hire an outstandingly healthy young wench who is just brimming over
with sensual physical charm.  She should cause heads to turn if she's costumed
correctly as she vamps up to the groom-mark and plants wet soul kisses on him,
cooing, "Don't forget our past, love.  And when you're tired of that little
girl next-door, you know where to find me."  As she leaves, she stage whispers,
"Last [night, week, whatever] was just super.  Don't be such a stranger --
you're too much man for that."

     3.  Call the church office before the ceremony and say that a crazed
ex-lover of the bride plans to destroy the reception.  Just as the reception
begins, arrange to have many M80s or grenade simulators exploded.

     4.  Consider bringing additives into play with the punch and the food.

     5.  Hire someone, grief stricken at the loss of the bride or groom, to
messily and dramatically "attempt suicide" at either the ceremony or the
reception.  Be sure to have associates to carry the victim out quickly for
"medical attention."

     6.  Hire someone to become physically sick during the ceremony or the
reception.  With luck, you can get a member of the wedding party to do this.

     7.  Use many additives in the groom-mark's drinks during the prenuptial
bachelor party.

     8.  Hire someone to slowly and dramatically flash the minister for the
back of the church while everyone else is facing front.  This also works well
if there is a singer in the choir balcony.  Try to upset him or her during a
song.

     9.  Call the state police or the drug-enforcement people and give them a
complete discription of the car that will carry the bridal couple on the
honeymoon.  Report that the couple and the car are really dope mules, that is,
couriers of the drug trade.

=====
MEDIA
=====

     The mass media -- newspapers, radio, television, and magazines -- can be
helpful tools in getting even, or they can be your mark in a dirty trick.  I
suggest you keep your media-as-tool aspect relegated to local events and local
media.  In general, newspapers tend to be conservative and stodgy and not much
interested in your rousing of the rabble.  Most newspaper officials play golf
with corporate officials, and their common bond are advertising and profits.

     Television likes good, visual consumer stories, and local TV stations will
go for local controversy more often than will local newspapers.  Here are some
basic suggestions for using the media to help you in your getting-even
campaigns.

     If the editor says the event is news, then it goes out to the public as
news.  People don't make news; editors make news.

     To impress editors you have to keep coming up with fresh action.  You have
to be visual, outrageous, funny, controversial, and brief.  Your message has to
be catchy, visual, and packaged to fit ninety seconds of time in the six- or
eleven-o'clock news slot.  It's no wonder long-winded academics end up with
"Viewpoint," or "Talk Out" at 3:00 o'clock Monday morning.  They don't know how
to use TV.

     Now, how do you get even with the media when they deserve it?  There are
several things you can do:

O     Take or phone in a fake wedding story, being sure to give them a
 legitimate-looking bride-groom photo.  It doesn't matter who the people in the
 picture really are.  Most smaller and medium-sized papers will publish without
 checking, which could lead to all sorts of wonderful things if you've been
 inventive in your choice of marriage partners.

O     Use a low-power mobile transmitter to add little bits of original
 programming to your community's commercial radio station.  Some people did
 this in Syracuse, New York, and drove officials crazy with hilariously obscene
 fake commercials, news bulletins, etc.

O     Newspapers often have huge rolls of newsprint in relatively unsecured
 storage areas.  It is a low-risk mission to insert paper-destroying insects or
 chemicals into those rolls.

O     Some small radio stations are often loosely attended at night.  Often,
 only the on-duty DJ is around, and even he will have to go to the can
 sometime.  You might be able to wait until then or have an accomplice distract
 that DJ while you place a prerecorded cassette with a message of your own
 choosing on the air.

O     With smaller newspapers, it is sometimes easy to get phony stories and/or
 pictures published.  Using you imagination, you can certainly cause a variety
 of grief with their crime.

     According to media consultant Jed Billet, if you have a financially weak
radio station in your area, you can often place ads for your mark over the
telephone.  Agreeing, Eugene Barnes recalls, "A couple of years ago, I wanted
to get back at a doctor who'd really screwed up my family with some terrible
behavior in a business dealing.  So I designated him as my mark and had him
'open a pizza business.'  I called the radio station and had them run a
saturation campaign of twenty-five spots per day listing his name and home
address and telephone number, plus all sorts of promotional gimmicks, like free
delivery, free Coke, stuff like that.  He had to have his telephone
disconnected for a week.  The station ran the ads for a day and a half before
the doctor got them pulled.  He had 'customers' off and on, though, for the
next ten days."

     Newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV are businesses, very concerned about
their profit-and-loss statements.  Sales, both of advertising and of audience
for that advertising, are vital to the media.  Knowing this, old media hand Ben
Bulova has a scheme that works well most of the time.

     "Most newspapers will start a subscription with a telephone call," Bulova
says.  "You call in and order a subscription in your mark's name and address."

     The next step, Bulova explains, is to call the mark and, using the real
circulation manager's name, tell him that you are with the circulation
department of the newspaper and that they're going to give the mark a free
trial subscription.  That way, when the papers start to arrive, the mark thinks
they're free.  When the bill arrives, the mark will call the real circulation
person.  That conversation would be interesting to hear.

     Bulova says that this will work with magazines and trade publications, as
well.  He advocates an entire string of such gifts.

=======
MEDICAL
=======

     Either steal real medical test-report forms from a hospital, clinic, or
laboratory or have a friend get them for you.  If this doesn't work, a trusted
printer will make some for you.  You will also need matching return-address
business envelopes to mail the reports to your mark.  Get some technical advice
from a medical textbook or a very trusted friend with a medical background,
then prepare a series of embarrassing lab reports for your mark.  This could
include positive identification of such problems as venereal disease, drug
dependence, cancer, yeast infection, or mental illness.

     The mailing of the bogus report must be coordinated with a telephone call
to the mark's spouse, employer, parents, parole officer, etc.  Doctor Milo
Weir, who helped with this idea, recommends that multiple copies of the
diognostic report copy could be sent to public-health officials, and a
drug-problem might go to the state narcotics bureau.

     If you're waiting in a doctor's examining room you will probably see all
sorts of goodies stacked around -- syringes, common drugs, medical equipment,
maybe a diploma or two.  A couple of Yippies said they used to make
appointments complaining of vague symptoms just so the could rip off goodies.
Beyond simple pilferage, the opportunity exists here for introducing additives
to various products.

     This should tickle the fancy of those true sadists among you.  It comes
from the Olde Medical Almanak of Doctor Jerrold Andurson.  He removes some of
the Preparation H from the regular container and refills that with tabasco
sauce.  Andurson guaratees that this will give your hemorrhoidal mark one of
the hottest seats she/he could feel.

     Andurson adds, "That reminds me of the observation made by the man who
caught his genitalia in a bear trap.  He said that the second worst pain in his
life came when he came to the end of the trap's chain."

     One summer, Will Gressle had the misfortune to be incarcerated in a
hospital wing run by a nurse who made Doctor Josef Mengele seem like Santa
Claus.  An easygoing sort, Gressle was driven to revenge by this nasty
Brigadier of Bedpans.  Here's what he did about it.

     "In late November I was visiting my uncle's ranch in Idaho, where he
raises a few sheep.  I got about seven pounds of farm-fresh sheep droppings and
put it carefully in an opaque, airtight plastic sack," he relates.

     "I put that in a box, wrapped it in bright Christmas paper, and stuck
little happy-face and Christmas decals all over it.  Then I wrapped all that in
heavy brown paper and mailed it to the nurse, in care of the hospital.  I put a
fake return address on the package and a few holiday stickers on the outside,
too.

     "I'm sure the parcel arrived at the hospital, where they have a little
tree in each wing and a small exchange of presents.  It is my sincere hope that
Nurse Nasty unwrapped my gift in front of a lot of nurses, doctors, and
patients.  She would finally get to the bag of sheep shit and a little note,
which read, 'Just returning a tiny little bit of what you are so fond of
dishing out in great amount,' signed, 'A Former Inmate.'"

     Considering that the major side effect of medical treatment these days is
terminal bankruptcy, it is little wonder that the medical institutions and
personnel have become the target of so much getting-even thinking.  In speaking
with people on both sides of this fight, I have concluded that there are only
limited stunts you can direct against these specific targets.  Yet the range of
regular stunts presented in a dozen other chapters of this book are as
effective against medical institutions and people as against any other subject
-- perhaps more so, given the self-held exalted status of the medical
community.

     For example, it's one thing if your mark is a contractor and suffers from
a venereal disease because of your getting even -- but think how it would work
for a doctor!  Gossip travels fast in the medical corridors.

     However, if you are thirsting for a few little goodies to toss at the
medical community, here's a mini-list of suggestions:

O     Leave dead vermin at strategic points of a particular medical facility --
 near the coffee shop, the kitchen, the emergency room, the visitor's lounge,
 etc.

O     Dressed in whites or other appropriate uniform, slip in with cafeteria or
 kitchen help and put some harmless food coloring into foods.  Or if you can
 get in to where the staff food is prepared, more powerful additives may be
 used.

O     Borrow some medical-insurance identification from a cooperative friend or
 otherwise obtain someone else's identification.  Use this to charge medical
 bills, either real or imaginary.  The point is to get bills sent to a totally
 innocent or totally unaware third party.  If it's your friend, he or she is
 part of the scam and will pretend to be outraged about the whole business.
 Either way, the medical facility is the real mark.

========
MILITARY
========

     The canard that began World War II in Europe was based on the tenets of
dirty trickery.  On 1 September 1939, a group of what appeared to be Polish
soldiers attacked a German radio station near the two countries' borders.  In
"self-defense," German units then fired upon Polish units in Danzig.

     That stunt actually started World War II.

     The so-called aggressors who attacked the German radio station were
actually inmates from German concentration camps, dressed in Polish army
uniforms, driven from Germany to the radio site near the border and injected
with the lethal drug skophedal.  The dying men were spread out in what appeared
to be a firefight scenario and riddled with bullets by German SS men.  A few
who survived told the story.  The German code name for this "military"
operation was Canned Goods.

