Mayhem - Violence As Public Entertainment (George Haydule)
Mayhem - Violence As Public Entertainment (George Haydule)
Mayhem - Violence As Public Entertainment (George Haydule)
In my last book, I made editorial hamburger out of a rude jock named Dave Kingman.
This time I wish to pay honored homage to another retired baseball star, a clever young
chap named Jay Johnstone. An excellent ball player with a great sense of humor and
reality, Johnstone is a natural Hayduker. Many of his escapades are related in his book
Temporary Insanity, a highly recommended read.
Johnstone makes a good point about two rules of Hayduking: revenge is a stew best
served cold, and you don't wait around to get blamed for something you've just done.
Johnstone writes:
It was another triumph. By that time I was at the far end of the clubhouse, busy
doing something else. Most guys want to be there to gloat....Not me....I won't
even be in the neighborhood. It's always better when someone else gets blamed.
My mother, talk show hosts, and other worrying do-gooders are always asking me why I
tell people ways to get revenge on their tormentors and other bullies. Besides being a
bullybuster, my calling in life, I also feel my books and ideas help relieve stress in our
mean-spirited world.
In the Hayduke lexicon, stress is the confusion created when your mind overrides your
own self's basic desire to choke the living shit out of some asshole who desperately needs
it. There is little sense in meeking it through until Earth-inheritance day. Or consider that
if you make yourself into a sheep, you will soon meet a very hungry fox, which is an old
Russian proverb as applicable today here in the land of the Great Satan as it was then in
the land of the Imperial Queen.
We Americans say "Don't make waves," while our Sicilian friends use the old homily
"Do not disturb the cattle," meaning about the same thing: Do not bother the cattle and
they will provide you with rich, sweet cream and calm, tender beef. You may consider
this a literal analogy for our collective, dumped-upon public. Do you like being bullied
and shat upon? I don't and neither should you.
You have to stand up to these bullies and bust their chops. I don't mean that literally, as I
prefer the more subtle approaches that bend minds rather than bodies; in the long term,
that is much more effective. Of course, if you can do both, well, I, ahh, cough, cough...
This philosophy is a great deal like public opinion, and public opinion is like an elephant.
If you prod it correctly, it will go where you wish, but until you are its master there is
nothing much else that is powerful enough to stop it. So it is when dealing with bullies.
You can't be a wimp about this, someone who wouldn't go pop if he or she had a
mouthful of firecrackers. Of course, in civilized times, a gentlemanly or ladylike
understanding is fiine, but I sometimes feel it is better to carry a large caliber pistol.
It all comes down to that one story told to the guys at the gun shop by the mighty hunter
of people, games, toys, and fun times, my good pal, the nicely retired Donald C. Steffay,
Gny. Sgt., USMC.
"One day when the Corps had me serving in Vietnam," the genial giant told his
spellbound audience, "a tiger and a bull got into a terrible fight. After a tremendous
struggle, the tiger killed the bull, then proceeded to eat the carcass.
"Filled and pleased with himself, this tiger threw back his head and let out a mighty roar.
This mar attracted the attention of one of our kids on sentry, who promptly spotted the
tiger and shot him dead on the spot.
"The moral of this story, guys, is when you are full of bull it's best to keep your mouth
shut."
As yet another old vet stretching the seams of middleaged girth, I can vouch for Gunny
Steffey's advice. After all, you can only do so much--when the Titanic is sinking, it does
little good to start bailing with a shot glass.
One of the best pieces of advice I offer new Haydukers is not to brag about what you're
going to do or have done. Do your business without any fanfare. You want to be like that
fellow who's wearing the blue wool suit and can't make it to the bathroom in time, so he
pisses in his pants. He has this warm feeling, but nobody else knows what's going on.
Learn to love anonymity.
Anonymity is such a wimp-word, of course. I much prefer the simple advice given by
Andrew McGeary as he surveyed the site of the Roark's Drift battle of Zulu War fame
with his father and uncles. Young Andrew said, "When we McGearys go on safari, the
lions roll up their windows."
Animals usually have their shit together far better than we humans. After all, when the
hungry owl drops in on the annual Mouse Day picnic, he has much more in mind than
entering the sack race. As in all nature, there are anomalies...and I used to be one.
Freddie Sykes, my true identity in another life, once said that to truly get even with
people for something hurtful they'd done to you, all you had to do was to "tear, then pull
the scab off their foot slowly, very slowly, just beyond the point of where it stings." Old
Freddie was talking figuratively, of course.
Yet as you begin your chortlingly personal journey through this book, I offer my own
final thoughts on the matter. Armed with the information in Mayhem!, you can be sure
your marks and markesses would rather run through a gauntlet of pit bulls wearing pork
chop underwear than hassle you or me.
George Hayduke
La Matanza, Nicaragua
A SPECIAL REQUEST
I get a lot of mail, all of which I answer myself. Most of the mail is fun, some of it is
bonkers, while some of it comes from people with the personality of stale vomit. I try to
respond to everyone who writes. But, if you don't include some valid return address, even
if it's a mail drop, I can't write back to you. Some great folks write to me with great ideas
or with sincere questions, but they don't let me know where I am to send a response.
If you write to me and want me to respond personally, please give me a return address.
Fair enough?
SOME PHILOSOPHIC ADVICE
I'm a bullybuster, here to help you exact revenge upon the pencil necks, jerks, geeks,
institutions, corporations, bureaucrats, and other assorted assholes with black hearts or
Styrofoam pellets for brains. I always practice the traditional Golden Rule, but sometimes
have to substitute the Hayduke Rule: "Do unto others before they get unto you." I also
recall some advice George B. Shaw gave someone. A classic curmudgeon, Shaw was
always giving someone advice. He wrote, "Do not do unto others as you would that they
should unto you. Their tastes may not be the same."
I recall back in high school when Dot Harpster had us read Shaw, I knew right then and
there that here was a man I could admire. And I do.
GENERAL ADVICE
Throughout this book I make universal reference to the "mark," which is a street label
hung on the victim, male or female, of a scam or con or act of vengeance. In our case, the
mark is a bully--anyone or anything--who has done something unpleasant, foul, or
unforgivable to you, your family, your property, or your Mends. Never think of a mark as
the victim of dirty tricks. Think of the mark as a very deserving bully, a target of your
revenge.
Before you study any of the specific sections of this book, read these next few vital
paragraphs. They tell you how to prepare before going into action.
1. Prepare a plan.
Plan all details before you take action at all. Don't even ad-lib something from this book
without a plan of exactly what you're going to do and how. If your campaign involves a
series of actions, make a chronological chart (don't forget to destroy it when you're
through), and then coordinate your efforts. Make a list of possible problems. Plan what
you'll do if you get caught--depending upon who catches you. You must have every
option, contingency, action, reaction, and evaluation planned in advance. Remember,
time is usually on the side of the trickster. As Winston Churchill--who is one of my
favorite heroes for many, many reasons--once said, "A lie gets halfway around the world
before the truth even puts on its boots." Or, as that old Sicilian homily goes, "Revenge is
a dish best served cold," which means don't strike while your ire is hot. Wait. Plan.
Think. Learn.
2. Gather intelligence.
Do what a real intelligence operative would do and compile a file on your mark. How
detailed and thorough you are depends upon your plans for the mark. For a simple get-
even number, you obviously need less inside infon-nation Ow if you're planning an
involved, time-release campaign. Before you start spying, make a written list of all the
important things you need to know about the target--be it a person, company, or
institution.
Thanks to my Apostle of Revenge, Dick Smegma, I humbly present for your perusal,
belief, and adherence, the Eleven Commandments of Revenge. Stay faithful and you'll
enjoy a lot of yucks, without suffering the heartbreak of being caught.
2. Thou shalt never use thy own telephone for revenge business!
Always use a public telephone or that of an unwitting mark so calls cannot be traced back
to you or to someone who knows you.
3. Thou shalt not touch revenge documents with thy bare hands!
Bare hands leave fingerprints! Wear gloves.
9. Thou shalt trade with merchants who have never heard of you!
Do business with people only once when involved in a revenge plot. You can wear a
disguise so the people you are involved with will have trouble identifying you in a legal
confrontation.
I have arranged these subjects both by method and mark, listing them alphabetically. In
addition to using the obvious subject headings, you can also do a cr-oss-reference of your
own. Or you can adapt a method listed for one mark for another mark or situation. Thus,
these subjects become as versatile as your own imagination.
While this mix 'n match versatility is a standard item here, the personalized nasty touch is
still the best. Another effective part of this business is the anticipation of further damage
after your initial attack. This is grand psychological warfare.
CAUTION
The schemes, tricks, scams, stunts, cons, and scenarios presented here are for information
and amusement purposes only. It is not my intent that you use this book as a manual or
trickster's cookbook. I certainly don't expect that anyone who reads this book would
actually ever do any of the things described here.
This book is written to entertain and inform readers, not to instruct or persuade them to
commit any illegal act. Given my own mild disposition, I could hardly tell someone else
to make any of these tactics operational.
Consider the case of mistaken vengeance that took place in Vienna, Austria, in 1985,
when Leopold Renner thought his wife was cheating on him because he saw her holding
hands with another man. The shocked husband stuffed twenty-seven of her live, exotic
pets--one after another--into the churning garbage disposal. Down went screaming
parakeets, hamsters, mice, and tarsiers into a gushy gruel feeding into the sewage drains.
Fact: His wife Frieda was holding the hand of her brother, whom she had not seen in a
dozen years, and was bringing him home to meet her husband. True story.
Please read this book with that reference in mind. And remember--many lawyers are a
great deal like rats and weasels, sniffing and crawling around, looking for sneaky
passageways and tunnels through the soil of civilization's laws. But, as with rats and
weasels, we humans can sometimes make use of these lawyers.
ACID
Relax flower parents (née flower children of the Sixties), I'm not doing blotter acid here.
It's nitric acid that's on our agenda and, thank to The Razor, also on your mark's clothing.
The usual low-intensity revengefare is not The Razoes style. He doesn't go for low-risk,
low-cost stunts like dye and bleach; he wants to eat whole holes in the mark's ego
covering. Hence, nitric acid.
"You get eight to twelve ounces of it from a chemical supply house," The Razor relates.
"Test it first on some old rags so you can get an idea of dose and fire rates. Use an
eyedropper for your delivery system.
"After you've saturated a spot or two on your test rags, let them sit for an hour or so.
Check them. This will give you a true appreciation for just how valuable a weapon nitric
acid is to your efforts.
"In the field on an actual search-and-destroy mission, you'll know just how much acid to
squirt surreptitiously on your mark's clothing. It will eat away all of the fabric."
The Razor says you can use larger doses of nitric acid on heater or air conditioning vents,
which will really stink out your mark's home or office. He also told me how he dosed the
office snoop 'n gossip who had several paybacks coming from a lot of people.
"I dampened the seat of her office chair with the acid a few moments before she was due
in. She flopped her fat ass down on that chair and never noticed the dampness. A short
while later the lady got up to move to another office and her skirt just sort of fell apart, as
did the back of her underwear. She screamed and ran into the bathroom."
Eventually she was able to get a co-worker to fetch replacement clothing. The Razor
reports that this woman has been much more civil to co-workers since "the incident."
Grizzled suggests that you can sometimes play Switcheroo with acids. For example, he
says, "It is so pleasant and convenient that carmakers place the battery and the radiator so
close together. That way it's very easy for you to play Switcheroo with your mark's car
fluids."
What Grizzled suggests is to put battery acid in the radiator and undiluted antifreeze
solution in the battery.
AGE
Jimmy Carter discovered age as a weapon of revenge. He worked with a truly nasty
woman whom Jimmy called a mean bitch. I guess that means she is a female of a dog, or,
perhaps, vice versa. Anyway, Jimmy dreamed of getting back at this genderized bully.
Ten he found out that she was very sensitive about her age and that she was passing into
the big 30 that week.
"Naturally, I paid cash for everything but set up all the plans and reservations in the
secondary mark's name," Jimmy told me. "I had Mr. Balloon deliver thirty of their most
gaudy-awful Mylar balloons right to the office. He was followed by Mr. Party with a
gross-looking cake with thirty candles. Telegrams followed, bogus, of course, from the
mayor, the governor, and the President."
Jimmy added that variations could have included inflated and personalized condoms
instead of balloons, or hiring several all-the-way strippers. As an after-action report,
Jimmy notes that the lady in his office had a change of attitude after the birthday party.
AIRLINES
As this book is being written, it's hard to pick who is less popular: Iran, Hitler, or the U.S.
airlines. For the moment, let's share this little plan to make the skies seem a bit more
friendly. At least at first glance.
Everyone knows how the nice airlines have copies of current periodicals available for
passengers. Current copies of Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, and others
are placed inside stiff-bound plastic or board covers and made available to passengers.
Here comes the hook. You want to get back at an airline for something they did or didn't
do to or for you. Before boarding the plane, stop at an adult book shop and buy three or
four truly sleazy, gross magazines...stuff with titles like Pederast's Delight In The
Playground or Tammy Does Farm Animals...you get the picture.
Sneak these smutty mags onto the aircraft in your canyon and then replace the as-issued
magazines with them. Sit back and watch some horrified passenger discover what has
happened. Maybe you could also stick a label on the cover that says "This wonderful
magazine donated courtesy of [blank] " and name your least favorite politician, actor,
televangelist, or whoever.
Here's another trick. If you call and sound hysterical enough, you can claim an ongoing
personal emergency to cancel airline reservations for your mark. My Honduran friend
Papel Higienico adds that you can also accomplish the same thing by calling and
claiming to be a police officer, an EMT person, doctor, etc. The secret here is to sound
authoritative--use jargon, ID yourself by a number as well as name, etc. You can also use
a set-up number for them to call back to verify the claim...easily enough done.
Papel has also used the telephone to switch airlines and/or flights for his mark. He carries
a small, hand-held set to the airport and plugs it into an empty jack at a check-in counter.
"I wear a fake ID badge and stand there with my clipboard," Papel relates. "I call another
airline or even the one I am using and switch the mark's reservations all around. I travel
enough that I know the procedures, the jargons, and the codes. It's easy and the mark will
always blame the airline."
ANSWERING MACHINES
I don't know why people dislike these useful devices so much. Maybe it's some kind of
personal insecurity. You can have fun with them, as good friend Russell Straley points
out. The best part about Russell's plan is that you can customize your stunt for almost any
situation or caller. Furthermore, his plan is on the other side of the telephone, the callee
getting back at the caller.
Russell explains, "You simply pretend to be your own answering machine. You answer
the phone in a mechanical way, maybe with a little electronic hum in the background--a
turned-down radio will do that.
"Sometimes people leave messages, sometimes not. You can respond however you wish
to the message. Think about that! Blow people's minds, images, tempers. Refuse to
become human. Be a thinking answering machine. I've done it. It freaks people."
