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