     While serving as a guest of Uncle Sam, I had some intelligence
assignments.  There I found out that there are two types of intelligence --
military and human.  Or as Groucho Marx said, "Military intelligence is a
contradiction of terms."

     You can get arrested for falsely wearing the real uniform of the armed
forces.  That's why some tricksters don't wear an actual uniform but either
build or rent a replica that surely looks real.  That way they are free to give
speeches, shout orders, make bogus policy pronouncements, hold press
conferences, use rank, and all sorts of other bits of theater from which the
average citizen might infer that the actor really does represent the official
military.  This sort of incorrect inference could cause all sorts of
public-relations and worse problems for the military establishment.  Could this
be considered contributing to the delinquency of a major?

     Although the Yippies are a generation or so forgotten, and at least as
this is written, our army is no longer a high-profile domestic villian, someone
may still want to pull one off for old times' sake.  A Jerry Rubin trick would
be to find a somewhat deserted area of a large public recreational park.  Place
some official-looking, commercially printed signs in prominent places.  The
signs will say:

                                    WARNING

                          Army war dogs training in this
                        area.  Very Dangerous.  Keep all
                        children and pets within sight.
                        If Army dog approaches do not
                        move under any circumstances.

                            --U.S. Army. Official--

     Guess who will get blamed when frightened citizens complain to the town,
city, county, state, feds, or whoever is in charge of the park.  Guess how many
brass hats will have to visit the site, investigate, write reports, and give
explanations.

     According to Captain DeGeorge Media, things got pretty bizarre over at the
Pentagon when the intelligence boys found that OPEC intelligence agents had
broken the Pentagon ZIP code.  Hah!  Can you military agents reading this book
break the code I just used?  -- MESSAGE ENDS --

     Speaking of military-intelligence agents, I recall that especially
obnoxious recruits, second lieutenants, and other lower-order sorts could often
be sent on a fool's errand that often multiplied into more harassment than the
stunt was really worth.  If your mark caught a first sergeant with an
especially bad hangover or an ill-tempered senior officer who'd just dicovered
that his daughter was pregnant by some recruit from a Third World military unit
attached for training -- well, you get the idea.  Anyhow, you can send these
marks out to bring back a rubber flag to be flown on rainy days.  Or you can
send the idiot out to bring back the cannon report.  If you're air force, a
five-gallon drum of prop wash is an appropriate errand target -- or a bucket of
prop pitch or a box of RPMs.  The navy is good for sending someone to get
stuffing for the crow's nest, a biscuit gun for the galley, etc.  You can
always send someone to the post or ship's print shop for some dotted ink.  A
trip to the supply stores for plaid paint is fun.  The best part is that they
almost always fall for such nonsense.  I think that says something about the
military's effect on human thought processes.

     If you have access to the sound system over which Reveille is played each
morning, you might move up that magic time of day by, oh, say half an hour or
forty-five minutes -- just enough to screw things up.  The next day, make it
fifteen minutes late.  Another day, play it in the middle of the night.  Always
play it a bit louder than usual.

     In a similar sense, at one summer camp, a national guardsman switched the
Reveille record for a rock record one morning.  Another morning, recorded Rusty
Warren and her humor greeted the troops.

     Some solid general advice for getting even within the military comes from
a high-ranking and experienced military man who is now a biggie in the VFW.
You know he's qualified to give advice.

     He suggests, "The military is a blizzard of paper, paranoia, and intrigue.
A dirty trickster who understands this and can parody the system will drive a
mark to ruin.  A good primer for action is to read CATCH 22.

     "You will find an abundance of politics, ass kissing, back biting, gossip,
and reputation hunting and destroying among career military people.  It's an
absolutely fertile ground to grow dirty tricks.  A nastily clever person will
have no trouble getting even for all the petty bullshit the military inflicts
upon sensitive and logical people."

     Thinking about sensitive and logical people brought Selective Service to
mind.  When we last had a draft, during the Vietnam unpleasantness, all sorts
of young men did all sorts of bizarre things to evade it.  However, a true
dirty trickster would think in 180 degree terms -- why not invade the draft?
Simply register yourself in about three dozen locations with an equal number of
draft boards.  As far as I know, the law came down on only you if you failed to
register.  I guess I don't have to list the reasons why someone might wish to
get even with the Selective Service system or a particular board.

===============
MOTION PICTURES
===============

     Hugh Troy was a famed artist who was also a hardcore practical joker.
Once, the manager of a motion-picture theater offended Troy.  Troy went into
the same theater the next evening, after secreting several jars of huge moths
on his person.  Soon after the feature began, he released the creatures, all of
which flew directly into the beam of the projector and stayed and stayed and
stayed....

     Have you ever sat down in a darkened theater, later finding your posterior
has been parked on someone else's sticky candy bar or chewing gum from the last
show?  Did you ever go to a movie house, feel you were ripped off by the poor
feature, get up and leave well before the film is finished, and still be unable
to get a partial refund?

     Peanuts Campbell used the restroom of a local movie house, and when he
flushed the facility it backfired on him, staining his new pants and causing
other patrons to both turn up their noses and turn away their eyes in
annoyance.

     Another person was served buttered popcorn in a tub that leaked the gooey
liquid all over his date's dress.  Management refused to pay any claims.  The
patron of a stage theater had his pants torn on a potruding seat spring.  No
damages were paid, and his attorney said the amount was too small to take to
court.

     What's next?  Peanuts Campbell has an answer.

     You must have a quick, clear exit after this action.  Peanuts Campbell
used to take a container of lukewarm vegetable soup into a movie theater.  He
sat in the front row of the balcony.  He made the sounds of being sick to his
stomach -- choking, coughing, retching -- then dumped the soup on the people
below.  The same tactic also works at sporting events, public meetings --
anywhere there is a crowd below you.  But you must have a good escape plan.

     The point of all this is to have dozens of irate patrons demanding damage
settlements from the managements of the establishment.  If you don't feel
adventuresome enough to dump on your fellow customers, simply go into the
theater early and, while no one else is around, place gooey chewing gum on
random seats.  Pick seats aways form the aisle or ceiling safety lights.  You
may also use a slow-drying glue on the seats.

=============
NEIGHBORHOODS
=============

     Be the first in your mark's neighborhood to become a blockbuster.  It's
time to fuss up the mark's neighbors again.  Find a real estate agency that
deals mostly with blacks or Chicanos.  Posing as the mark, call the agency and
invite a salesperson out to talk about the sale of the mark's neighbor's house.
Don't hoke up your role with a lot of brotherhood stuff -- play it straight.
Now, if the mark is a good, solid white citizen living in a neighborhood of
same-minded bigots, you have a wonderful deal going for you.  The kicker is,
you give the salesman the mark's name and the neighbor's address.  Obviously,
you must pick the most rednecked, bigoted neighbor to be the fall guy for the
black or Chicano salesperson.  By the time the "mistake" gets straightened out
who's going to believe the mark?  Not only have you alienated his neighbor, but
you have taken a big chunk out of his credibility and popularity.  Black is
beautiful, especially when it's the color of the mark's reputation among his
peers.

     This stunt works -- a person I know used it.  He's a professional ball
player who went into a furniture store with his wife to buy living-room-and-den
suite of furniture.  The clerk was bigoted and exceptionally nasty.  My friend
calmly asked to see the manager, who turned out to be worse than the clerk.
The black customer suddenly flashed his wallet full of green money, and both
white guys blanched.  No further words were exchanged as the married couple
left the store.  Two days later my friend called a black real estate agency.
You just read about what happened next.

===========
NOTARY SEAL
===========

     Possession of or access to a notary seal is vital to a trickster.  To the
average layperson and common lawyer, the mere fact of a notary seal on a
document is like God's own rubber stamp.  Many times you will need to have a
document notarized as part of the scams explained in this book.  Having your
own seal kit is the obvious answer.  Some firms sell real ones -- "official" --
on the black market.  Some sell replica kits, which are not official.  Avoid
these -- some are so crude that they wouldn't even fool a politician.  I know
one trickster who had a seal kit custom made -- by a con in a California prison
print shop.  The con had been an engraver in civilian life and really knew his
work.

     You can buy a blank die kit openly from any shop stocking seals.
Corporations use them all the time, which may give you a tip right there about
the value of seals.  You can have a custom seal made by many of these
companies.

     However you obtain it, get a notary-seal kit.  The uses of it pay off the
first few times you scam someone.  In addition to the notary seal, you should
also get a couple of other official-looking dies.  Commercially and openly, you
can obtain blank dies with state logos, or you can get one that looks like a
U.S. eagle.  All sorts of possibilities exist.

=============
OIL COMPANIES
=============

     The soaring oil prices and lack of leadership got so bad late in 1979 that
all the dedicated and honest congresspersons got together to protest big oil.
But who is afraid of seven people!

     You remember the Great Gasoline Ripoff of 1979, when the oil companies
raped the driving public both coming and going?  Petroleum magnate Jimmy
Slushslinger related this story:  A regular customer pulled up to a service
station and said, "Fill 'er up."  As he was paying the bill, he said, "Oh
gosh, all I have is a fifty-dollar bill.  Sorry."

     The gas jockey replied, "No problem -- you can pay me the rest next week."

     Starting rumors at the inappropriate time is the something else to do.
For example, if your mark happens to be a gasoline station owned by a major
company, and a lot of citizens are in a gas line waiting for their semi-annual
pittance of overpriced petroleum, you could walk onto the scene wearing
oil-smeared coveralls and stroll down the line -- just out of sight of the real
station personnel.  Tell parked motorists that all fuel is gone.  If anyone
gets belligerent, use the "I'm a minimum-wage employee, but the boss said if
anyone got angry to send the bastard to him, because he'll sure cool him off in
a hurry."  Don't wait around for the cooling-off period.

