Phoenix Rising BBS/phoenixrising.zip/phoenixrising/misc/ge2.txt

Text File | 1992-09-27 | 26KB | 456 lines

=====
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."

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