ATOMIC LIGHT BULB
The Magic Z says this is the stunt you pull only on your worst enemy. He says it is
devastating. The idea is to booby-trap your mark's electric light--office, bedroom,
kitchen, bathroom, whatever. Here are Magic's steps.
When the mark turns that light on, it will take about five or ten minutes to activate. The
filament will grow hot enough to ignite the gasoline, which is held in by the wax. The
explosion will blow the hell out of everything connected with that system.
The Magic Z warns, "Use extreme caution."
One of Stu's more juvenile pals decided it would be funny to try frying an egg on the roof
of Stu's ride while our hero had his vehicle parked at work for the day. It was in the low
nineties outside and the semi-cooked egg made a nasty mess on the car's finish.
"My response was simple, direct, and appropriate," Stu says. "I found this jerk's own car
and had a nice helping of revenge. I took a raw egg, broke the shell gently, and let the
insides slide equally gently into his car's gas tank."
Stu reveals that eventually the egg will get sucked into the fuel line and stop the engine.
When the engine and pump shut down, the egg will probably float back out, ready for a
repeat performance. Stu adds that this is a very difficult problem for the mark to discover.
Another culinary contribution to home auto care is this devious idea from Capt. Video,
who has teamed with Aunt Jemima (or the maker of any instant pancake mix) to help you
take revenge against your mark's motor vehicle. Always fastidious, Capt. Video says to
be certain you prepare the pancake mixture properly, according to the instructions on the
box.
"Then you pour that mixture on the engine block of your mark's vehicle, preferably while
the block is hot. Have you any idea at all what that will stink like? You don't want to
know," advises our video visionary.
That's neat--your mark can cook pancakes as he drives to work, school, or wherever.
Jim Simmons found that it was very easy to redirect the windshield-cleaner-fluid nozzle
away from the intended direction and, instead, aim it toward the sidewalk, thus hitting
pedestrians.
"I had a good pump, a stronger than normal pump on there, and was able to hit people
fifteen to twenty feet away easily. I used that a lot when I was riding through places in
town where people yelled at me or kids threw things or gave me the finger. It was neat"
Rather than spray marks, Grizzled found another use for the windshield system of his
mark's car. He modifies the wipers slightly. His modification is to coat the wiper blade
with one of the miracle-type super glues and some sand. He said that the rubber cement
used to patch tires and some sandpaper grit will work fine, also.
Revengeful Chris has discovered the fun of locking gas caps. She says it works best when
you know your mark is planning on driving for a long vacation or business trip. The
inconvenience and delay for someone who's done her a real wrong are wonderful to think
about.
"I really dig throwing away those keys and thinking about all the fury and frustration my
mark is suffering," Chris says.
That is not unlike the work of Samurai Cat and Grid Warrior, who have found several
things you can do to your mark's vehicle. One is to replace the radiator fluid with motor
oil, which will cause a smelly mess. Then again, I recall my pal Dick Smegma telling me
about substituting gasoline for radiator fluid...but, I digress. Samurai Cat and Grid
Warrior have another scheme, this time for rear-wheel drive cars. It's a simple
modification to the standard equipment power train.
The Cat says, "Remove three of the four bolts on the connection between the drive shaft
and the rear axle. When the vehicle builds any torque, boom, the bolt will snap causing
nasty things to happen to the vehicle."
For those of you with visions of your mark's car careening off the road, please reread the
disclaimer in the beginning of the book.
By golly, it's Ray Heffer back again, this time with some snappy quickies for your mark's
automobile. Here's Ray...
Dump a handful of shredded cheese into the gas tank of the mark's car. Guess
what happens next?
Want to slash tires without attracting attention? Do the Heffer version of Rosa
Klebb.
Wrap several heavy-duty rubber bands around the toe end of your shoe. Insert a
very sharp knife blade under the sole side. You can use electrical tape to secure
the blade even more. Walk up to the tire and kick hell, and the air, out of it.
Brown sugar gums up an engine far worse than refined white sugar.
If you need to get into a locked car or truck and don't have the necessary tools, The
Blackmail Kid has a suggestion. He says, "On a lot of vehicles from 1986 back, door
locks are easy. Locate the area about two or three inches directly under the door lock.
Give this area a really solid and very good punch.
"I'm talking solid shot. You need to almost dent the metal. At the same time you'll open
the door lock."
BALLOONS
Children are usually such innocent by-products. A balloon has always been a favorite
play toy for a child, even for those of us who are growing down. Thus, the following
stunt is dedicated to its early practitioners: Chris, Uncle David, The Good Colonel, Lyle
& Tector, Brother George, Uncle Gerry, and Rusty.
Take a child's small balloon of that sort we knew as "penny balloons." Stretch it loose so
it will inflate easily. Clear one nostril vigorously, at least for beginners.
Now stuff the open end of the balloon into that nostril, shut your other nostril very tightly
with your finger, then blow your nose hard. If you've done it properly, the balloon will
inflate quite easily.
Your imagination will let you modify and grossify this stunt so as to tailor its impact for a
specific audience; i.e., you might not wish to clean your inflation nostril before blowing
up the balloon, thus adding solid materials to its interior.
A scholar as well as a tactical instructor, I was determined to learn the genesis of this
stunt. As nearly as I could tell from research, it was first done by a seven-year-old boy as
a Stupid Human Trick on "The David Letterman Show."
BANKS
With some wrong done to him lying on his mind, Rusty McBenge found a delightful way
to deposit some grief with interest upon his mark. Of course, you have to practice some
sleight of hand before you slight the mark's no-account mind. Let's let Rusty tell the how
of things.
"If your mark has an account in a bank that issues preprinted personal deposit slips,
obtain a supply of them. I'll leave the how of that detail up to your imagination...it's not
all that tough.
"These slips are imprinted with that magnetic-coded numbering system that automatically
credits the mark's account with each deposit filed. Your next step is easy. Just scatter a
few of these slips in with the regular deposit slips in the bank lobby before peak business
periods. Or you can have some friends fill in a few and deposit them.
"It will not take bank authorities long to find out that something has gone drastically
wrong as soon as the first few complaints come in from irate customers whose deposits
never showed up in their own accounts. The bank computer will quickly locate the mark's
account."
At this point, I suspect, Rusty's mark will start to feel that world of federal-interest-in-
him dung closing over his head. It also might teach that mark a valuable lesson about
fiscal fitness.
BEER
Beer belongs, abuse it. There are so many nice things I could say about beer as my
favorite drink of immoderation, often chased by shots of tequila. That's the way it was
one night down on the Maricon River, somewhere near the village of Culo Salchichon.
LTC Mac, Col. Mills, Lester Scrotum, old Mr. Graham, and I had gotten there from
Nogales the day before and were busy murdering our brain cells with myriad flagons of
drinkypoo when Scrotum brought up the Great Corona Coup of 1987.
Corona is this great Mexican beer. Indeed, almost all Mexican beers are far Superior (yes,
a pun) to American brands because they are real and not manufactured for some half-
assed bland national taste. Anyway, someone, a business competitor or some teetotaling
American (there are few Latino nondrinkers--most of them nuns), spread a very effective
rumor that Corona was a pissy-flavored beer, literally.
Not true. I know because I donated a lot of time and a lot of my liver to checking out the
rumor that year. As it comes from the brewery in Mexico City, Corona is great, grand
beer.
There are, however, some lessons to be learned here: one, rumors are usefully harmful, as
Corona learned when their sales dropped off a whole lot before a public
relations/advertising blitz cured their reputation; two, you can probably start rumors, also;
three, maybe you know someone whose beer does need to be used as a urinal in payment
for something done to you.
That serves well enough as an introduction to Madman Mike, a friend who spends time
visiting our foreign neighbors as part of his career. Mike says that as hosts and friendlies,
the French rank right alongside herpes. Unlike AIDS, nobody ever died from herpes, but
who'd want to go back? The same may be said of France, according to Mike, a
cosmopolitan sort who is multilingual.
"My fiancée had asked a French restaurant owner if several ladies who were on their way
with us to visit Lourdes could use his bathroom, which was locked. He practically spat at
her and said 'NO, you have not bought enough here. It is only for good French customers,
not stupid American tourists."
Mike adds that his fiancée had been speaking to the man in English but he responded in
French with his blast about Americans. Mike spat back in French and said that he would
handle the matter his own way. His group left and continued their trip to Lourdes.
"On the way back we stopped and I went in that same place. The man didn't recognize me
and I simply grunted and pointed at a beer. He served it and wandered away. It was dark
in there that evening and as customers wandered away I quickly grabbed their glasses off
the bar and surreptitiously urinated in each glass and replaced it on the bar. I left."
BIKERS
I hang out with some grand bikers. I also try to avoid the ones who strut around all cocky,
like an armed guard in a prison camp for blind quadriplegics. So does The Devil's
Advocate, who writes with some suggestions for these preening parasites.
Start the rumor that your biker-mark is a machine thief. This will poison his
reputation very quickly.
Help the rumor along by either getting some stolen parts or steal some yourself to
plant on his property, home, whatever.
Easily, though, our hats and helmets are off to The Hat for a stunt he orchestrated some
years ago to help out a crippled pal who was being terrorized by a strong-arm druggie. It
started with the druggie dealing from the cripple's place of business. Being they were
both bikers, the cripple pleaded with the big bad guy to stop dealing and to leave. The
muscle responded by punching the smaller, crippled man and sexually going after his
wife.
The law was called and the bad guy got forty-five days. Everyone figured it was all over.
Two days after his release, however, the bad guy shows up and empties a pistol into the
crippled brother's shop, nearly striking people inside.
"Some of the others wanted to waste him, but I had another idea," recalled The Hat. "So
we set him up. Got the wife of one of our brothers to set him up in a bar. We drugged him
with Seconal, then we got nasty."
They stripped the mark and placed him in a large, wooden packing crate, securing his
arms, hands, and legs with surgical tape. They then put a plastic hose into his mouth,
using tape to hold it in place. The other end was put into a gallon plastic jug of water
which they'd spiked with LSD and amphetamines.
"One of our guys was a ringer for this jerk, so we had him dress in the mark's clothes and
made sure he was seen around some of the other bars that day. Then we all took the crate
to a motor freight place and had the mark look-alike send it, containing the still-sleeping
real mark, away," The Hat said.
The Hat says nobody ever heard of or from the mark ever again and they have no idea
what became of him. He is also not aware of any legal problems, statute of limitations, or
anything else, so he is being very vague about locales. I understand.
Isn't that a wonderfully warm story of justice overcoming evil? Notice that nobody
needed lawyers, bullycoppers, or anything else to make it work? Ain't true democracy
grand?
BLACK OLIVES
According to Dick Smegma, head of the Hayduke Institute's R&D lab, black olives do
not disintegrate, digest, or change their original shape when they are ingested whole. If
you swallow them whole without mushing them, black olives will come out your pukki in
the same shape as they went in your mouth.
I'm certain you already know what Mr. Smegma and I are thinking. However, being a
practical scientist, he has some workable uses all ready for consumer disclosure. For
example, your recycled olives could be used at an unfavorite salad bar, a mark's home
salad bar, a gift pizza to someone, or even placed in random fashion in a resealable jar
and given to someone.
Mr. Smegma also suggests you could experiment with other foods to learn more about
this interesting natural phenomenon. Corn is one that I know about. Isn't this fun, boys
and girls?
BOMB
Isn't that a wonderful word? It's so descriptive and so fun-laden in all its glory and
meaning. Actually, this suggestion, coming from chemists Rob M. and Bryan S., has the
full formal name of The Hindenburg Bomb, and here's how it works.
Fill a Coke bottle three-quarters full of Liquid Plumber and add a small piece of
aluminum foil to it. Put a balloon over the neck of the bottle and let the resultant gas rise
into the balloon.
Insert a long length of cannon fuse under the end of the balloon, being careful not to let
much hydrogen escape. Then light the length of fuse.
At this point, the guys say to run like hell 'til you drop because these babies really
explode. Hence their full, formal name. We can think of lots of ways to use The
Hindenburg Bomb other than just for personal explosion amusement.
Perhaps less violent, but then, perhaps not (ahhh, such is the nature of that lovely word
bomb), is the handiwork of Capt. Video. Actually, I've known about this one for years,
having had family close to the Kentucky, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania mining scenes
in the thirties and forties. But, speaking of eyesores, I have digressed.
The Captain says to add about a quarter pound of carbide to a large plastic bag. Add a
long fuse. Then add a half gallon of water before you seal the bag very thoroughly and
quickly. If you have sealed the mixture properly, a great deal of explosive gas will be
created. The resultant explosion is not only very loud, it can be quite destructive.
Back in the old days, folks close to the mines used to go fishing with this type of rig. It
was much quicker than lines and bait, being more adaptable to feeding families than sport
ego. It was a forerunner to the military custom of grenade fishing. Now, that reminds me
of the time...
Meanwhile, back in the present, Capt. Video suggests "Bull's-eye Smokeless Pistol
Powder" as a wonderful product for people interested in demolitions or other pyrotechnic
games. I concur with the Captain, but be aware that this is also nasty stuff if handled
improperly. Used properly, however, it makes a splendid filler to load up Ping-Pong
balls, paper tubes, toilet paper cores, or whatever.
This stuff is pretty vigorous when it goes off, so stay away from it and don't use it to turn
your mark's charcoal grill or trash incinerator into a backyard bomb. Also, watch how
you store it and read the label cautions carefully. It is available in many gun shops.
BOOKS
Levine, Michael. The New Address Book. New York: Putnam Publishing Group, 1988.
A must reference for Haydukers, this book contains contact addresses for celebrities,
political figures, corporate execs, and public company execs. It has phone numbers too.
It's wonderful.
Rapp, Burt. Shadowing & Surveillance. Port Townsend, WA: Loompanics Press, 1986.
All good Haydukers need to know these techniques, as well as how to use them to avoid
being the subject of someone else's research.
My friend Terri Lee used to work for a really mean bear of a boss who was a real grouch
and a bastard for docking people if they were a few moments late for work. Terri and her
pal Cissy plotted and planned for ways of correcting the boss's nasty preoccupation with
time.
"One of the things we did was to drop toothpicks, paper clips, and folded Scotch tape
down into the card slot when nobody was looking," Terri told me.
She said it messed up the machine and forced the boss to come around and ask people
when they came in so he could write in the time-check information by hand while the
time clock was being repaired.
"When it was back in service we waited two days, then dropped a condom wrapper in the
slot. This time the boss called a meeting and asked who had the problem with the time
clock. Finally, he admitted he'd been overdoing it and promised he'd cool it if wed stop
messing with the clock. That was that."
Terri had another boss during one of her other lives, a true racist redneck. She told me,
"The man hated black people for no reason, sense, brains, or passion. He was
colorstricken, brainblind. He was also a pig who hit on women and used his power to
unfair, slimeball advantage.