     Cut out a stencil that has the word ARAMCO on it, then spray it with white
paint under the word STOP on all the stop signs in your town or near a large
oil-company office building or refinery.  Aramco, in case you didn't know, is
the major oil cartel that works with OPEC to rob American citizens.

     During the 1979 oil-company blitzkrieg against the American public, a
guerrilla fighter hit back.  He cut a sliding door in the floor of his van.  He
had a three-hundred-gallon tank installed in the van, along with a small
electrically operated pump and a twenty-foot hose.  He drove in only to
company-owned gasoline stations, parked over the main tank caps, then used a
wrench to open one.  He dipped in his hose, turned on the quiet pump, and
filled his tank with three-hundred gallons of free tigers.

     Bruno Tannetto dislikes oil companies.  For years he played credit-card
bingo with them, pirated cards, counterfeited cards, and ran up huge debts and
skipped them -- all in the name of guerrilla warfare against the oil giants.
He also saved all the postage-paid return envelopes they used to include with
his bills.  Since he rarely paid, he had quite a collection of envelopes,
which is when he really got his rocks off.

     Bruno collected a bunch of heavy rocks and boxed them up in a sturdy
carton, which he marked, "Caution -- Geological-Core Samples" and addressed to
whatever oil company he had the envelopes for.  Using the envelope as the
"postage," he mailed this heavy box first class to the oil company, which had
to spring for the huge postal charges.  He did this many times to several of
the giants.

     Giggi Hilliard tells about a chap who played nasty to get an oil-company
operation into some difficulty.  The agent provocateur's mode was forgery, and
here's what he did.  While on a routine visit to the oil company's corporate
offices, he swiped an internal memo from a desk while the secretary was out of
the room.  He had his printer create some blank memo sheets using the company
logo.  Then, using a safe IBM typewriter and following the style of the company
original, the trickster wrote a very sensitive memo from one oil-company
manager to another.  The memo discussed the need for deep cover to prevent
leakage of sensitive financial contributions to state and national political
officials.  He then leaked the memo to the press.

     "The idea behind this," Hilliard explains, "is to cause the oil company,
or whatever mark you choose, to have to explain and deny.  Nobody believes them
anyhow, so you give that big business another credibility black eye.  Great,
huh?  You can use this same tactic with any corporation, utility, or business.
The list of sensitive topics is limitless.  But always use real officials'
names on the forgeries."

     Consult OVERTHROW (see section on Ma Bell) to obtain the telephone-credit-
card numbers for the major oil companies.  Use this information to you best
advantage.  Beware:  Oil companies hire experienced FBI, CIA, and
drug-enforcement people for their security staffs.  The security and
intelligence operations of the oil industry are as nasty and effective as
anything the feds could put together, and they are not hindered with what few
laws do restrict the federal law-enforcement people.   You have no civil or
human rights when the oil-company security and intelligence people go after
you.  When dirty tricking the oil companies it is crucial that you practice
WYA, which means Watch Your Ass!

     Recently, a lady trickster called the wife of an oil-company robber baron
and pretended to be a lowly cleaning lady at corporate headquarters.  Telling
Mrs. Oil Executive that she, the cleaning lady, was a good Christian lady who
believed in the God-given sanctity of family and marriage, our "cleaning lady"
revealed that she often had to clean fresh semen stains from the couch in Mr.
Executive's office after "private, after-hours conferences" between the boss
and his young secretary.  That's all, just a simple telephone call from a
simple, honest, God-fearing lady to a stay-at-home wife who's probably already
paranoid about her executive-husband's extracurricular sex life.  If more
right-minded citizens cared about the moral decline among executives in the oil
industry...

     By now you surely owe that friendly and cooperative printer a few glasses
of lemonade for being your co-cospirator in a number of scams.  Here's one
more.  Many of your area's prominent citizens should recieve a fancy invitation
to attend a special local social function hosted by your favorite oil
corporation.  The invitation should read something like this:  "Admit bearer
and guest for the special Hollywood entertainment and buffet on [day and date].
Informal dress from [time] to [time] at [location]."

     Try to pick a Saturday or Sunday and mail the invitation only a day or so
prior to the nonevent.  This won't give the doubters, cynics, press, or anyone
else much time to ascertain the veracity of the invitation.

     In the summer of 1979, after reading newspaper stories about how the major
oil companies were raking in untaxed windfall profits ranging from 35 to 130
percent, Melvin Lierd decided enough was enough.

     "I had no mere dirty tricks in mind; my whole idea was to rip those
bastards as much as I could, the greedy, lying thieves," Melvin muttered
mildly.

     His plan was simple.  He obtained credit cards from as many companies as
possible and charged as many products and services as possible only from
company-owned stations.

     "I ran up bills as high and as fast as possible.  I had absolutely no
intention of paying," Melvin explained.

     Asked if he got the cards in his own name.  Melvin responded, "Nah, I got
them in a fake company name.  I run up as much as I can, then pay them each $5
or so, claiming it is only a token payment because we're a new company, but I
will make the rest soon, blah, blah, blah.

     "The greedy bastards are so anxious to make money they'll just add on
those outrageous interest charges -- usury rates, they are -- and drool at how
much they're screwing me on financing.

     "I'll string them along for a couple of months; then, if they get serious,
I'll simply dissolve my company and let them eat their bills."

     Do lawsuits bother Melvin?  He rates lawyers and judges slightly below
clam feces on his scale of respect, and he says, "Let them sue the company.  It
has no assets.  Plus, they gotta find me.  Let me tell you something, old son
-- you have to use the law.  There is no justice, so you use the law to suit
yourself.  How do you suppose the big oil companies and the big lawyers and the
big judges and all the other crooked snakes got so powerful -- by using the
law!"

     At last report, Melvin Lierd was draining the oil giants at a rate far in
excess of his own expectations.  He has invited many of you to join him.

     Not content to live by the rule of "steal from them before they steal from
you," Carl Bepp likes to add things to the oil-company stations' bulk tanks.
He says that many of the additives described earlier in this book and elsewhere
will work.  But, he does have a sentimental favorite.

     "Once, some land rapists were drilling a noisy, sloppy gas well near the
home of a friend of mine," he relates.  "Since they were stealing from the
land, I decided to steal some land from them.

     "One evening, when they were finished drilling for the day, I got some of
that slimy, mucky gunk that the drillers had bailed out of the well.  I took it
to my most-hated oil company's very own station and dumped three two-gallon
buckets of that gunk down into their bulk tanks."

     He said he has also used several gallons of refurbished solid wastes,
known as sludge, as another additive for the oil-company products.

==========
PARTY TIME
==========

     It's always fun to drop into a number of what I call olde phart bars --
the seedy downtown places where drunken men hang around from morning to
evening, pouring down oceans of booze but never seeming to get falling-down
drunk.  The place stinks, and they stink.  It's a great place to make up a
guest list for your mark's party.

     Have a couple of beers and talk with the old duffers, unless everyone's
uptight about a stranger being there.  Usually, though, old pharts in bars are
friendly.  After a bit of social ice has been clinked, tell them about a keg
party "you're" having.  Obviously, you use the mark's name and give his
address.  Early Sunday afternoon is a good time to schedule the party.

     If you hit enough bars on Saturday and talk to enough old drunks, your
mark should have a helluva wingding show up at his house Sunday afternoon, all
hung over and roaring to get started again.  Salud!

     Remember Donald Segretti, Richard Nixon's unofficial classless clown?
Apparently, he could have easily written this book from memory.  In any case,
Segretti came up with a party "on behalf of" the late Hubert Humphrey, thought
to be a threat to Nixon back in 1972.  Segretti printed up thousands of
invitations to a luncheon with Humphrey, set for 1 April in Milwaukee.  He had
the invitations distributed all over the black ghettos of that city.

     They read, "FREE! -- All you can eat -- lunch with beer, wine or soda.
With Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, Lorne Greene, Mrs. Martin Luther King."  He
gave a time and place, too.  Of course, there was no lunch, no drinks, and no
people there other than hundreds of hungry, thirsty, and highly irritated
people.  Should we say they were non-Humphrey voters?

     The next stunt demands that you or your personal agent arrive at a party
thrown by the mark.  Among your mark's other munchie dishes you should include
a selection of candied laxatives.  You can serve a commercial product, which is
already adequately disguised as candy, or you can make your own by coating
and/or coloring stronger constipation-relief medicines.  Be creative with the
disguise.  The result of having people eat mittfuls of these bowel busters is
breathtaking.

     Woolsey Newcomer and Enos Pomerene remember a party a number of years back
in which a barrel of beer washed down the thirst of the folks gobbling bogus
candy, which was really a powerful laxative.

     "The digestive hell began the morning after the party and lasted up to
four days for some people," Woolsey recalled.  "The guys had been stuffing
those laxatives in their mouths and washing it all down with some draft beer.
What a combination!  We had some sick folks."

     Woolsey always wondered who had infiltrated the candy dish.

     A more subtle relation to the dish full of laxatives is to get a candy
mold from a confectionery-supply house.  These are usually in the form of
little animals, Santas, etc.  Molds for chocolate Easter bunnies are probably
the most common example.  You simply melt a little bit of real chocolate and a
good bit of chocolate laxative together, fill the mold, and turn out some
homemade candy with an explosive punch to it.

     Finally, if you know your mark is having a party any given day or night,
that would be a splendid time to cause the utilities to be shut off or
otherwise disrupted.  Contemporary civilized socializers just can't handle
disruption of modern conveniences like power and water, and they tend to
remember the host/hostess (your mark) and identify him/her with the failure.
It's a good, subtle, nasty trick.

========
PEN PALS
========

     Men are fools when it comes to being conned by the game that proceded even
prostitution.  For example, if you could create a fictional lady, she could be
as seductive as you wanted her to be.  After all, to the mark she is an image
brought on by the words you put down on paper or maybe use on the telephone.
You want him to become her pen pal.

