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- This is THE REFLEX here. I originally typed most of these files in 40
- columns. So I revised them and I'm u/ling them here. I got a kick out of
- the book and for you who don't have it, don't buy it. I'm typing in all the
- sections from it and I'm u/ling them all here. I hope you enjoy them as much
- I did.
-
- --==**>>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?
- _______________________________________________________________________________
-
-
-
- ==================
- Getting Even Index
- ==================
-
- File ###: Title (approximate length in K)
- ==========================================
- File 001: Additives (8.75k) -
- File 002: Airlines (6.25k) -
- File 003: Animals (4.5k) -
- File 004: Apartments (8.25) -
- File 005: Assassination (3.5k) -
- File 006: Auto Dealers (3.75k) -
- File 007: Banks (4.25k) -
- File 008: Bikers (3.5k) -
- File 009: Books (3.25k) -
- File 010: Campuses (4.25k) -
- File 011: Carbide (4.0k) -
- File 012: Cars (13.5k) -
- File 013: Charities (2.75k) -
- File 014: Cheese, Child Abuse, CIA [combined] (4.0k) -
- File 015: CB Radio (3.0k) -
- File 016: Classified Ads (6.0k) -
- File 017: Clergy, Coins [combined] (4.5k) -
- File 018: Computers (3.25k) -
- File 019: Contractors (2.75k) -
- File 020: Credit Cards (4.5k) -
- File 021: Delivery of Consumables (2.5k) -
- File 022: Dirty Old Men (4.5k) -
- File 023: Drugs (4.25k) -
- File 024: Environmental Rapists (8.25k) -
- File 025: Explosives (4.5k) -
- File 026: Fillers, Forgery, Garage Sales [combined] (5.5k) -
- File 027: Gases (4.0k) -
- File 028: Graffiti (3.75k) -
- File 029: Highways (4.0k) -
- File 030: Hookers (2.5k) -
- File 031: Hotels (4.0k) -
- File 032: Homes (8.0k) -
- File 033: Insurance Companies (4.0k) -
- File 034: IRS (3.5k) -
- File 035: Thomas Jefferson (1.75k) -
- File 036: Joggers (4.0k) -
- File 037: Laundromats (2.5k) -
- File 038: Lawns (4.75k) -
- File 039: Lawyers (4.0k) -
- File 040: License Plates (1.75k) -
- File 041: Ma Bell (8.0k) -
- File 042: Mail (5.25k) -
- File 043: Mail Drops (2.25k) -
- File 044: Marriage (4.25k) -
- File 045: Media (7.0k) -
- File 046: Medical (6.25k) -
- File 047: Military (7.5k) -
- File 048: Motion Pictures (3.5k) -
- File 049: Municipal Services (5.75k) -
- File 050: Neighbourhoods (2.75k) -
- File 051: Nixon, Richard M. (1.75k) -
- File 052: Notary Seal (2.5k) -
- File 053: Oil Companies (10.25k) -
- File 054: Party Time (4.25k) -
- File 055: Pen Pals (2.5k) -
- File 056: Personal (9.0k) -
- File 057: Photography (3.0k) -
- File 058: Politics (8.0k) -
- File 059: Pornography (2.5k) -
- File 060: Postal Service (3.5k) -
- File 061: The Power Cartel (4.25k) -
- File 062: Printers (2.5k) -
- File 063: Railroads (1.75k) -
- File 064: Rats (1.75k) -
- File 065: Religion (4.0k) -
- File 066: Restaurants (5.25k) -
- File 067: Rubber Stamps (1.75k) -
- File 068: Sleepy Time (2.5k) -
- File 069: Security (2.25k) -
- File 070: Slingshots (2.75k) -
- File 071: Stickers (3.25k) -
- File 072: Supermarkets (4.75k) -
- File 073: Swimming Pools (4.0k) -
- File 074: Teachers (5.5k) -
- File 075: Telephones (6.0k)
- File 076: Theft (4.5k) -
- File 077: Toilets (4.25k) -
- File 078: La Turista (1.75k) -
- File 079: VIP (2.5k) -
- File 080: Water Wells (2.75k) -
- File 081: Wills (1.75k) -
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