"The guy had no class and no real power. That insecurity is why he was such a prick to
all the little people who worked for him. I mean, this is a guy with his name on his office
door, but he didn't flush the company toilet without checking upstairs," Terri told me, as
she explained how she nailed him.
"He had to drive through a predominantly black section of the city to get to work and I
knew I could use that. I went to a custom printer of bumper stickers and got three done
that said HONK FOR HONKIE POWER, I [heart] KKK, and BURN BLACKS. I put all
three on his car. Some real fun started, including a brick through the back window, paint
on the side, and eggs all over it. He was livid and called the police."
Terri said that when the detective team came to investigate, one was a black officer. He
saw the bumper stickers and pointed them out to the boss, who was furiously
flabbergasted. The investigators seemed to be amused. Terri was amused.
So am I.
BRATS
Childhood is too much fan to be wasted on children. Nonetheless, they are upon us,
sometimes like the locusts which used to plague our much earlier ancestors. Bryan Fear
used to babysit for family and neighbors. Sometimes he was stuck with awful brats who
figured because he was family or a neighbor friend, he could be bullied and otherwise
abused. These kids didn't count on Bryan's brutal mind.
"One nasty kid burned two of my expensive textbooks simply by tossing them into the
fireplace. Some kids are neat and nice. I seemed to get the other kind," Bryan said.
One of these kids, a perfect argument for retroactive abortion rights, finally goaded Bryan
to action.
"I finally convinced the little asshole to go to bed. While he was in the bathroom I
brought a pan of cold water filled with ice cubes into his bedroom. The pan and I hid
under his bed. I submerged my hand in the pan, holding it there until he arrived and
began to crawl into his bed.
"I reached up and snatched tight on his ankle and began to pull him off the bed and
toward me, all the while moaning. My hand was so cold that I could barely feel it. I know
that he did, though.
"The kid let out a pants-wetting scream and tore away from my grip. He ran from the
room, screaming for me. I let him rip all over the house, terrified, screaming for help. I
calmly returned the pan to the kitchen and sat quietly in the den as I heard him running all
over the house, top to bottom, screaming for me. He finally came into the den, crying and
shaking."
The kid demanded that Bryan check for monsters under the bed. Of course, there were
none. At this point, Bryan used blackmail psychology to insure that the kid would
behave. Otherwise, he wouldn't check for monsters and monsters might return. Bryan told
the parents about the child's nightmare.
I would imagine this would work well with multiple children, too. You can always spread
the terror evenly and while one is running around seeking help, you can grab others.
Happily, Bryan Fear lives up to his name.
BUREAUCRATS
If you're looking here for instant revenge, what you're going to get instead is a caution.
Be very careful of irritating the little cogs in a bureaucracy, especially if these people are
in charge of records, computers, or other weapons that can be turned on you. Think about
it! Also, it is often systems and the bosses who dictate them that cause your problems; it's
not always the little person with whom you might deal personally.
As Madman Mike, a military vet, points out, "Be careful when you abuse a clerk.
Sometimes, what I call 'The Deadly Triangle' gets after you."
Mike says, "Let's say you cross a billeting clerk. Your shot record might get lost in
medical and you might come up short at payroll...all due to 'computer error,' of course."
On the positive side, if you know a way into the web of The Deadly Triangle at your
mark's nearest bureaucracy, perhaps a loudly voiced complaint, report, or nasty comment
on your mark's behalf and in his or her name would be helpful. But be careful. While
many bureaucrats are losers with the unctuous whine of overused bacon fat on low heat,
they can still be dangerous, as can a cornered rat or jackal.
CABBAGE PATCH MANNEQUINS
Building these custom friends can be creatively ugly, but enjoyable. According to Carla
Savage, the brains behind this idea, their use can be even more so. First, Carla says you
have to personally try this to appreciate how realistic the effect is.
"It's really easy, too:' Carla explains. "You just stuff nylon stockings with cotton. Use two
pairs for arms and legs, then add more for whatever body parts you wish."
Carla adds that you don't have to be an artist to create the human contours and features
desired for that perfect effect. You are limited only by your own imagination and the
number of stockings and amount of cotton you have. Carla says not to forget clothes,
paints, Magic Marker, and other human like disguise.
What can you do with these life-sized, if not lifelike, new friends? Here are some
thoughts from Carla:
Impressing the neighbors...how will your new friends look on creative display on
the mark's lawn? Do the words "Kama Sutra" come to mind?
Do you remember those posters and calendars with the zoiac sexual positions?
This would be an interesting variation on The Twelve Days of Christmas.
Or perhaps you could use your cotton-stocking friends to adorn park statues.
Some creative sexual positioning ideas jump to mind right away.
You could also produce an anatomically erect penis using the same basic products. Could
this be shipped or delivered to a mark or markess, with devastating effect?
Good friend Carla has field-tested this idea in several configurations and loves it. She
gives this her personal Good Hayduking Seal of Approval. I trust this wonderful lady's
judgment about everything. Need we add more?
CABLE TV
Hilda Rexer had a neighbor whose cable TV reception ruined her on-air reception due to
some oddball electronics nonsense. Rather than work out some friendly sort of
neighborly arrangement or compromise, Hilda's neighbor ignored the protest and
situation. Hilda used the telephone and the local cable company to get even.
"I called the cable company and used my neighbor's name to cancel her pay-channel
selections. I substituted an adult channel for one of the canceled ones, explaining I was
doing it as a gift for my husband," Hilda told me.
The matter was finally straightened out. Hilda said it took five weeks, including some
grim calls from the nasty neighbor, before the lady agreed to be nice. Hilda waited four
more weeks of nice, then zapped the other lady's cable outlet with an electromagnet just
for fun.
CAMPERS
In a team, herd, or species concept, campers often consider themselves a family of sorts.
Sometimes other campers take advantage of the generosity that goes without asking
among true campers. Sick Sid the Avenger recalled how his group paid back one of these
take-advantage groups.
"These bozos borrowed everything with little repayment. It was almost as if they came
camping and deliberately left their gear and supplies at home," Sid recalls. "This one
group kept on borrowing stuff until they just began to take without even asking. That did
it."
The remedy was simple. As the other campers kept borrowing the bug juice for the
nightly invasion of biting crawlies and fliers, Sid replaced the bug repellent solution with
a mixture of lemon juice and sugar water.
"Ahhh," Sid recalls, "even now, in my mind I can hear the shouts of frustration, horror,
and finally anguish as those little insects helped us to even a debt."
CARPETS
I'll bet it grinds your gut when some careless slob drops a cigarette or spills a drink, chili
sauce, or the contents of his stomach on your rug. Dick Smegma discovered a nice way of
returning the favor to your messy mark. Dick says if you slowly and carefully pour liquid
bleach, with chlorine, on a carpet, it will permanently stain it a lighter color or totally
wash out the color.
Dick thinks it amusing to gain access to your mark's carpeting when he isn't there and
pour the undiluted bleach directly onto the carpet so that the discoloration spells obscene,
racial, or ethnic words and phrases. Actually, you could get creative about this, bringing
the mark's family into the messages you're writing on the rug.
CB RADIO
It's common knowledge that the state police, highway patrols, and other law enforcement
officials monitor CB channels 9 and 19 on a regular basis. Usually, the result is help or
aid in an emergency or other frightening situation.
However, it isn't abusing that help if you were to create a fictitious conversation with
another good buddy out there. Of course, if you are a good actor/actress, Mr. Poleeece
doesn't need to know it's just you doing only one side of an imaginary talk on the old CB.
Relate hilarious stories about your mark breaking speed laws, drinking and driving,
littering, showing Mr. Johnson to a group of little school girls, peeing on the parish steps,
and so on. I'm sure you can do something to get the attention of the officers.
In fact, my old pal Catzo Cignetti did just that when he got on his highly mobile CB and
started bad-mouthing the local gendarmes in the name of his mark. He pretended to be
drunk and got really abusive and personal. He started to name some troopers and relate in
some detail what he was doing to their wives and house pets while they were on duty.
"I knew this jerk of a mark, who'd been making my wife's life miserable at her job,
always got drunk during Happy Hour at a local bar. So, just before Happy Hour ended, I
did this CB attack on the police in his name. I ended up by challenging them to come
down to the bar and stand up to me as men and I'd whip their asses one by one," Catzo
told me.
We can all imagine what happened when Mr. Mark stumbled out of that bar that evening,
can't we?
If you don't want to go to all of that fun, you can simply report your mark for speeding,
drunk driving, racing, etc. You just get on the CB channel that your local road police
monitor and report your mark for breaking the law. Mention his car type and color and
maybe a partial on the license. Of course it will be investigated. It was a state police
officer who suggested this scam to me in the first place.
As noted elsewhere in this tome (see Farts), CB radios are a grand medium for sharing
your bodily function noises with the general public. According to that grand old
columnist from San Francisco, Herb Caen, other body parts interest CBers on the
California freeways. Herb writes, "We should tell people who hang those stupid yellow,
diamond-shaped signs in their cars that, according to an overheard CB conversation,
'Them damn baby-on-board signs make great aim-at targets for freeway shooters.'"
That ought to worry a lot of people. Or, as my old pal from our Mexico days, Jack
Beasley, would say, "That'll make your butt tighter than a bull's at the height of biting fly
season." You got that right, Jack.
CENSORS
Lust, or poor people's polo, has always held a fascination for me. That's also true of my
good friend Paul Wiltbuns, a former minister who found sexual overdrive so much fun
that he gave up crusading against it and began to enjoy himself. Paul found a grand way
to defeat those evil-minded censors who always want to put their "no's" into our pleasure.
"I modified an old stunt of yours, George," Paul told me over a couple of lemonades
recently. "I ordered the sleaziest porn I could find. I ordered it COD in the name of each
of the local censors who'd been loudly trying to rape the First Amendment in our town.
"But the kicker is that I used the very same address for each censor...the home address of
the preacher who ran their operation from his fundamentalist church, the First Rectalfied
Church of Reagan/Meese."
Paul says the local postal officials were both amused and annoyed. He says the preacher
got livid on his weekly radio show on the local Bible-banger station, WIMP. The town
newspaper carried a story about the incidents. Paul waited two months for the brimstone
and smoke to clear, then did it all over again.
Meanwhile, in Canada, many readers tell me that some customs and postal authorities
have banned my books, considering them to be "dangerous to the well-being of Canadian
citizens." I couldn't believe it. I called their version of the Mind Police and found that it
was true. Wow.
Dr. Deviant found a way to get back at the Canadian censors. He got various book
catalogs which contained books either officially banned or which probably soon would be
banned from that bastion of northern North American press freedom.
"Using friends and cutouts, I safely ordered a bunch of the banned books in this dude's
name and for his home address. I ordered them COD and included a faked letter on
phony 'official' letterhead stating that 'I' was a government official who wanted to review
these books.
"About a week before they were due to arrive, I called law enforcement officials,
including customs, postal, and police, to report, as a good citizen whose name will not be
used, that Czar Bookburner was trying to use his official station to obtain evil literature."
As with my friend Paul's stunt, Dr. Deviant's scam made the newspapers in his town.
According to the press stories, the closed-minded official had a lot of explaining to do. I
should hope so. Personally, I'd burn these evil censors at the stake if I were in charge.
Sadly, I'm not--not yet, anyway.
CHEMICALS
Many loyal funfolk have written for a source of the great stench producer, butyl
mercaptan. Thanks to my famed New Englander pal Squeamish we now have a source
for this comedy chemical. Order it from The Hatpin, P.O. Box 6144, Santa Fe, NM
87502. You're welcome.
Another friend, Jimmy Carter, being the good chemical expert that he is, passes along a
warning to Haydukers who are unsophisticated with chemistry. He notes that ammonia
and chlorine bleach are two useful and safe revenge products, if kept separate. Jimmy
says do not combine the two!
If you mix these two products together, they will form a deadly gas which is very similar
to one used by some elements within our own government to kill people. Be warned!!
CHILD ABUSE
If I were a true cynic, I would define child abuse as coming back to live with your parents
after you've already left the nest once. Then there is the other kind, the nasty kind. Most
states have very strong laws to punish these monsters who beat or sexually molest little
kids. Many states have child protection laws which mandate that teachers, nurses,
doctors, and other professionals report suspected child abuse situations to the law. A
version of the good Samaritan concept protects the anonymity and liability of the
informant.
Now, suppose you have a mark who is one of those folks mandated to report child abuse.
Why not have that mark report a case that is an obvious fraud or that is so suspect as to
make it ridiculous, like, for example, fingering his ex-spouse or a person incapable of
such acts. The idea is to make the mark look like a vengeful sort of jerk in the eyes of the
law. And, as any officer will tell you, they remember things like that even if they can't do
anything about it legally or at the time. That means your mark will have a mark against
him or her.
CIA
When it comes to spying on good loyal Americans, the CIA's into it right up to the tip of
its paranoid little dagger. But when it comes to sharing information with We The People,
the Agency folks do not squander the English language. They dole out useful information
about as often as Charlie Manson has kinky sex with a Barbie Doll. But they can be
useful, according to Houdini.
He had an especially annoying associate who also had a very suspicious mind. Houdini
decided to drive him across suspicious and into paranoia. Here is what Houdini did.
"With a very fine rubber stamp utilizing the CIA seal and the Langley address, I carefully
stamped it on the return portion of the front of an ordinary postal card. On the back of the
card, using an IBM typewriter from a public library near where I go to school, I typed a
terse message, addressed it, and mailed it to my mark."
The card was signed simply by a typed line: Legal Staff. Houdini warns you to be careful
of fingerprints. He says the mark's father consulted an attorney to investigate. Of course,
the CIA never admits anything, bewildered or not. I bet Houdini's mark does have a file
opened by the CIA after this stunt.
CLEANING SUPPLIES
There are times when the janitorial and cleaning supplies of a mark are not only
susceptible to revenge, they beg for it. Back when he was a student, Sick Sid the Avenger
found he got tired of doing free cleaning for the school because ft authorities had sent
him to detention hall for being a class clown.
"Hey, I didn't mind doing homework or reading, but I'll be damned if I was going to do
manual labor for the school. I complained and even mentioned liability if I were hurt on
the job. You know what the Principrick did? He gave me two more hours of detention,"
Sid says.
"When I got off detention I let things ride for a month. Then, one afternoon I got into the
janitorial supply closet with a key I had boosted earlier. I switched the paper labels
between cans of industrial aerosol cleaner with those of spray paint. I added bleach to
some of the containers of Windex. I put light oil in others. I used Drano in others.
Charcoal dust went into some of the furniture polish containers used in the Big Honcho's
offices."
As an aside, let me add that you could also exchange labels between cans of aerosol static
cling eliminator and those of spray-on dry lubricant. Your mark will never note the
difference until the clothes are put back on.
Yucko-Neato.