     As this scam progresses, you hope the emphasis will turn to personal
matters.  It's even more fun if the mark is married, because then he'll make a
bigger ass of himself.  Your fictional pen-pal lady must build a desire in the
mark, by doing just what comes so naturally.

     The climax is an assignation setup in an exotic city as far away as
reality will allow.  Setting up this sting calls for teasing creativity and all
sorts of facades like flowers, hints of gifts, Fredrick's of Hollywood apparel,
bogus sexy Polaroids, etc.

     The next to last thing you will do in this stunt is discontinue your
post-office box or whatever mail-drop address you were using for his return
messages.  The last thing you will do is mail, call, or telegraph this final
message, "Meet you at the Sin City Hotel, suite 625, tonight at 10 P.M.  I'll
have the tub and me all warm and wet."

     Naturally, only one of you will arrive, and he'll hardly be in the mood to
start without "you."

========
PERSONAL
========

     You can easily turn your mark into a fabled thief, according to former
private detective Trowridge Bannister.  You need a full-face photo of your
mark, plus a furtive longer shot of the type usually taken by surveillance
cameras.  Take these pictures and your WARNING copy to a trusted printer to get
some posters made.

     Bannister explains:  "You make up posters warning mechants and customers
to be on the lookout for the mark.  Display his name and picture on the poster
in a prominent location, along with the big headlines about this person's being
a thief, shoplifter, or pickpocket.  A small amount of copy could explain some
brief history of your mark's criminal career.  Make it sound realistic -- don't
get cute.  Sign the thing by the local community's merchants association or
something like that."

     Bannister says the final step is for you to take these posters to various
stores and carefully post them around the stores.  Avoid being seen.  Doing
this in a large shopping mall or in a busy downtown area ensures tha thousands
of local citizens will get your message about the mark.

     You could use the same tactic and mark your mark as a sex offender, child
molestor, or worse...a pornographer.

     You can write horrible "news" stories about your mark and have your
printer set them in newspaper style, complete with column-length lines and,
perhaps, border rules and datelines.  You should make the dateline a town in
which your mark fomerly lived.  In these bogus news stories, she/he could be
the subject of almost any sort of exercrable activity, such as child molesting,
sexual perversion, child abuse, killing kittens, starving and beating puppies,
poaching fawns, self abuse in public, and on and on.

     Naturally, the more authentic you make the story, the better the scam will
go when you send Xerox copies to the mark's employer, family, and friends.
Have your mail postmarked from the mark's former city and include a short note
from "a friend who thinks you ought to know the truth."

     During World War II, the British SOE made use of a harassing substance
that became known as "Who, Me?"  It was later adopted by the American OSS.
Essentially, it was a tube of obnoxious-smelling liquid that would be squirted
onto an enemy's clothing or body during some time that would not cause alarm,
such as while she or he was sleeping or bathing, or during the jostling of a
crowd.  Exposed to the air, the liquid immediately gave off the pungent odor of
strong, fresh human feces.

     The product was manufactured by Federal Laboratories near Pittsburgh under
an OSS contract.  It proved to be quite satisfactory and, as it was packaged, a
user could eject one cubic centimeter of Who, Me? as a thin liquid stream at
distances of up to ten feet.  There was little danger of self contamination if
it was handled properly.

     According to OSS records, two different formulas were used -- a fecal odor
for the European theater and a "skunky/body" odor for the Pacific theater.  The
research-backed reasoning is that because the Japanese often used human wastes
as agricultural fertilizers, they would not be as sensitive to the odor as the
Germans.  Both forms were found to be "noticeably lasting for well over a day,
despite frequent washings."

     You probably want to know if you can buy surplus Who, Me? from your local
army-navy outlet.  No, but you can produce it yourself using the following
formula:

     919 g. mineral white oil
      20 g. skatol
      20 g. n-butyric acid
      20 g. n-valeric acid
      20 g. n-caproic acid
       1 g. amyl mercaptan

     That will produce a kilogram of the fecal-smelling liquid.  You could
alter the amounts to produce as much or as little as you think you'll need.  If
you prefer the skunky odor, here's the formula on a relative-percentage basis:

     65 percent mineral white oil
     10 percent butyric acid
     10 percent mercaptan
     15 percent alpha ionone

     Another great pretender to aroma of woodpussy is 3-methyl-1-butane-thiol.
It is easily obtainable in chemical-supply stores and smells almost as terrible
as the real thing.

     If you are assertive enough to get the chemicals and mix up of a batch of
composition, you probably already have the applicator selected and don't need
further help.  If not, use this as a lesson in becoming more self-sufficient.
Happy squirting.

     If you're too insecure to become a home chemist, you could obtain some
formaldehyde, which is popularly known as embalming fluid.  This stuff is bad
news.  It stinks and cna burn your skin.  According to some folks, if enough of
it gets into the air it will vaporize.  If this takes place in a room, that
room will be cleared of all breathing objects for several hours.

     Being a liquid, formaldehyde may be squirted from any appropriate
applicator.  It is fairly devastating stuff, but you can get it in small
amounts if you are involved in biological or chemical experiments.  Sometimes,
a white lab coat makes a good cover when you go shopping in a drugstore or
medical-supply house outside your neighborhood or town.

     A bit more personal, but nowhere near as dangerous, is to dip your fingers
in warm water, come up behind you mark, and as you deliver an ear-shattering
sneeze, fling the water on the mark's neck or back.  This works well with
backless dresses, at the pool, or almost anywhere, for that matter.  Escape may
be a vital concern here, depending on your mark's sense of humor.

     If your mark is one or both members of a young couple, Dana Bearpaw had a
policy of calling the parents of one or both.  Playing the role of an older,
irate neighbor, he would shout, "Look, I don't care how much [description of
carnal activity to be left up to the discretion of the caller] your
son/daughter engages in with every male/female/whatever every damn night.  Just
keep them out of our backyard when they're doing it.  If you're any kind of a
parent you'll talk to them about all this."

     Parents usually take this sort of thing to heart...which causes all sorts
of communications and credibility problems with their youngsters.

     If you want to endear your mark to his/her neighbors, go to the local
library and consult the street-address or cross-reference city directory to
learn who your mark's neighbors are and their phone numbers.  If you can't find
such a directory in a more rural area, just drive and list names from
mailboxes.

     Later, call some selected neighbors using your mark's name and be sure you
identify yourself as a close neighbor.  Then, launch into something like, "I
want to come over and talk to you about [Communism, homosexuality, child
pornography, drug legalization, busing, whatever].  I want you to sign a
petition demanding fair treatment under the law for [whatever topic you've
chosen]."

     Be pushy and really work to make your mark's reputation a deserved one.

     Many times women are certain their men are out somewhere adding
significantly to the statistical rate for sexual infidelity.  When one lady had
absolute proof of her man's bombastic bedding habits with other ladies, she
devised a scheme that would guarantee his sticking around.  On one rare night
when he was in their bed, his mate waited until he had fallen into his usual
deep sleep, then gently applied one of the new superglue products to both his
penis and his leg and held the two together for the short bonding time so well
advertised on television.

     No elephant, tractor, or pro footballer could break that bond.  It took
the delicate skill of the family physician to make the separation, a move
matched that afternoon by the vendicted lady, who also cut out on her very sore
ex-man.

===========
PHOTOGRAPHY
===========

     Ask any competent photographer who also has some sense of humor, about
composite photographs.  They're easy to make -- the tabloids used them for
years.  It's a photo where someone has been added to a group, someone's face
has been used on the body of another person, or an entirely new photograph is
created simply by using composite parts.

     This is a very useful dirty trick and one that bears the stamp of approval
of the CIA and the FBI.

     Unless you're competent in photography, including copying, darkroom
technique, and minor retouching and airbrushing, or unless you have a very
trusted friend who will help you, you'd best forget this one.  However, done
well, the uses of composites are limited only by your imagination.  Here are
some examples passed along by some of the sources of this book:

o     A "photo" showing the mark leaving a motel room with a person of the
      opposite sex.

o     A "photo" sent anonymously to the police showing the mark or the mark's
      vehicle engaged in some illegal activity -- like poaching, dealing drugs,
      or corrupting the morals of minors.  Be sure the license number of the
      vehicle of visible.

o     A "photo" showing the mark's spouse nude and in a compromising pose with
      a companion -- human, animal, or whatever.

o     A "photo" showing the mark in a compromising situation with a person of
      the same sex could be sent to the mark's employer.  This will surely mark
      your mark a gay who will live in infamy.

     Like other topical areas in this book, this one is strictly a technical
suggestion.  You will have to furnish the motive, rationale, and application
for your own photographic nastiness.

========
POLITICS
========

     As public jesters from Jerry Rubin to Jerry Ford to Hunter Thompson to
Frank Rizzo to Nobody have discovered, any fool with twenty-five dollars and
twenty-five signatures can run for public office.  As Rubin asks, "What better
way to make fun of the political system than to run for public office?"

     He's right.  It gives you a legal platform to attack and ridicule the
institutions and people who deserve such attention.  If you have either
sophisticated or totally rustic local media, and know how to manage and
manipulate media people, you will get oodles of free publicity.  That isn't
very difficult, as many people demonstrate daily.

     Neil Mothra, who understands politicians, came up with this stunt.  If
your mark is a candidate or political VIP, if his coterie doesn't know you, and
if it's a very hot, shirtsleeve day, you're all set.  Slip into the meeting or
reception area, walk briskly up to the mark, and offer politely, "May I take
your coat, sir?"  The impression is that you are going to hang it up for him.
It will be best if you are dressed up or in some form of institutional-looking
uniform.  You simply take the coat away with you.  If you also have the
person's wallet, you must do what you think is best and most honest to all
concerned.

     One of the grandest tricks of all time happened in 1960, when a beaming
crook named Richard Nixon was posing in San Francisco's Chinatown with a group
of Chinese youngsters holding a large banner spelling out a slogan in native
characters.  The photo ran locally and was picked up by both wire services and
network television and disseminated to the entire nation.

     The very next day, a worried staffer told canidate Nixon the Chinese
banner had said, "What about the Hughes Loan?"  It was a reference to the
Howard Hughes cash payoff to Nixon's brother Donald, in the form of a "loan."
At the same time, Nixon found out that thousands of fortune cookies had been
passed out at the same rally, each containing the same message, this time in
English:  "Ask him about the Hughes Loan."

     The antics of Donald Segretti, court jester to the Committee to ReElect
the President (CREEP) in 1972, should fill your imagination with enough
fertilizer to devise tactics of your own, should you wish to advise a political
candidate.

     For example, during the Florida primary, one of Segretti's raiders paid a
young lady twenty dollars to streak naked outside Ed Muskie's hotel room,
shouting, "I love Ed Muskie!" and "Father my child, Ed!"  During a Muskie
picnic, a Segretti trooper had a chemist mix up a batch of butyl percaptan,
which is, as you know, a grossly foul, stinking mess.  The after-action report
to Segretti noted that among the guests, "everybody thought the food was bad."

     If the bigshot candidate is having one of those hundred-dollar-a-plate
fundraisers, your candidate should hold a ninety-nine-cent, blue-collar special
-- chipped-ham or bologna-and-cheese sandwiches.  Blue paper plates and cups
would contrast nicely with the power establishment's fancy eatery.  The theme
could be "Why pay a hundred dollars for bologna from [other candidate]?"

     Here's some further nastiness at the expense of three marks -- a
politician, the Postal Service, and the citizen you've chosen.  You secure a
franked postal envelope from your political mark.  Carefully steam and remove
the original mailing-address label.  Using a rented or public IBM electric
typewriter, carefully type in the name of your citizen mark on an IBM address
label.  Stick this label on the envelope.

     The rest of this stunt depends on how nasty you are and how much revenge
you feel you must squeeze from the mark(s).  Some general suggestions for the
contents of this envelope include:  Heavily anti-Semitic propaganda for a
Jewish mark; fanatical antireligious material for a religious sort; very
explicit pornography for a very straight person; homemade Polaroid photos
featuring closeups of dead pet animals -- roadkills and mutilations -- for
sensitive animal lovers; Polaroid closeups of genitalia, both human and animal,
for very proper people; and on and on.

     Most marks will blame all this on the person whose return address is on
the envelope -- the political candidate.

     Congressmen (there are rarely Congresswomen) have postal franking
privileges that allow them a lot of free mail.  A longtime politician baiter,
Ted Shoemaker, decided to help a least-favored Congressman.  Obtaining a
franked envelope from his own mailbox, Shoemaker had a printer duplicate the
postage-free envelope.  By the way, this is a serious federal crime.  He also
prepared a mailing in which the ultraconservative congressman announced his
backing for abortion and legalized marijuana, saying, "Times have changed, and
we old farts have to change with them."  Further, the letter had the politician
saying, "You get drunk on booze -- why not let the kids get high on pot?  You
cheat on your spouse -- why not let the kids get a little free fun too?"

     As you might imagine, the constituency was terminal Bible Belt.  Shoemaker
addressed, stuffed, and mailed a thousand of these messages, including copies
to many media outlets.  It only took two days for the old pol to claim fraud,
but by that time the bogus letter had received lots of media attention, and
more than a few old voters had made up their minds their good old boy was
actually guilty of the whole thing anyway.

     Shoemaker says, "He may have gotten some sympathetic backlash, though.
This kind of thing can backfire, so be careful."

     Barclay Skinner, the activist who championed women for membership in the
National Jaycees, developed a frothing dislike for an especially weasel-like
political candidate.  This man's major credentials were that he'd served as a
legal advisor for the Warren Commission, which tells you a lot about his lack
of honor, intelligence, and integrity.

     Skinner hired an actor who was a real lookalike for this politician and
had the ringer travel the state giving speeches and press conferences in the
real politician's name.  The actor made all sorts of oddball, controversial,
and asinine statements.  He insulted local leaders, heroes, and institutions.
He came off as a real sphincter.

     Because the real politician was not really well-known either personally or
visually, the impersonation worked well for the planned week.  The real
candidate found out about this and tried to stop it, but he was a week too
late.  He did not do well on election day.  By that time, Skinner and his actor
friend had faded back into the shrouded mists of heroic anonymity.

     "Ah, politicians, God's unchosen people!" Skinner beamed.

===========
PORNOGRAPHY
===========

     Buy some really sleazy skin magazines -- ones featuring kiddie porn,
animals, etc.  Use an IBM typewriter and some pressure-sensitive mailing labels
to prepare phony address labels in your mark's name.  Place them on the porno
magazines.  You can start by leaving a few magazines in doctors' or dentists'
waiting rooms, Sunday-school reading rooms, and the periodical shelves of your
local library.  The public will think your mark is passing along his used
literature.

     You might also get some paste-over copyright stickers printed with your
mark's name and address.  Buy some raunchy porno, put the stickers in somewhere
on the title area, then take the goods to local grade school and junior high
school areas and sell them to the children.  Do this only once.  If you do get
caught, swear the mark paid you to distribute his pornography.

     This tactic is best used against bluenose censors and others who would
impose their own personal beliefs upon you under penalty of law.  According to
civil libertarian Townsend McFerrick, this piece of counter-propaganda is
almost always effective against the personal outrages of puritanical dictators.

==============
POSTAL SERVICE
==============

     M.J. Banks once sent her mother a Bible via the U.S. Postal Service.  By
the time it arrived, seven of the Ten Commandments were broken.

     If you like your mail deliverer but dislike the U.S. Postal Service, Loren
Eugene Sturgis has good news for you.  He feels that ordinary citizens are
already subsidizing the big corporations and their junk-mail advertising.  He
fights junk mail, which we'll get to in a moment.  But, here is one of Loren's
ways of cutting down on your own personal postal overhead.

     Use Elmer's glue to coat the surfaces of stamps.  This substance defeats
the cancellation imprint enough that when you soak the stamp in lukewark water,
both the Elmer's and the cancellation ink come right off.  Then you reglue the
back of the stamp and use it again and again and again.  This is a real
money-saver for those who use a lot of postage, Loren points out.  Your local
postmaster would also point out how illegal this stunt is.  Whom would you
rather believe?

     Rufus and Ruthie Luv are true rebels.  Ruf used to work for the postal
service, and he claims that automatic sorting machines really can't tell stamp
denominations.  For example, he said letters do go through with Easter Seals in
place of stamps.  He also suggests placing your stamp in the lower right
corner.  That way, the automatic canceling device will miss it and someone can
reuse the stamp.

     The U.S. Postal Service also furnishes you with games you can play with
your mark.  If you've ever moved, you know how happy USPS is to give you
change-of-address cards.  OK, you get such card and change your mark's address.
It would be good if you had his mail sent to another state.  Don't get exotic,
though; keep it simple.  Use a larger city, like Los Angeles, since this
increases the likelihood of further screw-ups as the mark attempts to
straighten out the mess when he discovers his mail is no longer arriving.  You
can double the trouble by changing both home and business addresses.  Stop a
few moments and think how fouled up your own life would be if your mail was
suddenly diverted and possibly lost.  It's just a thought....

================
THE POWER CARTEL
================

     When Metropolitan Edison had to raise money shortly after being
embarrassed by its nuclear tinker toy at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, the
premier psychic semiologist Doctor John McManmon joked that they offered to
sell used matches as an alternative power source.

     In a far more deadly vein, Eddie Gast doesn't regard the giant utility
companies as public services.  He sees them as powerful monopilies who buy
legislators, judges, and commission officials as human investments toward
larger profits for the big stockholers.

     "They don't deserve mere dirty tricks," says Gast.  "Out-and-out sabotage
is all they understand.  The ecotage raiders had the answers -- cut power lines
and blow up towers."

     Gast also advocates shooting insulators, trashing vehicles and other
power-company equipment, and terrorizing their service workers.

     "I also show people how to doctor their home meters to cut way back on the
amount of money paid for electricty.  Anyone can learn how -- a guy even has a
book out on it [John Williams, STOPPING POWER METERS, available from
Loompanics].  Do unto them before they do unto you, I say."

     Asked if this doesn't inconvenience and even hurt innocent people, Gast
says it does, but they must learn who the enemy really is.

     Other tricksters are less radical.  Osborn Milteer suggests that most of
the tricks pulled on the telephone and oil companies will work as well on the
power giants.

     "Leave the small rural co-ops alone, though," says Milteer.

     Surprisingly, Gast agrees, adding, "The rural co-ops are the way things
should work.  The people really do own them.  I want to destroy the mammoth
corporations -- the monopolies who own nuclear plants and oil companies and act
as if they own our government, too."

     For example, J.W. Burke, Jr., writes from Virginia to explain the monopoly
between the State Corporation Commission and the VEPCO (the Virginia Power
Company).  He explains that in the middle of May 1979 VEPCO filed for a rate
increase of nine million dollars citing financial losses caused by the
temporary shutdown of two nuclear units by the federal government.  They had
already just had a huge increase in March.  Without a whimper, the Virginia
"regulatory" agency gave in.

     According to Burke, that's not the end.  Less than a week after getting
the nine million, the VEPCO powers came around asking for an additional nine
million.

     A mite upset, Burke exploded, "They [VEPCO] don't give a shit about public
relations, and they don't need to, because the newspapers here won't even
squeak about this.  VEPCO also has the State Corporation Commission in their
pocket.

     "It's worth noting that the SCC has never turned down a VEPCO
rate-increase request.  We have a lot of getting even to do here in the Old
Dominion."

     The power cartel is as vunerable to the same getting-even tricks as are
deserving institutions and persons mentioned in other sections of this book.