COMPACT DISCS
Although The Sperminator did this payback with regular records, it will also work with
CDs, especially if we're going to be technologically up to date. As usual, a major-mail
order record club badly screwed up their financial files related to The Sperminator's
account. Letters and calls did no good and he finally had to pay an attorney some money
to get the club off his back. Then he really got interested in setting the record straight.
The Sperminator found one of those "ten CDs, records or tapes for a buck" ads from his
former club. He filled it out and ordered some of the very popular current numbers likely
to be stocked by most record stores.
"I wanted the money, man, so stick with me here," our hero snarled by way of
explanation.
He used a vacant house in another neighborhood for his return address and his telephone
number was that for a rural pay phone in another county. Naturally, he used a fake name,
choosing one of his enemies as a secondary mark.
It took about three weeks for the ten records to arrive at the drop. The Sperminator picked
them up and went to the most expensive record stores in town.
"I explained that I'd gotten these records as a birthday gift and that I wanted to return
them because I didn't have a player, or that I already had them. They're sealed in plastic,
obviously new, and perhaps you've managed to swindle a sales receipt."
He says his only snag so far has been that twice the store wouldn't give back money
without a receipt, which he couldn't get. He settled for new merchandise on an exchange
basis.
COMPUTERS
A lot of people are slaves to computers, voluntarily or no, actively or no. And computers
are a lot of work, too. Once some fool was messing with The Razor's computer life,
which is like teasing Lady MacBeth after a hard day's knife (sorry if you don't like
literary puns).
The Razor starts off easy with his revenge. He suggests a total rearrangement of cable
hookups from the main terminal to the various peripheral devices, like the printer, disk
drives, monitor, etc.
"It's just harassment, but so few folks ever really check the hookups," says The Razor.
"So you rearrange things and the computer blows, won't work, or works oddly. Most
marks will head for the repair service before looking at the hookups."
On a more serious level, The Razor suggests that you hit the mark where his computer
lives--in its chips. He adds, "Chips are the elongated black objects that appear to be stuck
to the green circuitry. Chips are easily removed for normal service work. You have other
plans for them, however."
The idea is to remove the computer's cover and remove a few chips. Or place the wrong
chips in the wrong holders. Or coat them with clear nail polish. Perhaps the best thing to
do is to simply take them away and dispose of them. Replace the computer cover and let
the mark wonder what happened. The usual result is a hefty repair charge. As Thorne
Smith once wrote, "Life is just one long dirty trick."
There is also mien to Razor's mean. One of his high school teachers cast lustful attention
upon Razor's lady friend. A most unhappy situation soon erupted, causing chaos in all
directions. A heady sort, Razor headed for the teacher's computer system, the man's true
love.
"I borrowed a couple of his private work diskettes and took 'em home. I removed the
medium from one of them. That's the shiny black plastic stuff that stores data. I replaced
the medium with some very fine black sandpaper. Some thin, fast-drying glue held the
sandpaper in place in the diskette holder sandwich," Razor related.
He replaced the computer-killer floppy in the teacher's files. He also thought it might be
fun to do the same thing if the man ever crossed the line of professional behavior again.
"He didn't have time for a while. He was too busy explaining why his diskette ruined
school equipment. Not only was he trying to screw students, but he'd been using the
school's computer equipment to do his own personal work. My custom disk erased that,
and it booted him into a lot of hassle with his bosses."
Syd Fudd is a computer technician who was fired from a company because one of his co-
workers made a costly mistake. She was not fired because she was a Token from the
Minority Hiring Quota Bank and the company had many government contracts. Syd said
she was also a very pretty 39D. Sexist, for sure, but true.
In any case, as a going away present, one of Syd's angry pals wrote an Accounts
Receivable program with a built-in self-destruct "virus" into the company's records with
the time-release formula set to go off in thirty days. It worked, and the result was
seventeen days of costly chaos in which much confusion accrued and many dollars were
lost.
A survivor, Syd is doing just fine, but he still doesn't consider it a fair trade. The
company's opinion was not sought.
Doc Sarvis, a computer expert, relates that computers, laser printers, and other desktop
publishing materials make it very easy for you to create all sorts of bogus letterheads and
other printed materials. You are limited only by your imagination and/or conscience.
"For example, you could have an official medical form or letterhead inform your mark's
employer, family, school, unit, or whoever, that his or her most recent examination
showed HTLV-3 positive, an indication of exposure to AIDS. Nasty, but effective," Doc
explains.
At one point, a supposed friend stole computer programming from Bryan S. and Rob M.
They waited for a while, then set up their mark for the big payback.
"Through a cutout we let him know he could get a free copy of the latest program disk.
But before we arranged for him to get it, we modified it a bit," the guys related. "You
pour some clear nail polish remover onto some clipped off match heads. Crush the
mixture until you can't see the heads and everything is gooey."
The stunt is to then paint the substance on the disk you are giving the mark. They did it to
their mark. The payback is that when the mark boots the loaded disk, it boots his
computer drive really hard.
Enough nasty. It's time for silly fun. Thanks to the comical genius of Dale McKinnon,
president of the Modem Advisory Institute, we now have access to some wonderful
computer-generated Pranks. Mr. McKinnon's outfit sells software known as Pranks,
which is a collection of relatively harmless practical joke programs. I've used Pranks and
some of the selections are grandly hilarious. For example, there is one menu selection
called "Printer Panic." Unknown and unplanned by the mark, it causes his or her printer
to malfunction, spewing sheet after sheet of paper through the printer, like the machine
was under the control of a poltergeist.
The idea behind Pranks is that you use McKinnon's software to load your booby traps,
gimmicks, insults, and surprises into your mark's PC. You program your "pranks" to
function from the mark's normal prompt. You leave. The mark comes in, cranks up the
old PC and hits the usual prompt. Thanks to Pranks, that's when highly unusual and, to
you, amusing things happen. See the Sources section for information on getting a copy of
Pranks.
CONCERTS
Ever try to buy tickets to a big concert or other event and get burned by a scalper,
promoter, entertainer, or whomever? I bet the universal yes comes from all of us. Of
course, there is little you can do about it, except to Hayduke the guilty parties. Our own
Andy Cove decided to take this thought the extra step toward delight.
"You could involve your mark in this situation. What if you decided your mark had some
tickets available for a popular upcoming concert or sports event? Why not advertise that
for him or her?
"You don't need the big money to buy ads in regular media. Just make up cheapo Xerox-
copy ads by the dozens and stick them on telephone poles, buildings, and school bulletin
boards. Anywhere there is a school or campus this will go down great."
That is Andy's straight idea. He also has some kinks to bend in there, saying, "Suppose
you do a few direct-mail ads or personal ones to the 'right people' in which you offer front
row or backstage passes in return for perverted sex acts?"
Or, gosh, Andy, take it to the next level and put up public wall ads from your mark
offering street drugs, painkillers, and other purloined hospital narcotics, garage-made
booze, etc. We could even pimp for his sister.
I can just see Andy's next idea, where Mother Teresa undulates up on the pulpitistage of
the PTL Club, hoists up her habit, and sets her bush on fire.
CONDOMS
Wally is a helluva nice guy, one who can get great ideas to help abused women. He told
me about a friend of his who wanted to break up a go-nowhere relationship between a
kind girl and a sphincter-muscle guy. Wally's pal started to send her gifts in the muscle-
mark's name.
"I started out with a few truly tasteless things like truly cheap jewelry, telling her in mash
notes how its value reminded me of her. I heard he was really puzzled over it. She wasn't
sure she believed his denials because he wasn't all that swift and she wasn't all that cute.
"She saw him as a catch, he saw her as an easy lay."
Wally's pal decided on the quantum gift after an evening in which the muscle mark
proved how easy a lay she was and bragged to his jock buddies at the frat.
"I masturbated into a condom, sealed it shut, put a tacky thank-you card on it, and had it
delivered to her sorority. It was rough and nasty, but it finally did the trick. This so-called
shy girl, to get even with this jerk for what she thought he'd done, started the rumor on
campus that he couldn't get it up and that's why she was dropping him."
Don't you just love young romance and justice when it all comes together?
I took some heavy fire from a friend about condom misuse. It was most deserved and
right on target. Carla Savage shot me down for suggesting the old hole-in-the-condom
stunt in an earlier book. Her major objection must be published.
"While there are a few folks I wouldn't mind killing:' Carla says, "I sure as hell would
never promote or encourage the kind of mark-related pregnancy that might result from
disabling a condom.
"Geez, George, other than the laws of heredity being stacked against us as it is, it is more
than enough to have one mark loose in the world without knowingly contributing to the
creation of a junior mark or markess."
She's right and I apologize. Perhaps it would be a good idea if all male marks had to have
condoms permanently attached to their penii at birth.
As Carla once wisely told me, "Sex is such a great subject. Those who don't get off can
always get even." I love that lady!
COPS
There are those days when the bear gets you. It was a day like that when one of my police
officer pals walked into our neighborhood gun shop muttering about his partner. He said
the guy had the IQ of a throw rug, the personality of a slug, and beyond that, he just
didn't like him. One of the resident loafers at the shop had been an MP in another life and
proceeded to explain how he dealt with his incompetent partner.
"Without going into detail about how often and how messed up he was, just let me say he
was too cowardly to stand his ground and too fat to run," the ex-MP said of his former
partner. "But one night we got a report of a suspected prowler in the basement of the
NCO club.
"I let him follow me a few paces behind as we descended the stairs to the darkened
basement. I could hear him wheezing along behind me, his flashlight about as steady as
palsy. What he didn't know was that this was a set-up call, made by a pal, who had pulled
the circuit-breaker switch so we'd have to use flashlights.
"Meantime, I had moved off to the side of the main room and let him go ahead of me. He
got about thirty feet ahead in this big cavernous basement and started to whisper my
name. I ducked down behind some boxes, stuck on ear protectors, and tossed a stun
grenade simulator out toward the floor.
"He was in shock. My pal and I hustled him out of there and put him back into the Jeep.
As he was starting to come out of it, I sat there and asked if he was ready to check out the
basement--acting like we'd never been down there and had just arrived. He got all shook
up and refused to get out of the vehicle. He took off 'sick' the rest of our shift."
I broke into the monologue to relate how another police officer I knew got back at a cop
he had to be associated with at one time. Nobody wanted to ride with this slap-happy
Yahoo, so he had a solo car. My friend used to spray tear gas or Mace on the unit's radio
microphone or into the heater ducts in the winter. He and other officer put two live
chickens in the cop's locker. On his wedding anniversary date they gift wrapped a dead
cat, courtesy of the Roadkill Pet Shoppe, put in a card with his name, and had it delivered
to his ex-wife.
It's like a bull session here. A lady officer who calls herself Penelope Penophile when
we're talking for the record told me a story she heard once about a traffic control cop who
told her he got back at assholes who gave him a hard time by doing something really off
the wall.
"Nobody ever deserves a moving violation ticket, right? That's the story. So, if a driver
really jerks you around, threatens with political juice, stuff like that, this cop I knew
would giggle and hold up the guy's license. Then, he'd pop it in his mouth and eat it. No
kidding, he'd chew it up and swallow it," she told me.
The citizen would be flabbergasted. Then the cop would tell the guy he was also citing
him for driving without a license. "And he'd do it too," she added.
"The best part came at the hearing, usually when the citizen beefed about the officer's
actions. This cop, who had the sweetest face, would get on the stand and act all
professional and polite about the arrest, then calmly deny everything about eating any
license. He'd really patronize the citizen and appeal to the court's dignity as a fellow
professional, all the while lying through his teeth. He never lost a bust or a complaint on
one. I loved it."
CREDIT CARDS
People in big business make grand use of credit cards. This fact can help you get back at
a Mr. or Ms. Big who has done you a rotten turn. Your Mr. or Ms. Big Mark probably has
a secretary who screens all incoming calls to see if the caller is Important enough to talk
with the bigshot. If so, here's how the telephone conversation should go when you call.
Secretary answers phone and after you ask for Boss says, "And what is the nature of your
business with Mr./Ms. Big?"
You respond in a kind of conspiratorial tone, "It's kind of personal, but you see, I am the
cleaning lady/man over at the Rooms by the Hour Pussy Cat Motel and I found Mr./Ms.
Big's credit card by one of the whore's beds and I wanted to get it back to him."
If the secretary argues, just say you'll mail it to the Big residence.
DAMS
Some very agile and creative EarthFirst!ers from Washington state became some great
dam(n) busters by directaction targeting of the Elwha Dam for an early morning, high-
level graffiti attack. These wonderful Haydukers gave the power establishment a major
headache with their version of the Washington Water Torture using skill, imagination,
courage, and paint.
They painted a large, 100-foot-long black crack down the face of the dam, making it look
as if the structure was about to break. They also later painted the legend "ELWHA BE
FREE" on the dam's vertical face.
One raider said, "It was the next best thing to really cracking the dam and letting the
river's water run free. It was a fun, risky commando raid. We loved it."
The raiders used a combination of rappeling and climbing techniques, no easy feat
considering the dam's top is only twenty-four inches wide with no hooks to attach ropes
or any gear. Added to that risk is the fact that there are security guards on duty.
Appropriately, the paint they used is labeled "Midnight Black" and it is guaranteed to last
ten years. That may be more than you can claim for that dam(n) if someone else gets to it
with something stronger than paint.
DOLLARS
The Midnight Avenger uses dollar bills to dispense justice in the form of monetary
graffiti. His logic is fine, as he says, "More eyes see paper money than see messy public
walls, plus the circulation is far wider. Why not write your nasty payback messages on
dollar bills?"
Indeed? Write all sort of offers...drugs, sex, paid Icillings, political threats, pedophilia,
etc., combined with your mark's telephone numbers, work,'and home. This is especially
fun if the home number is unlisted.
Another possibility with the dollar bill is to deface it You simply cut out the picture of
George Washington and tape in a photo of your mark. Be a big spender--do this for a
dozen bills and see that they enter circulation. The next step is to call the Feds about this
desecration and/or counterfeiting. But be warned; the Feds take messing with money very
seriously, so avoid leaving fingerprints that will finger you instead of your mark.
DOORS
Sure, it was easy back then to lock, nail, or glue Cpl. Guffaw's door shut, causing him to
miss formations, meetings, drill, and dozens of other milestones of his daily life. There
was a war on and he was a lifer. But my pal Fred Rectal brought this to a new level of fun
when he clotheslined his boss's door shut while the beast was shacked up with his
secretary. Why was this such a problem, you ask?
"Ahh, you see, I'd called Mrs. Boss and told her I was the boss's assistant, Mr. Mark H,
and that she was to come on down and meet her husband at the motel in that little old city
thirty-five miles away where he was 'at a sales meeting.' The bimbette was not supposed
to be there, of course," Fred explained.