=======
PRINTER
=======

     You've noticed that a friendly, trustworthy, and perhaps devious printer
has been your staunch associate in so many tricks.  A printer can be your best
friend, and having access to one or more totally trusted printers is an
absolute must for a trickster.  There is an old axiom about the printing
business that goes, "We don't read the writing; we just set the type."  Don't
trust it.  Instead, trust a friendly printer you know.  Often it is easy to
find a printer who thinks as you do.  If not, your best bet is among large
printshops in other cities.  Although this is risky, many really don't censor
your jobs.  But you're better off to cultivate your own good offset printer.

     Unless your printer is also a good graphic artist, don't rely on him or
her for such services as double printing, counterfeiting official documents,
retouching, or sophisticated design work.  That works calls for a person who
has the specific skills and knowledge to handle it.  I might add that those
skills are not all that tough to pick up.  Speaking from experience, a solid
background in advertising and publications work will give you the specific
knowledge and skills.

=========
RAILROADS
=========

     If a railroad line has been nasty to you and you want to get back, you are
welcome to follow "Bart's" advice.  A fan of Edward Abbey, "Bart" offers you
the following from his trickster's arsenal.  Set the manual brakes on railroad
cars; this will cause a great deal of delay in checking and rechecking, which
ties up people, time, and money.  You can visit the railyard areas on cold,
cold nights in winter and pour lots of water on the switch points.  This
freezes the switches, making them inoperable.

====
RATS
====

     Here's one where the price just has to be about right.  You invest a few
dollars in some Norwegian rats -- the big, dirty, mean ones.  The idea is to
get males and females.  Put them in some well-screened rabbit hutches.  Feed
them on garbage and swampweeds.  These rodents are cheap to keep, and they
multiply quickly, and they make people really unhappy.  Ask a New Yorker about
the Rat Raids of summer 1979!  I am sure the imaginations of many readers have
already figured out creative things to do with all those rats.  Good old
Willard, revisited!

========
RELIGION
========

     If your mark is a religious sort, you could follow the advice of Lee H.
Blakely, who suggests printing up phony leterheads using your mark's name,
address, and telephone number under the imprinteur of a group such as Atheists
for a Stronger America or Nonbelievers Against God or Gays Against God.

     Blakely continues, "You then mail really bitchy letters to local TV
stations demanding equal time to make up for 'Sunrise Sermonette.'  You also
write letters to local newspapers.  Sometimes, smaller newspapers don't verify
letters that come in on letterheads and are typed well."

     From one of my regular religious correspondents, the Reverend Fleisher
McGeary, I learned that hooligans have been carrying on near his parish in
Packer, Alabama.  It seems their trick is to call or visit one of the local
whacko religious sects -- the goofier and more Holy Roller the better -- and
ask them to come meditate with "you" and your family.  Of course, you give them
the name and address of your mark.  Another variant is to suggest that the holy
folks roll in during the mark's office hours and save the staff.  Getting the
fix set up here requires a great acting job, lots of sincerely pious rhetoric,
and all that glop.  But according to McGeary, it works.

     If the mark is not well-known in his/her neighborhood, you can call, using
the mark's name, and say you would like to come talk with the neighbor about
communism, gay rights, gun control, interracial sex relations, or free drugs.
The idea here is to be as obnoxious as possible about the issues.  Say that
your mark represents his/her local church.

     If the mark is a Grand Liberal, you can use the same tactic, but turn the
topics around -- support for the death penalty for most any crime, even tougher
antidrug laws, outlawing abortion, and making the ERA illegal.

===========
RESTAURANTS
===========

     It used to be annoying when a waitess accidentally stuck her thumb in your
soup while serving you lunch.  That was before topless waitresses, however.

     Suppose you're really fried with a local eatery for charging you for
terrible food time after time, and are ready to wash your hands of the whole
place.  Try silver nitrate instead.  If you can introduce a bit of that
chemical into the soap dispenser in the restaurant washroom, you will have
customers and employees furious with the restaurant.  Silver nitrate will leave
their hands and faces unwashably stained to an ugly, erratic brown color.  It
does not come off easily.

     Harry Katz, a prominent Pennsylvania socialite, frequents many posh dining
establishments in the company of equally ritzy jet setters.  He insists that
this scam is only a practical joke, which may be correct.  However, with a bit
of malice aforethought, someone could easily create a nasty version.  Harry
carries with him a supply of elegantly printed cards.  He spots someone he
wishes to hassle and bribes a waiter to carry one of the cards over to the
mark.  The card reads, "The management requests that you and your party leave
immediately before we have to call the authorities."

     Of course, we don't always have to be so sophisticated.  If there are
entire groups of people you don't like, you can always eat in restaurants
frequented by such people and put salt into the sugar dispensers or unscrew the
tops of the salt and pepper shakers, so that the next diner gets a plate full
of seasoning.  Of course, such stunts are perilously close to April Fool
amateurism, but they do have some minor harassment value.

     If you had a friend who would take care of the tab, you'd take that friend
out to dinner, right?  In some swanky and excellent eatery, order your finest
repast.  Treat yourself to the best.  About halfway through your meal, you
introduce that friend who's going to take care of your tab.  Your friend is a
dead cockroach that you brought in with you, carried carefully in your jacket
pocket.  Place your late friend amid some food on your plate and then turn on
your theatrics.  Make a noisy fuss and express concern about your health and
the restaurant's cleanliness standards, and mutter about your lawyer filing an
action.  After this, let the management talk you into a free meal or two and
some drinks.

     This next trick will cost a few bucks, but if you consider it as a
perverted investment, the return will be worth many times the outlay.  For
example, a small display ad could be run in either a campus newspaper or one of
the small local newspapers or shoppers.  Pick one that isn't too professional,
since they are less likely to check the veracity of the ad.

     The ad promises some fantastic dinner bargain, such as a steak dinner for
two at half price, when the clipped ad is presented between 6 and 7 o' clock
that night.  Or promise an All You Can Eat Special of roast steamship round of
beef for three dollars, with all the trimmings, also with the clippped ad.  Use
the logo of the restaurant with which you are feuding in the ad.  Check their
regular ads so your layout looks authentic.  Take it in and tell them you're
the new assistant who handles advertising.  Just don't spend too much time
talking or getting remembered.  Be prepared to pay cash if necessary.

     Between 6 and 7 P.M. your mark will literally have his restaurant crammed
with very hungry and soon-to-be-very-unhappy customers.  By 8 P.M. the owner
could have a whole lot of ex-customers and an undeserved bad reputation that
will be hard to oevercome.  Or the owner may decide to go along with the
"promise," which will cost her/him a lot of bucks.  Finally, there will be an
unpleasant scene with the newspaper.  This scam will also work with local radio
stations.

     Note, too, that this scam can be turned so that the mark is the newspaper
or radio station.

================
RICHARD M. NIXON
================

     Richard Nixon has all the charm and warmth of an obscene Christmas card.
Let's remember him always.  For instance, whenever you are asked for your
Social Security number for no good purpose to you, and when giving a false one
will not harm you, give them Richard Nixon's number.  It's the least we can do
for all that he did to us.  Richard M. Nixon's Social Security number is
567-68-0515.

=============
RUBBER STAMPS
=============

     A stock of "official" rubber stamps is an important part of documenting
authentication.  A good sampling of what you need and what is available may be
found in THE NEW PAPER TRIP, a valuable reference book for the dirty trickster.
Most office-supply stores and many mail-order outfits sell just about any
rubber stamp you need.  You will need rubber stamps.

========
SECURITY
========

     Mort Sahl once pointed out that people who were afraid of ideas and
thinking would label him an outlaw.  Yet, Sahl, who has a hell of a lot more
understanding and conscience than many people have brains, says he thinks of
himself as a moral sheriff.  I think we can tie into that.

     Any person concerned with security needs a supply of chains, locks,
cables, and glues.  Sometimes you need to protect your mark.  That might mean
chaining his/her car to the bumper of another car at a party, in a parking lot,
or on the street.  A good padlock completes the picture, and by the time you
get some expert there to release things, everyone is unhappy.  If your mark is
the obvious target, then all the victims are unhappy with him/her, too.

     Locks, chains, and cables are great for closing lanes and driveways,
sealing vehicles in or out.  They can keep people in offices, homes,
apartments, or even buildings.  They can fasten objects to other objects.  The
horizon of your own ideas is not yet even in sight.

===========
SLEEPY TIME
===========

     If you want your mark to sleep for a bit you should know that the fabled
Mickey Finn, knockout drops of grade-B-film fame, is a very real item that you
can incorporate into your dirty tricks.  The mysterious liquid is simply
chloral hydrate.  Although it is no longer in general use as a sedative, it is
still available.  In addition, you can easily find the formula to produce your
own version.  It's a bitter substance, so mix one gram with several dissolved
saccharine tablets before serving.  Most experts also suggest that you use the
chloral hydrate in connection with booze -- a very potent combination.

     Another sleepy-time mixture is one capsule of Seconal mixed in with the
marks beer.  But as Doctor Christopher Garwood Doyle cautions, use only one
capsule and never use this drug with someone who is really loaded or otherwise
medically messed up.  Seconal is a powerful downer and can be deadly.

     Other than that, according to Doyle, you take one capsule of Seconal, the
hundred-milligram size, and empty it into a glass of beer.  Stir gently and
serve to the mark.  Sleep will take him away in about fifteen minutes.

     Sweet dreams.

==========
SLINGSHOTS
==========

     Slingshots are useful tools for the dirty trickster.  The modern ones are
as different from the forked-limb-and-inner-tube variety of your youth as a
Daisy BB gun is from a Taser.  They aren't even called slingshots any more.
The technocrats have renamed them hand catapults.  I bet Goliath is turning
over in his grave.

     Any good sporting-goods store can outfit you with the proper
nylon-and-steel Hand Catapult to carry on your missions.  If you'd prefer to
deal through the mail, write to Wham-O, Box 4, San Gabriel, California 91778.
If you want a giant assault model, there's one available, according to Mike Hoy
of Loompanics.  Mike reports that an outfit known as Information Unlimited,
Milford, New Hampshire 03055, sells plans for a "giant slingshot," which is
five feet tall and anchored into the ground.

     I recall some of the boys in my old neighborhood using an improvised
version of the giant slingshot to propel large fruits and vegetables against
the home of the neighborhood grouch.  They used the fork of a walnut tree and
an entire inner tube.  A winch drew back the pouch, which could load several
cantaloupes, pieces of watermelon, a half dozen tomatoes, or combinations of
the above.  Effective hits were scored at about 75 yards, as I recall.  Perhaps
this technique could be put to modern use by means of a mobile weapon.

========
STICKERS
========

     John Hansen of Boulder, Colorado, takes a more passive but no less
creative approach in his revenge.

     "Vexed by poor service in restaurants, vending machines, and other devices
or institutions that take your money and don't deliver the promised services?"
Hansen asks.  His response is called Creative Revenge.

     He has had permastick slogans printed to slap on an offender's premises or
equipment.  For example, if a vending machine fails to deliver, Hansen slaps it
with a sticker reading, THIS MACHINE STEALS MONEY.  For restaurants, Hansen has
stickers that read, HORRIBLE FOOD, or LOUSY SERVICE.  The stickers can be
placed on the table or counter, or on the windows and doors of the
establishment.

     His other stickers include THIS MOVIE RATED BLAH for questionable
cinematic efforts, MY TAXES PAID FOR THIS? to be placed on examples of
government or public foolishness, FILTHY RESTROOMS, for either food-service or
gasoline stations, and INEPT NERD for offending civil servants or irritating
store clerks.

     For the simpleminded who park supidly in one or more spaces, Hansen tags
their vehicles with WAY TO PARK, ACE.  He has a bunch of NO MORE JUNK MAIL --
RETURN TO SENDER stickers to affix to people's mailboxes.  Enraged by the oil
companies, John Hansen printed a new sticker for the first time in mid-1979 --
PRICE GOUGER -- which adorns hundreds of service-station gasoline pumps.  In
many cases, equally irritated station owners are not removing the stickers.

     Hansen has a huge variety of stickers, including examples such as RIPOFF;
PAID UNDER PROTEST; YES I MIND, DON'T SMOKE; RUDE DRIVER; GAS HOG; and an
entire selection of adult stickers that feature hilariously nasty slogans whose
R rating places them out of Family Hour.  I have used Hansen's stickers, and
they are wonderful.  For a worthwhile sample kit, send $1 to Consumer Comments,
Box 175, Niwot, Colorado 80544.

============
SUPERMARKETS
============

     Oswald Rankin doesn't like large supermarket chains.  He has a favorite
game he plays with them, using a least favorite acquaintance as an unwitting
accomplice.  Ossie explains his game.

     "I go to the bulletin board of a store out of my neighborhood and remove
a policy notice from the bulletin board, since the statement is usually printed
on corporate letterhead.  At home, I cut off the letterhead and with rubber
cement, dummy up a blank piece of paper under it to create a new blank piece of
letterhead.  I take this to a self-operated coin photocopy machine and get a
few good copies that are as clean as the original with no smears or lines
showing.

     "I call the corporation and learn who a couple of the vice-presidents are
by name.  Then I type, very carefully and professionally, using a rental
electric typewriter at the local library, a very nice letter to several of my
least favorite acquaintances.  I tell each of them they have won some fabulous
prize at their neighborhood store...like a small color TV set or two hundred
dollars' worth of free groceries, something like that.  I tell them they should
come in Saturday and claim their prize.  I sign the VP's name and mail the
bogus letter.

     "They show up, and the local store manager is puzzled.  He doesn't know
what to do.  It's Saturday, and he can't call the corporate headquarters.  What
does he tell the customers?  Will they get upset with him?  With the store?
What do you think happens Monday?  And beyond?"

     Happy Shopping, Oswald Rankin.

     If you're upset by a large corporation that owns a dairy, here's an old
trick milk truck drivers used to pull on each other a few years back, before
the mammoth agricorporations destroyed competition.  The driver for, say, the
Udderly Sweet Dairy used a medical syringe to inject a few squirts of lemon
concentrate into the milk containers of the Joyful Jugs Dairy.  The customer
who bought Joyful Jugs milk would find the product sour as soon as she/he
opened the container and would storm back to the supermarket to sour their
corporate milk.  It doesn't take too many stormy customers for a supermarket to
dump all over a dairy.

     Today, of course, medical syringes are only a bit tougher to obtain, lemon
concentrate is easily available, and delivery men don't do this to each other
any more because their bosses are all paid by the same international holding
corporation.  But you aren't and can.

     I once interviewed a supermarket manager for an article I wrote on
shoplifting.  I wanted to find out whether Homer Husband and Harriet Housewife
were boosting expensive food as a response to zooming price increases.  The
very first words out of his mouth were, "Ahhh, we refer to that sort of
activity as 'inventory shrinkage' in this business."

     Whatever they call it, a lot of people are doing it.

     Abbie Hoffman has some interesting ways of stealing from markets that have
been targeted for whatever reason:

o     Empty out a pound box of the cheapest margarine you can find and fill it
back up with four sticks of the best butter in the store.

o     Sew a bag inside your overcoat to receive cuts of meat.  Don't be greedy;
you don't want to look too bulky.

o     Two or three phonograph records can be placed inside one of those large
frozen-pizza boxes.

o     Fake an epileptic seizure while your partner, who has already cleaned out
the meat counter, flees during the confusion.

o     According to Hoffman, stolen food tastes a lot better than store-bought.

==============
SWIMMING POOLS
==============

     If your mark has a swimming pool all sorts of additives and accessories
are available for your incursion into a targeted recreation area.  Dyes are a
good choice, and there are many chemicals avaiable to do the job.  Placing
colored dye in the water could create quite an expensive maintenance problem.
Heavy doses of salt will create difficulty for your mark, as will fertilizer
and the bacteria-inducing chemicals sold for septic systems.

     Another swimming-pool additive you could consider is an extract of
toxicodendrol, which is the nonvolatile oil found in the poison-ivy plant so
memorable to legions of its fans from experiences in camping, fishing,
picnicking, loving, or whatever.  If you've ever had a brush with poison ivy,
you can easily imagine what the concentrated extract could do if introduced
into the mark's swimming pool.

     It's not very creative, but you could put dead animals in his/her pool.
That's why you should always keep several large trash or lawn plastic bags in
your car -- you never know when you're going to happen upon an especially
disgusting piece of roadkill.  Generally, for swimming pools, the larger the
dead animal you can manage to get into the mark's pool the better.  Call the
zoo; maybe they'll give you their next dead elephant.  Use a fictitious name
and have the animal sent to a safe mail drop!

     Some of my acquaintances belong to esoteric military units like Special
Forces, SEALS, Blue Light, etc.  One of them recently told me about a non-issue
application of the orange dye marker solution that is normally issued for
air-sea rescue work.

     My friend recalled, "It happened down South, when we were refused
membership in a community swimming pool because (1) we were military types and
(2) two of our five were black dudes.  Since these civilian bozos were so color
conscious, we decided to give the locals some sensitivity training.

     "A friend in Supply got us some orange dye marker, and a week or so later
we pulled a late-night recon mission into enemy territory.  We loaded us their
lily-white pool with orange dye.  Man, does that stuff work -- even better than
we thought!  It messed up the filters and pumps something fierce, and it coated
the bottom and sides of the pool this vivid orange.  Oh yeah, the whole pool
full of water was ruined too.

     "This made local TV coverage, and were the city fathers pissed off!  They
figured it was us military types, but nobody had any courtroom proof.  The
local hoods were afraid to mess with us physically, so the whole thing was a
draw.  It cost them a few thousand bucks to get the pool running again.  By
then, we'd discovered we could enjoy the base pool anyway.  That was our
contribution to making some bigots a bit less discriminatory."

========
TEACHERS
========

     Early one morning before their teacher got to the classroom, some students
painted a large black/brown spot on the ceiling.  With some deft art touches,
it looked as if a huge hole had suddenly broken through.  They piled broken
plaster, ceiling wire, and hunks of lath on the floor beneath the hole.

     The teacher was a priss, and when he came in and saw the mess he pranced
out to inform the principal.  Quickly, the perpetrators cleaned the water paint
off the ceiling and swept up the floor.  They disposed of the residue and trash
on the roof outside of the room.

     When the principal and the teacher returned, the students acted inoccently
concerned about the teacher's sanity.  The principal asked the teacher to
please stop in and see him at the first available moment.  As he left, the
principal stared at the teacher for a long, long time.

     If you don't like a teacher, here's the ticket, according to that veteran
student of human affairs Doug Dedge.  You have to get your mark to a library
where they use an electronic sensor to catch people taking books out of the
place without proper checkout.  Locate your mark.  Then go to the periodicals
section and page through several magazines until you locate and remove several
of the metallic sensor strips.

     Carefully plant these on your mark or on his/her own books, briefcase,
overcoat, or whatever.  The idea is to get multiple plantings.  Perhaps a
diversion could be created to allow you the few seconds needed to plant the
sensors.  Stick around and enjoy the fun when the mark tries to go out the
door.

     Your planted sensors will set off the bell.  This will cause extreme
shock, upset, indignation, and confusion.  With luck, only one sensor will be
found at first, and the mark will try to leave again.  Round two is also yours.

     Because teachers deal with children, they are especially susceptible to
child-molesting charges, deserved or not.  Claude Pendejo's son was accused by
his teacher of cheating on a test and given an F.  The boy, who was quite
innocent, literally cried his innocence.  No one believed him but his parents.
The teacher was especially insolent about the entire matter, refusing to talk
with the parents.  The teachers' union backed their errant member, and that
caused the principal to shy away from the case.

     Claude Pendejo decided that because the teacher had messed up his son, it
was only fitting for the man to become a molestor of a different sort.