What Fred did was to tie a tough nylon rope to the large doorknob of the room containing
the boss and his doxy. He then stretched that rope out and around a sturdy tree some
fifteen feet from the door. He snugged that sucker so tight you could have hung one
hundred pounds of wet wash on it without a bow.
"Naturally, the door opened inward and when Mr. Boss tried to leave he couldn't get the
door open. Naturally, I had already disconnected the phone line in his room so he could
not call the desk for help. And it didn't matter; his wife was only about fifteen minutes
from arrival and she had the room number."
When Fred saw her arrive and start into the lobby, he cut the rope as she headed up the
stairs toward the room. Mr. Boss had quit trying to tug open the door and was starting to
shout for help out of the only window he could open, a small one in the bathroom at the
rear of the room.
The next thing Fred reports is the wife knocking on the door and her husband, thinking
management had come to rescue him, throwing open the door. Who was most
astonished...Mr. Boss? Mrs. Boss? Ms. Bimbette?
>From time to time it's important to disseminate informational instruction. I refer to Ray
Heffer. Ray says if you want to gain entry through a locked door, don't kick it in like you
see on TV, unless you're in a helluva noisy hurry.
"Buy a small hydraulic-type jack, those bottle types for small cars, and weld an 18-inch
metal extension to the piston rod," Ray says. "An old piece of water pipe will be fine.
"Insert this modified jack sideways between the door frame and the door. Using the pump
handle, expand pressure outward to the frame. Expand the pressure more. Obviously, the
jack's pressure will spread the door frame to where the door lock will clear the latch plate.
The door will open freely."
I tried it. The only sound you hear is a slight creak of splitting wood...ever so slight.
Ray also explains how you can open a locked screen door from the outside without
leaving any sign of forced entry. Take a bicycle spoke and grind a tapered point on one
end. Insert that end through the screen mesh right under the latch hook. Pull up.
It works. And there is little, if any, trace that the door was tampered with.
DRUGS
Given America's media hysteria over drugs, it's easy to see how this topic has become a
wonderful straight man for humorous Haydukery. For instance, former Dodger
baseballers Jay Johnstone and Jerry Reuss used to swipe notepads from the team doctor
and write scary instructions to teammates, e.g., "Due to the presence of abnormality in
your recent urine specimen, it is important that you bring me another specimen." Several
players fell for it.
Johnstone says that Reuss also conned a couple of teammates into providing semen
samples. Naturally, when the mark walked into the clubhouse he was further victimized
by other teammates who had been primed for his arrival by "Dr." Reuss.
Lee Bertoncini had another suggestion. The next time one of your co-workers has to take
one of those urine tests, swipe the company doctor's notepad à la Johnstone and write this
note: "Due to major abnormality in your recent urine specimen, it is necessary for you to
bring in a much larger specimen. Over the next several days will you please fill a quart
Mason jar, seal it with the cap, and bring that to my office."
Others who hate this brave new world of the Piss Police have reacted. Sally Boreclay, a
noted radical and unforgiving hippie chick, brought her mandatory urine sample to the
office in her plant. Her container was filled with apple juice.
Looking at it with a frown, the nurse said, "This surely looks cloudy."
"Not to worry," Sally said with a cackle, "I'll just recycle it for you."
She chugged the apple juice down in one shot, burped, and headed for the ladies room,
saying over her shoulder, "Hang in there, Nursey Babe, I'll fill 'er up and be right back."
All of this has to make you wonder if Nancy Reagan hates dope so much, how comes
she's still married to one? That great philosopher, the Rev. Dr. David McGeary, must
have been thinking about that, too, when he remarked, "Life is the sentence that man
must serve for the sin of being bom."
My old pal Doc Sarvis, who is a doctor for real, notes that many dealers now use UPS to
transport dope, which seems appropriate because from my dealings with the UPS
management, they are dopes. The scam works by purporting to send some illicit
substances via UPS and calling the police to report the shipment. You can use this scam
to hurt both a primary and a secondary mark.
Doc says the best way is to actually use the real thing, which is an expensive step to take
for a scam. Or you can use a look-alike, smell-alike, taste-alike substitute. Oregano is a
good pot substitute. What would work well for coke? Speed? Etc.? Let me hear from you
experts.
Keep in mind, however, what one cop told me, that in most states the seriousness of drug
crime is in the weight, not the purity. That is, .99 of an ounce of 100% pure cocaine is not
as serious a crime as 1+ ounce of 1% cocaine.
DRUNKS
It's not that everyone picks on drunks, it's just that some drunks need to become civilized.
We don't appreciate you throwing up on our new sofa, our favorite rug, our car, or our
bed. I'm talking here about the bad drunks, people who do evil and unsociable things to
other people.
Bummer has a whole menu of goodies to visit upon the dastardly drunks of your life. For
example, he suggests spreading some Elmer's glue on a sleeping drunk's body hair. When
he or she awakens, the first step will be stiff, followed by a fall. Walking will be hunched
and painful.
Want something worse for your drunken mark? Bummer will come through for you. He
suggests taking a very ripe, peeled banana and carefully laying it in the crack of the
mark's ass. The result will be a soft, mushy butt-stain as the mark waddles off to the
bathroom in wonderment.
Dental floss makes great bondage wrap for a mark. It won't break easily and usually has
to be cut off by someone else. Think about that--new whine in old bottles. Perhaps you
can get some bad drunks to take my advice and stop following the liter.
FAN
Ceiling fans are making a major comeback, which is neat. I like them and have ever since
I saw my first one in an old Jon Hall South Sea adventure film. In addition to their
cooling function, they can be easily converted to Haydukery if you wish to chill a mark.
Thanks to Grizzled and some friends of his, we can now offer new insight into that old
expression of the shit hitting the fan.
When our friend Grizzled was in high school, he happened to be living in Southeast Asia,
where it is a bit muggy. Every classroom had several of these large overhead fans with
the wide blades horizontal to the ground.
"We had a nasty trickster who wanted to get back at some of the teachers who had been
hassling him for no good reason," he recalled. "He knew they were having a meeting in
one of the rooms there, so just after school ended for the day and before the meeting
began, he opened several bottles of india ink and placed them upright on the still fan
blades. He left the room, waiting for the teachers to come in and sit down and then for
someone to switch on the fan."
As Grizzled points out, for maximum results place your open bottle of whatever close to
the center axis of the fan so that the whirling force builds up quickly, which will fling the
substance further when your little bomb lets go, thanks to centrifugal force.
FARTS
Not all marks are horrible individuals deserving to get your best or worst shot right in
their soft ego. Not every mark is someone plotting to overthrow God's Own America or
kidnap blue-eyed Christian babies for the purposes of ritual cult murders with possible
cannibalistic overtones. No, sometimes your mark is just simply society as a whole, with
or without the "w" in front.
For such times as you just feel like Hayduking the world, Uncle Gerry and Rusty suggest
you turn to your trusty CB radio, saying, "We love it when some old neighborhood
biddies are gossiping away on the CB. We have a way of blowing them away and getting
some good air time and some laughs at the same time.
"Both Uncle Gerry and I work up these great, huge farts--enough gas to float three
dirigibles, you know. Then we turn on the CB to their channel and one right after the
other we blow these farts at the old biddies."
To get the full impact of this, you need to witness a Big Fart Attack by this disgorging
duo. I have personally witnessed Uncle Gerry blast paint off the wall of a room three
houses away from the fart scene. He also once blew an assfull of rectal suppositories
through a 3/8-inch plywood board.
If that's not enough for you, can you imagine the result if every single person in the world
farted at the exact same time?
OK, you're not laughing. As my publisher once pointed out to me, "You know, George,
not everyone is as amused by farting and belching as you are." No, I really don't know.
Let's find out. Let's take a poll. If you, gentle reader, are amused or not amused by
gastronomic eructation and flatulence, (a.k.a. belching and farting), please address a
postal card to Fart Poll, c/o George Hayduke, P.O. Box 1307, Boulder, CO 80306.
I will report the results in the next book and will award a prize to the reader who comes
up with the best reason for or against fart/belch stories in my books. Decision of the
judges will be final.
Which reminds me of a court case which was actually reported in the Chicago Tribune.
Isn't that the home base of my favorite fan in newspaper journalism, Gutsy Bob Greene?
Anyway, if the pro-farters win the poll I'll tell the story next time out.
FIRE
Unruly, irate, unfair, and sleazy bosses are common bullies whose underhanded deeds
against fair, loving, or at least loyal employees come through the Hayduke Hotline daily.
Sometimes, though, we look through the wrong end of the telescope in viewing this
problem, i.e., there are some really terrible employees, too.
While talking to some nice people from the Cincinnati area on WLW radio, I got a call
from Joe, an employer. He told about some rotten employees who lied, cheated, stole,
and otherwise gave him a bad time. It was a mirror image horror story. Joe had a solution,
all for entertainment purposes only, of course.
"When I have to fire a really evil person who's cost me a lot," Joe told us, "I use the IRS
to help pay them back for their unfair, costly personal and financial expense to me. I
simply add some 'money' to their gross income on their annual W2 form that I report to
the local, state, and federal governments. You know, I just add some extra digits to their
reported income. Of course they never saw any of that money. Let them hassle it out with
the IRS."
Joe reported that only once did this bounce back to his court and he shrugged and told the
IRS that he'd had an incompetent bookkeeper who must have made the error. They said
OK and went away.
"The thing is to keep the amount reasonable enough to seem legitimate," Joe added.
FLASHPAPER
This is a gimmick trick, but thanks to the Midnight Avenger it will work. The basic is
flashpaper, available from any magic supply house in most large cities. The stuff is great-
-it bursts into flashing fire--very spectacular. You can store bundles of it in potentially
hot places belonging to your mark, like fireplaces, car engines, cigars, or lamps.
Can you see adding this to the kindling laid nicely for a fire by your mark? Can you see
lining an oven bed with it? Can you see arming your mark with flashpaper as a
firestarter? Can you imagine substituting flashpaper for your mark's marriage license,
graduation certificate, etc.?
FOOD
Food is fun stuff, even if you can't eat it because it tastes awful. But I'm getting ahead of
Bill Hurley. According to Uncle Gerry and Rusty, life is very uncertain so you'd better
eat your dessert first. Bill Hurley does that and more.
An accomplished masticator, Bill Hurley knows how to gross out the mark(s) with whom
he dines. If he wishes to put his sustenance scenario into play, be digs in with relish.
"I look right at the mark(s) and put large bites of whatever we’re eating into my mouth. I
chew with gusto and noise, trying to keep my mouth open part of the time. Sometimes
smaller pieces of food fall out. But that doesn't spoil my performance," Bill relates.
Bill stops chewing, then deliberately begins to spit his chewed food back out onto his
plate. He plays with it. Holds it up to the light, examines it, maybe rolls it into balls or
chunks. He gooshes different chewed bits together.
"Then I start to pick up these little piles and pop 'em back into my mouth to eat again,
noisily and with gusto. I do this, of course, only after offering the plate to my fellow
diners who are my marks."
Don Silverman of WJNO in Florida is my kind of talk show host in that he too fights for
the little guy against the bullying institutions. Don knows this restaurant that does not
have the friendliest or cleanest waitpersons in the land. He says the place should be
renamed Surlyland.
"I got in a hassle with the manager over some of the salad bar offerings being a bit
mature. For example, the lettuce was beyond limp, it was in terminal decay. The tomatoes
were a sickly orange and dimpled with liver spots. All I got for my mild complaint was a
'So, don't eat here' from this dog of a manager," Don explained to me.
While Don took the manager's advice, he did return to the scene of the insult but not to
eat. He says, "I knew the type of plates and dishes they used and snuck one of my own
like theirs into the salad bar line. I had scooped some Alpo into the dish and simply
placed it on the salad bar line."
You, of course, may wish to substitute some other ingredients of your own. It's the
thought that counts in a tasteful stunt like Don's.
FUSES
A very easygoing teddy bear, Pepper once worked for a horrible boss who used to bully
employee's personal lives. This boss once ordered Pepper to watch his home and water
his lawn while he was away.
"I did it because I'm a nice guy. But I also made sure I could have access to his home
should he become more intolerable at work. He did and I did," Pepper said.
Pepper lived in an old house with old wiring. Fuses frequently blew, so Pepper had a
supply of blown fuses of the type also used in the boss's home.
"While the boss was away for a summer week-long business trip, I went in and opened
his freezer door to get as quick a defrost as possible. I replaced the perfectly good fuse for
the freezer with one of my burned-out ones. I left the door open for five days. The odor
was getting rank. I closed the freezer door the day before he was due home."
The nasty boss found that apparently a fuse had blown and that nearly $800 worth of
meat had spoiled. He could hardly blame the employee he'd ordered to watch the house
and water the lawn because he hadn't given Pepper a key. He was frustrated, furious, and
shouted all over the office about his own house wiring.
"The jerk even paid an electrician $75 to come in and check everything, then gave him
hell when he didn't find anything and couldn't tell him why the fuse had blown. I plan to
continue my efforts to make this man more civilized," Pepper added.
GAS STATIONS
Ahh, back to the scene of so much unhappiness. Before he joined the Navy, Pusgley was
a pump jockey in the Carolinas. One thing that soured him on civilian avarice was that
his boss cheated old people who came to the station for gas.
"When we devised a self-serve island I got my mind busy with revenge ideas. It was
amazing how easily this one came to me," Plusgley related.
The plan hinged on the fact that a lot of older folks make mistakes and try to get the
cheaper leaded gasoline into their cars rather than the unleaded variety.
"I called the state regulatory agency and told them the station owner was actively
encouraging people to do this. I also told them he had a special funnel out there so
anyone could pump leaded fuel into the car's unleaded gas filler opening," Pusgley said.
After two calls, agents showed up to stake out the station. Sure enough, some seniors did
their own pumping and Pusgley had thoughtfully supplied a large funnel for others to use
in the likely event the leaded pump nozzle wouldn't fit in their filler.
Not only did the station owner get nailed, but the stupid bureaucratic agents also hassled
the senior citizens and even arrested two of them. One was the 70-year-old former mayor
of the community who wasn't even involved in the gas pumping but was just hanging out
at the station.
The black-eye punch publicity to the station owner and to the police was well worth the
time and phone call energy invested.
GAYS
Gay people take a lot of undeserved shit from people whose main contribution to
evolution is that they don't walk on all fours because of peer pressure. From the get-go, I
like a lot of gay folks. I have gay friends, just as I have other friends who tend to piss off
"normal" people and frighten grown-ups of all ages. Don't get on my case for gay
bashing.
Roy Blount, a delightful raconteur, spoke for me as well when he said, "I have been
around gay couples who seem a lot better matched than I have been with several
women."
One of the finest sights I saw during that Gay Rights parade in Phoenix was a young,
athletic-looking guy carrying a sign that read "I AM YOUR WORST FEAR AND YOUR
BEST FANTASY." True for anyone or not, it made me laugh.