     After giving the teacher a couple of months to forget the incident,
Pendejo acted.  One morning, each home in the neighborhood around this school
was posted with a brief letter, run off on a cheap mimeo machine.  The letter
stated that the teacher in question had molested the little child of the
letter's grieving writer -- a scared mother -- and only now did this parent
have the courage to come forth.  The "writer" of the letter said that the
teacher had sexually abused her son on four occasions, and finally the pain and
shame had made him come to his parents for salvation.  The "humble mother" said
the police would do nothing, so she, as a frightened mother, was appealing
directly to other concerned parents for their help in ridding their
neighborhood school of this horrible beast.

     Within three days, the man was blamed (wrongly) for an actual molesting
incident totally unrelated to the scam.  Two other kids came forward and
"confessed" he had made sexual advances to them (he had not).  The man was
waylaid by two fathers and pushed around, his car was trashed, and the
neighborhood cop told him he would have his eye on the man.  The teacher's wife
was a suspicious sort anyway, and this whole thing just fed their marital
fires.  Finally, his supervisor told the man he was too much of a problem and
he ought to consider either moving away or going into a new line of work.  This
happened after the local paper ran a "guilty or no" story on the whole matter.
Since there was no actual proof, the paper was somewhat sympathetic to the
mark.  Eventually, the whole matter burned down to a few embers of suspicion
that would never die out.

=====
THEFT
=====

     Theft and other bits of guerrilla warefare by employees against a despised
corporation have long, deep roots.  Greedy, embittered, politically alienated,
or just plain loose-fingered employees took home an unauthorized twelve billion
dollars in 1979.  This bit of larceny is so easy and requires so little thought
that most experts regard it as little more than another expense of doing
business.

     "We figure the cost of a certain percentage of employee theft right in
with our other costs like rent, advertising, overhead, salaries," says business
economist Ivo Neglagenti.  "Most companies add this cost right into the amounts
they charge the public for goods and services."

     Does that mean if you steal from your employer you are simply stealing
from yourself?  One anti-corporate guerrilla has a ready response:  "Simply
steal more than your share of the cost.  Like the old bromide goes, never steal
anything small, and if you do, do it often."

     Abbie Hoffman gives you the operational details in his classic STEAL THIS
BOOK.  Good luck finding it, though.  It is apparently "out of theft," and no
publisher wishes to reprint it!  Try used-book shops.  It's an instructive
book.

     If you're interested in petty larceny, Loran Eugene suggests you
experiment with various sizes of brass washers in coin-operated vending
machines.  If you don't like a particular newspaper, he suggests you use
number-fourteen washers in their vending machines, remove all the newspapers,
take them into bars and other places, and sell them yourself.

     Braden adds.  "Hey, even if the washers don't operate the machines there's
always the hope they will jam the coin slots.  So you don't really lose in any
case."

     Obviously, some of the radical advocates of rights for ordinary citizens
are both preaching and practicing theft as a form of fighting back.  I was
brought up to believe that stealing is not nice.  On the other hand, maybe some
of these antiestablishment tactics aren't really stealing.  I leave the
decision to you.

     Most modern philosophers recognize a major difference between theft for
fun, for survival, for a career, and for protest purposes.  As the premier
corrections officer Wallace R. Croup points out, "A common thief will steal
from anyone, whereas a protestor will steal only from his institutional enemy
-- a corporation, utility, or some other establishment target."

     Even so, maybe you still have a moral block about theft.  If so, think how
thin the dividing line is between business as usual and stealing.  Some of the
Detroit auto companies know that their products are dangerous death traps; yet
they sell them anyway.  You pay nine dollars for a tiny container of a
prescription drug.  Do you really believe that the compound drug costs that
much?  Talk to a salesperson for a large drug company if you doubt me.  I wish
you could see the breakdown of costs in producing laundry detergent.  I worked
in advertising.  I saw those figures, and know how many dollars you have to pay
for how few cents' worth of materials and labor.

     There is a very thin line between business and theft.

=======
TOILETS
=======

     If you enjoy playing in the potty without blowing one up, consider this
trick.  Saturate a large dry sponge with a thick starch solution.  Squeeze it
tightly as possible with tough string.  Allow the whole thing to dry
thoroughly.  Then remove the string, and the sponge will stay in its compressed
state.  Put it, or as many as you've made into targeted toilets, flush the
sponge down, and walk away from the fun.

     It may take a while for the sponge to become wet enough to expand solidly.
Have patience -- it will do so soon.  For your purposes, you probably hope it
is farther down the drainage system than is convenient for a repairperson to
get to easily.  Holy backup!

     If you have some of that poison-ivy extract left over from the section on
swimming pools, heed Ed Hoover's story.  As a kid, Ed obtained some extract of
toxicodendrol (poison ivy) and applied it liberally to the toilet paper in the
counselors' outhouse at his summer camp.  He said he later did the same thing
to the officers' latrine while serving Uncle Sam.  Maybe Ed just has this
problem with authority figures.  Even so, that's a lot more comfortable than
the problems his authority figures got wiped out with.

     Mower McMurphy sticks closely to commodes.  Like the sticker man from
Boulder, McMurphy has a very sharp, nasty mind and uses creative revenge.  One
of his classics is to have official-looking warnings printed on permastick
stock.  When, for some reason, he gets irritated at someone or something in a
bar, office building, school, or utility, he will post each restroom stall in
the area.

     Each sticker bears an official-looking seal and signature around the
message, which reads:  DANGER:  THIS RESTROOM OFF-LIMITS DUE TO INFECTIOUS
VENEREAL DISEASE.  STAY OUT FOR YOUR OWN HEALTH PROTECTION.

     In another campaign, McMurphy printed up graffiti-style stickers, which he
posted over toilet-paper dispensers in the bathroom of least-favorite marks.
The stickers read:  WARNING:  THIS TOILET PAPER HAS BEEN INFECTED WITH A HIGHLY
CONTAGIOUS NEW STRAIN OF ASIAN GONORRHEA.  Uh-huh -- I know what you're
thinking.  But, would you really take the chance anyway?

     Now, if you wish to be discriminatory, this next trick works best in a
bathroom frequented by women.  According to nationally known sexist Butch
Bryant, it is also an old trick -- cheap bathroom humor, Butch calls it.  A gay
sort, though, Butch will always settle for a laugh.  Butch once said, "A cheap
thrill is better than no thrill."

     Lift the seat of the commode, then stretch and place Saran Wrap very
tightly across the top of the bowl so no creases show.  Then lower the seat
gently.  The trap is set.

     Ideally, the mark will come dashing in, sit, and let loose.  Your humorous
imagination can finish the rest of this trick, when the trap is sprung, so to
speak.  Butch Bryant says this works best in barrom johns.  Anything you say,
Butch.

==========
LA TURISTA
==========

     If your mark is traveling into Mexico or some South or Central American
country, or even into Canada, you could consider doing your duty as an
honorable citizen and reporting your suspicions to the authorities of that
country that he/she is a drug dealer.  It might help to sneak some drugs into
the mark's car, luggage, or clothing prior to his or her hitting a border
point.  If you are kindhearted you will have the discovery made on the U.S.
side of the border.  If not?  Hey, this is only a book.  It's his/her life.


===
VIP
===

     We've all tried to get that always unavailable Very Important Person Who
Can Solve Our Problem on the telephone.  But that Important Person always is
tied up, is in a meeting, or just stepped out of the office.  So after you
waste your time calling him or her in vain a few times, do it yet one more
time.

     This time come armed with the name of the chief executive officer of the
company.  Get that from the main switchboard operator.  When the unavailable
Very Important Person's flunky starts to give you the runaround again, sternly
tell the flunky something like this:

     "I didn't want to bring [use full name of the chief executive] into this
little matter.  I thought your [use name of very important person here] could
handle this him/herself.  I guess not.  Well, I'm calling [first name of chief
executive] for a luncheon soon, and I can just ask him/her about this matter
then."

     No person wants the superior, especially the chief executive, to think
that he/she is incapable of handling routine matters.  Beyond that, the fact
that you have namedropped adds a dimension few bureaucratic managers care to
call as a bluff.  It's easier and cheaper to finally talk to you -- and satisfy
you.

============
WATER WELLS!
============

     People who live outside the lines of municipal services provide their own
utilities, one of which is a water well.  Normally, these wells are topped by a
simple metal cap held in place by several set screws.  It takes only a few
minutes to loosen the screws, remove the cap, and dump a load of modest-sized
roadkill, such as squirrels, small rabbits, rats, birds, etc., down the well
casing.  Replace the cap and tighten the screws, and the mark will be none the
wiser.  For a while.

     Water wells are usually purified once a year by adding a gallon of a
chlorine bleach, such as Clorox, to the well.  This process also oxidizes the
iron in the water, turning the liquid a dirty rusty color.  The water now
stinks and tastes awful.  To demolish the quality of your mark's water supply
for at least a week, dump about ten to fifteen gallons of bleach down the well.

     Barfo Renchquist got his nickname as you might imagine.  His favorite
water-well trick is to eat all sorts of multi-colored greasy junk food, like
pizza.  He drinks a lot of beer, too.  Primed and loaded, he is driven to the
mark's water well.  The well cap is removed, and Barfo positions himself over
the well casing and pulls the trigger by sticking his finger down his throat.
Barfo does his thing -- all of it down the well.  The well cap is replaced.

     "It works best when they don't have too fine a filter on their pump and
some of the small pieces of puke come out the house taps.  A lot of the color,
smell and taste almost always comes through.  It's a very demoralizing stunt,"
Barfo reports.

======
WILLS!
======

     If you have a least-favorite friend, relative, or other family member you
want to shame in front of the others, write him/her into your last will and
testament.  Simply instruct your attorney to include a codicil to the effect
that "I bequeath all my yachts, silver plate, gold bullion and coins, foreign
holdings, carriages, and aircraft to [name of mark]."  Obviously, you had best
not have any of those items, or you suddenly become the mark.  This stunt is a
blow from the grave.  Maybe you won't know how it works.  Maybe, though, you
will.  Is there revenge after death?