Anyway, a fan we'll call Mr. Lupero is a retired government employee who is gay. Mr.
Lupero once had a very bad business dealing with a retired military man--we'll call him
Hal Johnson--who later found out that our pal was gay and went out of his way to be a
meanass about it. He tried to destroy Mr. Lupero's otherwise well-earned reputation in the
community.
Instead of making a big fuss, Mr. Lupero simply wrote a very sweet and sexually explicit
letter to the chapter president of the local Pagan Motorcycle Club. His letter was from
Hal Johnson, of course, who was scared witless when a horde of irate bikers invaded his
home.
"Eventually, the police were called by neighbors and on the surface got things sorted
out," Mr. Lupero told me, "but to both the police and the bikers, Hal Johnson was now
branded as an aggressively active homosexual who lied about it. How fitting."
GRAFFITI
Once more the scrawl of the wild beckons and we move to the word war of the walls,
where paint or pen is at least more legible than the sword. These graffiti are credited if I
know the source. Otherwise, they're just here, bared for your use like literary fangs.
If a few literary critics wonder what is the difference between this section and Insults, it
is that these messages, usually more terse, came directly from actual graffiti sightings.
We must remain true to pure science, even if it is only social, yawn, science.
No, this isn't about heroin. It's from Kansas City's Ray Heffer and it's his telling of a good
old American Indian prank that you can use to pay back one of your marks or markesses
who happens to ride horses. It's a simple trick of nature; just find a couple of good-sized
cockleburs, and stick them to the underside wool skirt liner of the horse's saddle.
Ray guarantees that when the mark or markess mounts up and plops down on that bur-
loaded part of the saddle, he or she will start a wild ride, although it may not be a long
one.
HUNTERS
Up front, let me say that usually I'm on the side of the animals in these disputes, unless it
involves radical animal rights jerks like Cleveland Amory and others of that ilk. On the
other hand, I'm also less than fond of the orange-safety-necked hunter radicals.
Tennessee wildlife officers used a trick I suggested some books ago to catch poachers
and slob hunters who shoot from their vehicles. They placed decoy deer, either stuffed
ones or freshly roadkilled bodies, in spots they could use as ambush points to arrest the
bad guys. Along comes a piggy-lazy shooter who takes a shot or two at the decoy. Boom,
the wildlife police arrest the guy. Neat.
I was thinking about taking it a shot or two further. What if you made a lifelike dummy
of another hunter or farmer and placed it in a field or woods? Place ID on it in the name
of your mark. Wait until you see some other hunters or some neighbors coming by and
shoot the decoy dummy. Run like hell to your car, then drive away. The "witnesses"
won't know what to make of all of this but I bet they call the authorities. They'll know,
and, eventually, so will your mark. That's when the mental abuse will start, i.e., "Can you
think of anyone who would want to shoot you, Mr. Mark?"
INSULTS
Do you know the difference between a [blank] and a toilet seat? A toilet seat
doesn't follow you around for two weeks after you've used it.
You know, it's a good thing[blank] and [blank] married each other. That way only
two people are sickly miserable instead of four.
If a skunk and [blank] were both run over on the highway, there would be skid
marks in front of the skunk.
To be sure, owing money to a Mafia loan shark is probably dangerously worse than
owing it to the IRS sharks. But the fed enforcers can also get downright nasty trying to
collect what they feel is Uncle's share of your earnings. Unlike the Mob collectors, I don't
think the IRS has deliberately killed anyone...yet.
Despite this bitch of a reputation, the IRS is a magnificent tool in the Hayduker's arsenal.
One threat of IRS interest in his finances could make your mark feel like his ass was put
on sideways and he had to take a dump real bad.
Chris D. in Cleveland says to call your mark at work, about 4:30 on a Friday afternoon,
especially if the following Monday is to be one of myriad federal holidays. Tell the mark
you are from the IRS and demand that the mark be at the IRS regional office in the
federal building on Monday or Tuesday, the next business day. If that office is in a city
some miles from the mark's home, so much the better.
The mark is told to report at 7:30 A.M. with all his records for the past year. He may
bring his accountant and/or attorney if he wishes. When the mark begins to stammer for
some information or explanation, you or your associate explains very politely, firmly, and
formally that you are sorry, you cannot discuss this matter on the telephone. That is what
the meeting is about.
The mark will sweat the entire two or three days of that weekend, calling friends,
associates, legal advice, etc. The mark will not be able to call IRS officials because they
aren't in the office. The mark sweats some more.
The secondary fun occurs when the mark and his entourage report as ordered. Perhaps
some tertiary humor will be realized if the IRS people, a paranoid and suspicious lot,
grow curious about the mark, his fear, and this alleged prank.
This one left me weak with laughter, too weak to fart, even after a baked bean dinner.
Seriously, the IRS ought to use as its new service motto: DEDICATED TO
HANDICAPPING THE HIRED.
Before sharing his holy writ with me, the Silent Samaritan noted that of all the
professions and industries, collecting taxes and selling Jesus were probably the most
profitable. Not being one to argue with truth, I examined his thought for a mark who had
turned a rabidly nasty lawyer upon Samaritan.
"It was hardly worth any challenge. I just got some copies of IRS Form 1099 (a claim
form used for extra sources of income) and filled them out in the mark's name, then
added some figures of my own as coming from a secondary mark. I sent this to the IRS
with proper letters in forged letterhead. Little did they know as they passed along this
economic virus.
"Of course, all of this showed up in the proper envelopes at the proper tax time for my
mark to panic over."
JUNK MAIL
John Raymond, a writer for the Atlanta Constitution, once explained his own rules for
dealing with mail, advising, "If it's not a personal letter or a check...throw it out." While I
personally believe you must pay your obligated bills, too, I would apply his rule to the
daily effluvia of advertising we get flushed into our mail receptacles.
It's not justified, and thanks to Letterman (no, not that one; this one knows the United
States Postal Service well), we are paying for this commercial insult more than we know.
Junk mail does not subsidize first-class mail, it's the other way around.
"According to USPS figures, first-class mail is 54.5% of all mail, bringing in 61.2% of
the money. Junk mail is 32.3% of the volume and brings in only 14.7% of the revenue.
Junk mail brings in only about one-third the revenue of first-class mail," Letterman told
me.
What it suggests to the Armchair Avenger is that junk mailers and their willing agents of
delivery, the U.S. Postal Service, must be taught some expensive lessons. He says, "Junk
mailers pay only 20 percent of the cost you pay to send fliers. They also deduct this
business postage off their income tax. We subsidize their advertising shit by paying
higher and higher postal charges ourselves. Enough!!"
Here is what he proposes. Remove the address label from your unwanted mail. Using a
rubber stamp and red ink, stamp the legend UNSOLICITED MAIL--RETURN TO
SENDER where the label was. Redeposit all and any such mail in a nearby postal box
and let the USPS, its employees, and the junk mailers worry about it.
Because there is no mailing label on the piece it will either have to be returned to the
sender, which costs him money, or it will have to be stored or destroyed, which costs the
USPS time and energy. Maybe someone will get the point after a while.
Think of the statistics. If 100 million of us dumped five junk mail pieces a day back into
the system that would be 500 million pieces of trashed mail someone would have to do
something with. I love it. But wait, there's more.
Mr. Avenger has another idea, but this one is very illegal, so he says it is for theoretical
entertainment purposes only. That means you shouldn't laugh too hard, I guess.
Go to a very trusted printer you know and order several hundred or several thousand
exact copies of some postage-paid return envelopes from your least favorite junk mailer.
You can then use these to send porno, bricks, other messages, competitor's advertising,
etc., back to the advertiser. Evil, isn't it? He has to pay all the postal charges on these
returns. This stunt is illegal and dangerous, so be careful of fingerprints and other errors.
Finally, the Armchair Avenger says you can screw up the USPS automated scanning
machines by altering the bar code that usually appears at the bottom of the postage-paid
return envelopes. Try using a Magic Marker of the same color as the bar code to extend
the length of some of the shorter bars, messing up the system and causing either errors or
stoppage.
There is another side to this argument and I am not referring to the junk mailers. Those
buzzards have no argument. This argument comes from lonely and/or curious people who
actually like to receive junk mail. Yes, I have heard from a few of them. To help them, or
to provide you others with a never-ending source of junk mail to send your mark, please
say thanks to Mr. Urban Resistance Fighter, who informed me about an outfit that
guarantees to "get you enough junk mail delivered to last well into the twenty-first
century."
He also notes that you must sign a statement that you are over twenty-one years of age.
LAUNCHER
Need something to launch projectiles such as water, paint, or stink-filled balloons at your
mark or his building? Freddie the Fez comes through with his three-person launcher, aka
Freddie's Surgical Tube Catapult. Freddie says to get some surgical tubing, i.e., latex
rubber hose from a medical supply shop. You also need one of those plastic baskets of
the sort used at fast food places to serve fries.
The launcher requires two people to hold the tubing over their heads with the other ends
attached to the plastic burger basket. The firer places one or two balloons filled with
whatever disgusting ingredients you can stomach putting in them into the basket.
Each party stretches his element with as much tension as possible. The firer aims the
projectiles and releases the basket. Freddie claims accurate and very messily devastating
hits at well over one hundred meters.
He adds, "We used pop, corn sugar syrup, motor oil, paint, urine, thinned tar, diarrhea,
vomit, and worse to fill our balloons."
Ol' Soot 'n Ink also describes a launcher he invented, calling it the Funnelator. It is
basically a long-range, highpayload delivery system. Here are Soot 'n Ink's instructions
for building your own model Funnelator.
Get a large (minimum ten inches) zinc-plated funnel from your local farm supply store.
Make sure it is (1) good U.S. steel and (2) sturdy.
Mount a firing handle by running a long carriage bolt through a large washer from inside
the funnel, so it won't pull through the spout from the inside. Then run that bolt through a
one-inch hardwood dowel crosswise to the spout The dowel is now attached to the
bottom of the spout by the bolt and washer coming from inside the funnel and secured by
a nut at the dowel end. Tighten.
Next, attach two S hooks at the rim and on either side of the funnel. Line up the hooks
with the projecting ends of the dowel. Attach a pair of bicycle inner tubes to the S hooks.
You mount the hooks on the Y fork of a large tree, a metal brace, poles stuck in the
ground, a door frame, in a pickup truck's stake bed, or wherever you wish to fire from.
According to Soot 'n Ink, you must see this super slingshot in action to believe its power,
range, and accuracy. His list of favored projectiles includes runny excrement loaded in
old bread bags, dead animals, pint-sized Ziploc bags loaded with paint, roofing tar
wrapped in wax paper, rotten cantaloupes, and small watermelons.
He adds some war stories, too, noting, "One time I had a terrible boss whose dog got hit
by a car while she was at work. I got to her dog fast and took the body home with me.
She never knew it was dead, and thought it had run away for the day.
"I put a tiny hangman's mose around its neck, then loaded it into my portable Funnelator
mounted on my truck bed after driving late at night to within two hundred feet of her
home.
"George, you would not believe the loud, smashing sound that her dead dog made when it
was projected at high speed into an aluminum-sided house. At work the next day, she
tearfully told some other bosses that her little doggy had come all undone' from the
impact. Isn't that neat?"
Ol' Soot 'n Ink tells us to practice a lot for accuracy and speed of attack/disengagement.
He recommends a crew of three--a loader, firer, and driver--for the mobile hits.
LAWNS
Ms. Penelope Kishkas is proud of her lawn. She is also quite a gunlady, as she proved to
Grizzled when she blew away his best friend, a nice old dog, that happened to only tread,
not poop, on her premises. Grizzled is a kindly, patient man, and he waited until the
following spring to get partially back at this murderous mama.
"Her lawn is immaculate, but it's also well lighted. I solved that problem with
projectiles," Grizzled explains. "I filled some balloons with a mixture of old motor oil
and a strong commercial defoliant, then launched them on her yard late at night in a hit 'n
run raid."
He reports the combination did the trick in about a week, showing off four "bomb
craters" of dead grass scattered in her former oasis of a lawn.
Rapid Revenge works for a landscape engineer and tells me that if you're truly unhappy
enough with a mark to go after the lawn, you need to use a product like Round Up.
Spraying it on the mark's lawn will murder the grass totally. Rapid says it costs major
bucks to replace the lawn, as well.
MACE
You can buy commercial containers of CS and other military/law enforcement irritant
gases. Or you can use the suggestion of Bryan S. and Rob M. to make your own version
of Mace.
Mix three parts alcohol, one-half part iodine, and one-half part salt. They tell me you can
also use three parts alcohol and one part iodized salt. The guys say it is a fine Mace
substitute and really does a number on the mark's eyes and breathing.
Delivery systems could include a small atomizer or a fill-it-yourself spray can available
at hardware stores. Be careful of firing this stuff into shifting winds, however.
MAGIC
Being a professional stage magician, Jim Helik of Toronto told me how very useful many
items sold in magician's shops (not the usual mall-variety gag/joke Shop) would be to
someone in my line of work. There is usually such a shop in many major cities, and after
you convince the owner that you are a professional magician you can buy useful items.
Some of the ones Jim suggested as basic include flash powder, flashpaper, and a useful
fire powder known as Dragon's Breath. He also recommends hand flashers, a hand-held
firing device, Dissolvo paper, a paper that totally dissolves in tap water, trick handcuffs,
lock picks, straitjackets, instructional books on stunts, etc.
Jim also suggests shopping at theatrical supply houses. Again, the secret is to convince
the shop clerk or owner that you're a pro. Perhaps a few phony press clippings, ID card,
or business card would help, as would tossing around the proper jargon.
MARBLES
The next time someone asks you what possible use marbles have, those hard glass balls
that we kids from so many generations ago used to play with, tell them to see Neal in
Atlanta. Neal had a roommate who used to borrow staff from his medicine cabinet all the
time and never stocked her own. As Neal says, "It was cheaper and easier for her to rob
my cabinet than to buy her own. That's where my marble collection, all six hundred of
them, came in."
Using a piece of cardboard as a dam, Neal very carefully filled his roommate's cabinet
with marbles, hundreds of the hard little spheres. He then closed the door and removed
the cardboard. Later that night, he heard her open his cabinet, get what she wanted, then
open her cabinet. The next sound was a combination of rolling clatter, a very loud
scream, followed by some unladylike curses.
I regret I have no report of the long-term effect of this stunt upon the mark.
MESS
This one is so delightfully awful that I chose the generic name of "Mess" to adequately
describe its purpose in your life. It is a delight when used in cars, homes, apartments,
offices, stores--almost anywhere you wish to create, well, a mess.
The "it" is an Air Texture Gun, an electrically powered tool nominally used by
contractors for interior decoration and renovation. I see no reason why you can't use this
remarkable device for the same purpose on something owned by your mark.
You have this mark who's the kind of dickhead who would celebrate Pearl Harbor Day by
throwing a sushi party at Benihana. He or she has a really lovely car, home, office, or
whatever, of which she or he is very proud and keeps very, very neat. This pride borders
on obsession. This mark has done something evil to you. You know about the obsession.
You now also know about the Air Texture Gun, which can spray joint cement, texture
compound, paint, splatter, gooey plaster, oil, gunk, or just about any mess you want to
use onto ceilings, walls, floors, windows, drapes, furniture, artwork, etc.
These fun guns are available at any and all building supply houses, discount stores, and
through the mail. They are great tools. I know.
MONEY
When I tried work as a business cog some years ago, heard the axiom that "A Dollar is
What You Label It." I now know where that bromide originated--with Midwestem Will.
His is a novel use for paper money that brings true meaning to the term "marked money."
Will suggests putting your mark's name, address, telephone number, Social Security
number, charge card numbers, etc., on paper money. List this data about your mark on all
the bills of all denominations. The following wonderful occurrences may happen:
1. Some graduates of the Hayduke School of Mayhem might come in contact with
the marked money and practice what the master would teach.
2. Some credit scam criminals could easily come across some of these bills and
acquire a new mark of their own.
5. Will bets that the Treasury Department has regulations about marking or
defacing money. They do. Why not send them a few samples as an investment in
creative justice.
Again, heed the warning in the Dollars section about leaving incriminating fingerprints
on the bills.
MONKEY SHIT
All you shop guys and mechanics recognized this one right off as Babbit-Rite. It is an
industrial putty known to many users as "monkey shit," which it resembles when it gets a
mite dirty. Our friend Jimmy Carter suggests combining Babbit-Rite with other
chemicals, especially odor-causing ones, to create real look-alike/smell-alike ca ca. The
stuff can be molded to any shape and will adhere to most surfaces.
The applications of this compound are endless and amusing. It is readily available from
industrial supply stores.
MOTEL
Old Pepper's back off the road again and he's got a story about how he paid back Motel
Hell for making his home away from home a very bad scene. Pepper says, "I won't bore
you with details, other than rude, waddling waitresses, food I wouldn't feed to a starving
Contra, a dirty room with a broken TV, and a bed that must have been used once as a
landing pad for flying elephants."
Pepper did a few get-backs and will share some of the nicer ones with you. Because his
room key was apparently a master for his wing of the motel, he was able to get into seven
other rooms, all empty. Here's what he did.
He carefully unwrapped soap, placed pubic hair on the bars, and resealed the soap
package.
He altered the checkout times on the room cards, making it read 4 P.M. rather
than noon.
In some of the rooms he jam-stuck the thermostat on high heat, while in others he
put it on cold air-conditioning.
In one Gideon Bible, Pepper put porno pictures, while in another he left the name
and phone number of a nasty ex-sweetie who lived in the city.
As Pepper said, "All in all, I think everything balanced out for all parties. In any case, I
haven't heard anything about it in the past year and I never returned."
NAPALM
Several hand-wringing worriers were all whined out because I gave you folks a formula
for napalm in the last book. I wonder how they feel about Du Pont, which made the stuff
I saw dumped on real people...but I digress.
For those of you who don't own even bathroom chemistry experience and don't or won't
make napalm because of its reputation, I offer an alternative--a paraffin/sawdust
incendiary device. It's almost as effective as napalm, though it requires more boost to
start it going. Also, it is solid state when cool and more stable than napalm, thus, safer.
All you need is dry sawdust and paraffin (or candle wax). You melt the paraffin and stir
in about the same volume of sawdust. Stir until it cools and starts going to a solid state.
Remove the mixture from your container and let it cool completely. It will become solid.
Use fist-sized lumps for your actions. You can easily transport these in a paper sack. Any
sort of fire-oriented ignition system will do the job.
OLIVER NORTH
I'll bet that name made you sit up a bit taller and got your mind running a bit more
deviously. Speaking of whom, do you know why the sun never really set on Ollie's
Empire? It's because God would never trust a Reaganista in the dark. Actually, Fred
Rexer told me that joke.
"All these peckerhead rednecks were running ads in Shotgun News selling Ollie North
junk. I had an enemy who was a staunch right-wing America-first kind of guy who
suspected that even General Singlaub was a KGB disinformation agent. He thought
minorities were put on this earth for target practice. What a way to make his day!"
You're aware of the flip side of Olliemania, i.e., the HATE THE RAGHEADS industry
with its paper firing range targets featuring pictures of Khomeini, Ortega, Khadaffi,
Castro, etc. Our hero, Kenny, put the two together and made a Hayduke sandwich with
his mark in the middle.
"I ran this wonderfully illustrated ad in some of the more virulent right-wing publications
showing a firing-range target of Ollie. My ad copy was a satire of the usual Third World
bashing done by the nuts on the Right--the 'set your sights on Ollie' kind of thing. I used
my enemy/mark's name and address for the logo. Several friends in the cities where the
publications were located took in the ad copy and the cash.
"The ads ran, then the calls and hate mail started pouring in, both to the publications and
to my mark. He has everyone furious with him and nobody believes it was a set up. You
know how simple-minded and paranoid they are," Kenny said with a howl of laughter.
Wow, I bet his mark must still feel like he's surrounded by diarrhetic elephants.
PANTIES
Child molestation is a cruel and barbaric fact of life. The fact that the sight of a little girl
gets some psychopaths hornier than a zoo monkey is very useful knowledge for you. As
the official philosopher of the Grubbtown/Blairsville Bus Company, a new wave heavy
metal group, Lee has put this to work for her.
"This mark had done some rotten things to me and I couldn't get relief through work
because of the usual old-boys network. I couldn't afford an attorney, either," Lee related.
"But I could afford to buy little girl's panties and did so," Lee said. "I got some cute little
panties with flowers and little animals on them. I started to place these in my mark's
office, on the door to his office, in his mailbox, and even stuffed panties in his briefcase."
Said Lee, "It got the guy in a lot of hassle at home, started rumors at work, and he was
even called upstairs to explain what in the hell was going on. He couldn't, of course,
which is why this stunt was so great."
Lee added that she was always very civil, correct, positive, and innocent around the mark,
giving him no reason to suspect her of being the cause of his problems.
PARTIES
Did you ever go to one of those parties where you were so bored that you began to
wonder why you were there and suddenly realized that if you knew the answer you'd be
bored even more? Or do you owe a payback to some evil host or hostess for some past
nasty done to you? Hark, Dr. Roy Infinger, county coroner for Eremite County, Utah, has
a suggestion.
He takes a supply of hazelnuts and removes the tops very carefully with a very sharp
instrument. He extracts the nut from the shell and inserts a colorful condom in its place.
Then he carefully reseals the top back into the shell with plastic wood and/or super glue.
I've seen his finished product and unless you are looking specifically for the doctored
item you can't distinguish it from an undoctored one, so to speak.
Our good doctor fills his pockets with these little treasures and goes to his social function
target. If there is a bowl of unshelled nuts on one of the side tables, and there usually is in
his society, he simply places some of his Doctor's doctored nuts in with the others and
goes about the party, being careful to observe the action.
It's usually only a short time until some soul happens along and makes use of the
nutcracker and some of the nuts. Obviously, when one of the rubber-filled nuts is
discovered, it is greeted by reactions ranging from embarrassed sobs to screams to
cackles of silly delight. Nearly always, the reaction attracts the attention of those nearby,
which always attracts the hostess or host. By the time the little treasure inside the shell
has been unrolled, the secondary mark has attracted quite an audience, most of whom are
paying more curious attention to the primary mark or markette (the host).
Several refinements are possible here, according to the good Doctor Infinger, including
making a local market your mark. You can even fill the condom with mayonnaise before
inserting it into the shell and mix food coloring in with the mayonnaise.
PAWNSHOP
As all of us will, Dr. Deviant got down on his luck, was between jobs, and needed some
money to keep his life moving ahead. He decided, most reluctantly, to pawn his good
35mm camera and zoom telephoto lens. Dressed neatly and being very polite, the Doctor
entered a local pawnshop and explained his plight.
The owner obviously mistook him for a street scum and started to scream at him to get
out of his shop. He swore at the Doctor, called him a common criminal, and shouted that
he didn't buy stolen cameras.
"I had never even been in a pawnshop before, let alone a police station. I was stunned,"
Dr. Deviant explained. "I tried to talk nicely to him and to offer proof that it was my
camera. He threatened to call the police. I left his shop. But as I was walking away, I
began to think that calling the authorities into the matter was a very good idea."
Dr. Deviant went to a trusted printer in another town and had a bunch of advertising
leaflets printed in the name of the pawnshop and its owner. He advertised cheap
handguns, switchblade knives, silencer kits, parts for machine guns, and special-effect
sexual equipment. These leaflets were stuck on cars in the local shopping center that next
Saturday morning. As fortune would have it, police, both local and national, visited the
pawnshop that same afternoon.
PHOTO SHOP
In addition to being a nice guy and a solidly nonviolent contributor to Haydukery, The
Hat is a photo fan. Naturally, he was dismayed when his trusty old Rolleiflex broke down
and needed to be repaired. I'll spare you the details, which aren't happy ones, but to be
brief, the camera store management really screwed Hat and returned his camera in even
worse condition than when he brought it in for repair. He got no satisfaction from the
usual Golden Rule and Chamber of Commerce methods.
"I waited nearly a year, then set out to get even," says The Hat. "I had three thousand
fliers printed with the store's name, logo, hours, etc., including coupons for free film, free
processing, and 30 percent discounts on all other services. I spread these all over town,
including the malls.
"For my second attack I had three hundred bumper stickers printed in garish Day-Glo
colors (your book covers inspired me, George). They read "I [heart] JERK'S CAMERA
SHOP," only I used the real shop name and address.
"I picked out really expensive cars I'd see in town, like BMW, Mercedes, Ferrari, Rolls,
Maserati, etc., and stuck one of these ugly stickers on the rear deck of each car.
"My final assault was to take out an ad in our local shopper newspaper to announce a
PHOTO FAIR PARTY at the home of the owner of the camera shop and invite the entire
community to come over and get acquainted. I announced free food and drink, and wrote
that manufacturer's reps would be there with free equipment and supplies, there would be
sexy models, etc."
The Hat also made copies of this ad and plastered them all over the local campus. The ad
ran only the day before the party so there'd be no time to run any correction. He also had
announcements made on the local radio station--all charged to the camera shop, of
course.
The Hat reports that all phases were great successes. In Phase One, the mark was forced
to give away great amounts of supplies and services to avoid police and the courts. He
was also billed for all of the printing The Hat had done. In Phase Two, he had to pay
damages to several of the car owners and was actually taken to court by two of them.
Finally, the party turned into a near riot and the police had to be called.
PHOTOGRAPHY
This idea comes from V.P. Kowalski, with inspiration from Eastman Kodak, a narrow-
minded company that got some fun-seeking amateur in trouble with the Reagan Bedroom
Gestapo at both the Post Office and Justice Department. The man had sent film to Kodak
with nude photos on it. The bluenoses passed moral judgment about what they considered
off-color about someone else's pictures. They confiscated the film and called the cops.
Anyway, when I'm done explaining V.P. Kowalski's scam, we'll put our minds to paying
back Kodak. Brother Kowalski says to go to some store and buy a prepaid processing
mailer. Guess whose brand we suggest using?
Load your camera. Get some hard-core porno at an adult store. Put a macro-zoom lens on
your 35mm and copy the porn pictures. Use care to crop the edges and to focus out the
halftone dots on the printed pictures. Of course, if you can get willing and cooperating
live models, that would be so much more fun. However...
Put your mark's spouse's name and address on the mailer, insert the film, and send this
little photo bomb on its way to the target. You get a major direct hit whether the company
calls the cops or returns the completed pictures.
Now, about Eastman Kodak. What's that? Oh, right. Never mind.
POOP
Jordan Smythe, a regular at the Messy Stool Bar in Salmon, likes to tell this one on
himself. He was driving along one night so drunk he couldn't pronounce it and badly
needed to defecate...very badly.
"I was hurrying to get home as my bowels were about to move on their own. Without
looking, I quickly pulled over to the other side of the road and parked on the wide
shoulder there. I had not seen the cop until he parked behind me, his lights rolling red and
blue.
"He asked me what I was doing over on the wrong side of the road. I told him I had to
take a dump. He told me I was drunk. Insulted, I cocked my leg and did a loud, messy
dump right in my pants, right there in my car.
"The officer seemed to be very upset. He ordered me out of my truck and to clean myself
up, that I was under arrest. He was growing livid. I had a roll of paper towels and cleaned
myself up somewhat, throwing my shitty pants in the back of my truck. I finished my
wipe job, then slid my messy ass across his seat, obeying his order to get in the car. He
grew even more livid. He made me clean off his seat.
"He then took my towels and spread them on the seat of his car before I got in, under
arrest for drunk driving and for defecating in public. I was a real hit at the police station
and the other cops ripped all over the arresting officer for bringing me in. I was jailed and
the DUI stuck."
So what's the joke, the punch line, the grabber? Let Jordan continue.
"The joke on them was that I was holding at the time of my arrest. I had a baggie full of
some very fine weed in my pants pocket, some real primo Noriega marijuana. The next
day I went back out to my truck and sure enough, there was my stash. Who's gonna dig
around in shit-covered pants?"
Gnarly likes the holiday season except for the thieves who prey on the sick, the elderly,
and the poor folks who can't fend for themselves. You know, those nasty Dirtballs who
rip off or vandalize mail, presents, lawn decorations, etc. Gnarly has a season's greeting
response.
"I use cat poop, lots of it, and the fresher the better because it will go further. You use a
very sturdy cardboard box with a piece of wood in the bottom to cushion the large, coiled
spring you will mount in the bottom of that box.
"Next, you fasten a piece of cardboard over the spring, like a launching platform. You put
your bushel or so of fresh cat poop on this platform. Then you cover it with Saran wrap to
hold in the odor. The final bit is to close the box, wrap it, and put it where some nasty
mark will find it and rip it off."
Gnarly says it's always more fun if you can see this giant Poop-in-the-Box explode on the
mark or marks. Otherwise, use your imagination.
"I got to see one explode once," Gnarly says, "and it was great. I never thought the stuff
would fly so far. But that poop covered twenty feet, stuck to a ceiling that was twelve feet
high, and the fallout ruined food and furniture over a thirty-foot arc. I had a hard time not
laughing until I left the mark's place."
If you want to get even with your mark at night by attacking one of many mark's most
cherished treasures, the car, follow Prankster's advice. He suggests you take a great, solid
dump on a heavy, dark-colored towel just after you've gotten into your mark's car and
removed the overhead lightbulb. Place the dump-laden towel on the driver's side seat or
drape it over the gas pedal, depending upon the degree of nasty you feel toward this
mark.
POPPERS
Old Grizzled is a fine chap, easygoing, but when you do something bad to him, you'll end
up wishing the Pope had anathematized you rather than have Grizzled put you up in his
fire and smoke.
For instance, a friend of Grizzled's has a neighbor with a very nasty goat that chases the
friend's kids, messes up the friend's yard, and is otherwise not nice. Grizzled took care of
this while the friend was on vacation.
"As it was just below freezing, I made up four of my special Poppers, a plastic Pepsi
bottle in which I put a bunch of carbide I had stashed in those digestible horsepill
capsules. Since the Pepsi was frozen, nothing happened right away.
"I planted my delayed-action Poppers in the goat's pen. We had a good January thaw that
week and when the liquid ate away the capsule and set off that carbide, the mark thought
someone was shooting at or bombing his goat," Grizzled explained with his whooping
laugh.
The mark was furious in frustration, steaming about like a fresh cow pie in a snowbank.
And there was nobody around.
Later, Grizzled secreted a couple of firewood bangers in the mark's woodpile, using rifle
primers rather than live ammunition. I suggested that the next attack on the firewood be
made with a live round from which the bullet has been Pulled and the end of the casing
sealed. Or use an M-80 for all I care.
PORNOGRAPHY
Because the forces of censorship, ignorance, fear, and bullyhood all seem to have an
intense, almost pathological, obsession with pornography, this literature form is easy and
convenient for making trouble for your mark. Given that well-known social phenomenon,
the Swaggart-Baker Syndrome, it is often the most pious antiporn personalities who are
the most kinky and sexually perverted among us. This makes Col. No Man's Fallout
Exercise work even better. Here's how it works.
1. Using cash or a money order in your mark's name, order some kiddie porn for
him or her. Do this several times. Each time ask the smut dealer to keep "your"
name on his mailing files for "special promotions" of real kiddie porn.
2. If all goes according to plan, the mark will throw out the kiddie porn when it
arrives. More importantly, if you tip someone off, that someone could then find it
in his trash and cause it to get into the wrong hands.
Most local police are not sophisticated and tend to be very emotional about issues such as
those raised in this stunt. Any rudimentary investigation will turn up the mark's
established m.o., his past record of buying kiddie porn, etc. I am sure that angry parents,
betrayed fellow censors, and outraged politicians will do the rest for you.
Don't feel sorry for your mark! He or she had to have done something dastardly to bring
down this plague upon his or her house.
Don't fret for the rights of the porn seller, that merchant of venus mons, either. The
profitable hairy pie of pornography is major big business requiring flaccid investment and
raising engorged profits.
PUBLIC RELATIONS
Public relations is one of our major growth industries, whose product is often guile and
façade where imagery replaces reality. But let's not get too snooty, because all of us are
PR practioners at some time. Come on, even you refrain from belching, farting, and
scratching your ass on at least the first couple of dates.
A major branch of professional public relations is publicity, getting you, your company,
or your client's good image into the news media. It's all a matter of putting your best feat
forward, I guess. Anyway, one day while sucking down a few cold lemonades with some
friends, I heard a very funny story from Vaslo Phlegm about how he got revenge on a PR
man who had really done some very unethical things.
"This publicity guy was a devious swine, given to lying, taking credit for other people's
ideas, and using company funds, equipment, and time for personal projects," Vaslo told
us. "Knowing that reporters and editors didn't really like the guy anyway, I decided to
make that feeling even stronger."
As a premise, folks, you have to understand that most honest, tough, and intelligent
journalists, which is about 40 percent of the entire profession, are really independent,
stubborn people who view publicity people realistically, i.e., as humanoid garden slugs
who want to suck up free space and time in the media. Most successful PR types are
toady assbussers who are viewed by those 40 percent of media types who are real
journalists with suspicious disdain. Therein lies the sting of Vaslo's plan.
"Pretending to be this PR dork, I called the assistants to department editors at the various
regional media offices. I really laid into them, telling these journalists they did a rotten
job of covering my company, that they couldn't write, that they were incompent jerks
who were stuck in lowpaying news jobs while winners like me were important PR types.
"I called assistants because I figured the editors would know this jerk personally while
the others didn't. I was right and the message got passed along quickly. Some called the
jerk back and really unloaded. The really urinated-off journalists didn't bother to call
back. Instead, they figured other ways to get back at this fool. Good journalists are
usually creative-thinking people, so you figure it out."
Speaking of radio talk shows, two of the funniest and friendliest hosts going are Jay
Thomas at KPWR in Los Angeles and Jack Wheeler at WPLP, Tampa/St. Petersburg.
Then, of course, there is my old favorite home, KFYI in Phoenix. That's because of all
the grand friends in and near that city of sun.
RESTAURANTS
Houdini used to eat at a restaurant in his town. The owner used to come over to visit and
sit with Houdini. The man was obese, smelled, and would order coffee or a sandwich,
then stick it on Houdini's bill. Houdini says he tried many subtle ways to get the cheap
lardass to stay away from his table. No luck.
"Finally, I decided if he was going to stick around I'd help him," Houdini says. "The next
time he came over, I had friends with me and we had a table full of dishes and glasses.
Old Lardass came over, sat down, and started being obnoxious.
"While his attention was on one of the girls at the table, I carefully and firmly used a
large safety pin to attach his jacket to the tablecloth."
At this point Houdini and his friends left. Three seconds later they heard a loud,
continuous craaaaasshhhh as dishes and glasses smashed to the floor. Lardass had stood
up.
"You didn't even have to turn around to imagine the picture and enjoy the scene,"
Houdini concluded.
ROADKILL
When Roy Blount, Jr., wrote his delightful C & W song, "I'm Just a Bug On the
Windshield of Life," he didn't even know that Uncle Chris and Uncle David had eaten
roadkill yet. In their usual tasteless way, Uncle Chris and Uncle David have come up
with another use for these handy highway helpers for Haydukery.
Roadkill is wonderful for creating scary and intimidating pictures to send to your mark as
postal cards or in a fancy frame. Or slip the pictures into frames of existing pictures in the
homes and offices of the mark, his friends, and family. You may also put these pictures in
the frames being sold in stores.
"You get a large, whole roadkill, like a groundhog, that's not been all smashed," Uncle
Chris explains. "Lay it on its back and extend one paw. Between the toes of this paw you
place an enlarged picture of your mark, preferably a formal portrait.
"You then step back and using either a close-up or macrozoom lens on your camera, take
some color photos of this setup, the dead animal holding a photo of your mark. Then send
the developed and printed final photos as we suggested."
Uncle David and Uncle Chris also added that you could get very weird and kinky in your
selection of mark photos, including composite photos. You can also make really different
choices as to roadkill animal selection and where, specifically, the mark's photo will be
placed for the setup picture. They thought you'd understand.
You've heard the expression about cooking one's goose? A friend of Dick Smegma
literally cooked his landlord's cat. When he was losing his $400 security deposit to his
crooked landlord through no fault of his own, Dick's pal was so mad that he didn't see the
landlord's cat sleeping under his car tire when he left the driveway.
Obviously, the heavy truck tire flattened the feline. Not wishing to waste the moment, or
too many tears, Dick's buddy took the cat with him, cooking up the idea of creating kitty
quiche for the landlord.
Dick takes up the story, saying, "My friend was due to leave the apartment the next day
and had already moved his stuff out. He was still furious. He took that cat corpse and put
it in the apartment's built-in oven and left it to slow cook at 275 degrees for the next two
days.
"Can you imagine what that larcenous landlord found when he came in for building
inspection? The kitty's collar was draped over the oven door handle. It must have smelled
wonderful in there.
"My friend had moved clear across the country and was easily out of the landlord's legal
reach. He denied everything anyway, then just turned it all over to his brother, an
attorney, to hassle the crooked landlord even more. A former neighbor there later wrote
to my friend and said that his former place wasn't rented for two months because of the
odor and the story about the whole situation. It was the talk of the whole apartment
complex.
In one of my earlier books, I made a plea for photographs of any particularly gory
roadkill you might happen upon while out on a Sunday drive. Well keep 'em coming--if I
receive enough submissions, we might be able to put a special book together. Send your
pics to me at the address on page 185. Thank you.
ROOSTERS
Who can forget Carla Savage? Surely nobody who's gone against this classy lady will
soon forget. Now I learn her mother, Marty, is also adept at blasting away the bastards
who make life uncivilized for others of us.
Marty had a neo-Nazi neighbor who complained about pet noise and any sort of fun
behavior coming from the Savage side of the fence. Savage side. I like that. Anyway, this
crypto-cretin called the police, shot BB guns at the dogs, and was a royal bastard. That's
when Marty said she'd had enough of the chickenshit.
"His stupid wife used to tell my mom everything," Carla told me. "Anyhow, the guy
comes home and can't figure it out. Meanwhile, my mom tells him really sweetly that this
rooster noise is very bad for the neighborhood and mentions calling the police."
He got rid of them. Marty got more. Mr. Nazi shot one of them that night when it crowed.
Mom jumped over the fence and dumped its body in the guy's swimming pool. His wife
raised hell about him wounding that poor bird such that it crash-landed into the pool and
drowned.
Carla says that Mr. Nazi never did figure out what was happening to him via the roosters.
It just proves that old adage credited to Freddie Sykes, that sometimes it takes a noisy
little cock to shut up a great big prick.
SALESPERSONS
A good salesperson is the high priest in the temple of business. Yet sometimes the
sermon can get annoying, expensive, and irritating. To put the salesperson in perspective,
it is sometimes necessary to put mind over patter. Which reminds me of a story The
Ranger told me.
A friend of his had a very obnoxious car salesman as his next-door neighbor. We'll call
him Howard. Howard was a bully, a gossip, and a drunk. He also screwed his neighbors
on car deals, and, in two cases, literally, their wives.
As Howard was a car salesman he had a Demonstrator, his own car from work, a dealer
sample, as it were. The Ranger's friend found Howard's Demo and poured a pint of warm
milk under the front seat and another pint of warm milk in the trunk.
After a week of unhappiness, Howard had to have major replacements for the Demo's
interior, at his own expense, of course.
Seedy had quite another experience. Fresh from college, he was a new salesman with
ambition, goals, and fresh outlooks. Unhappily, he worked with a jerk who was foreman
of the shipping department, a very sensitive job to a salesperson's life. The older man was
highly jealous of Seedy and had already driven other salespeople from the company.
Management seemed blind to the problem.
Seedy said he had to get the man's attention to change his perception of salespeople. He
also had to get either fear or respect from this man. He set him up with the cooperation of
the guys who worked on the loading dock, all of whom hated the foreman.
"Some of us ate lunch outside on nice sunny days at a small picnic area the plant had. We
pulled the stunt on the mark-foreman there. I made sure that I sat next to the foreman,
then one of the guys diverted his attention. I quickly daubed some peanut butter on the
edge of my shoe and waited for the foreman to turn back)" Seedy said.
At this point, one of the other guys piped up, "Hey, Seedy, is that dog shit on your shoe?"
Everyone agreed it was and laughed.
Seedy said, "Damned if I didn't step in dog shit somewhere. I wonder how fresh it is?"
With that, Seedy put his finger down and plucked the peanut butter off his shoe and
popped it into his mouth with gusto, making a big sound and look of satisfactory delight.
He yummed and awwed about how good fresh dog shit tasted.
True story: The foreman looked, gulped, gagged, and vomited his lunch and breakfast all
over himself. He took the rest of the day off.
"From that moment on he was always nice to me," Seedy added. "I became especially
nice to him, asking him how he felt when he reported back to work and all of that. It was
nearly a week until he'd eat with us again. But I never had any more problems with him."
SCHOOLS
Why is it that so many school administrators are such mental midgets? I once had the
misfortune to sit in a class full of educational administrators for tine days. Not being one
of them, I fled. Actually, it was almost worse than being captured by the bad guys in
wartime, which also happened to me...but I digress.
John Elliott McGeary made a hobby of fighting back against bigots, bastards, bullies, and
other evildoers in high school at Vandergrift, Pennsylvania. In one case he shot a duck
and snuck it into an empty locker the next day, incarcerating it with a heavy padlock. A
decaying duck smells much worse than you might imagine--far worse than a chicken,
crow, or other bird with less body fat. After six days of suffering, the school was closed
an additional three days while "readjustment and repair" was accomplished.
After catching a number of suckers and catfish from the nearby river, he put them
in a large metal drum into which he urinated six or seven times daily. Within two
weeks he had a horrible brew cooking, so bad that he had to approach it with an
air mask filter. He filled a plastic mustard squeeze bottle with the ugly juice from
this brew, took it to school, and sprayed it on the handrails of several staircases.
The memory, the stench, and the heartbreak of people's hand infections lingered
for days.
Assisted by his pal Burl Yates, John experimented with oxygen-filled balloons.
They found that by mixing acetylene with oxygen, they could create a highly
explosive toy. Experimenting with various fuses, lengths of string, etc., the
bombastic boys learned how to explode the balloons as they reached the ceilings
of the auditorium, or, when released outside, when they reached the second-story
classroom windows.
I was told that John Elliott McGeary is either doing time in Vacaville Prison in
California, passed away in Markle, Pennsylvania, or is an assistant to Larry Flynt.
While he was attending school, my pal Pepper also worked as an assistant janitor for the
money and the potential for infamy. He realized this potential quickly when one of the
snooty bitches dunked his kid sister's gym suit in a toilet for no special reason other than
that she wasn't an "in" kid.
Pepper says he waited, saying and doing nothing. Then, as he was cleaning up the bio
labs after dissection class, he began to collect some of the grosser specimens and parts
thereof.
"I did the usual, like flayed worm bookmarks in the bitch's books and rat entrails in her
boots, but my happiest was a whole fetal pig in her lunch box. She was out of school for a
week," Pepper recalls.
He adds the amusing part that another assistant janitor, a nasty, shiftless toadstool of a
student, caught the blame as he had been pestering the bitch for a date. Pepper says, "That
was the day I learned the meaning of the word serendipity."
Dr. Clint Taurus hated noisy students when he was trying to study as a serious graduate
student. "Fun is neat," he says, "but there is a time for study and we were blessed by an
entire floor of asinine, overgrown, underbrained football players living below us."
The Doctor was on Floor Three, the Animals on Floor Two. He complained to their
zookeeper, an assistant coach, who laughed at him. The Doctor thought he would rain on
their continual party.
"These assholes partied all of the time because the school just had them there to play ball,
not to be real students. They stayed up all night and kept us awake, too. So a few times I
watched them party on a large balcony just below a hall window on our floor."
The Doctor pissed out of that window several times, hitting the various beer pitchers
below and partially refilling them. Yet this had no effect. So, being in the National
Guard, he had boots to be shined.
"I had a really filthy rag I buffed them with. It was all brown and black. I started using an
old pair of underwear I had swiped from the assistant coach/zookeeper downstairs. He
had his name sewn in the shorts."
After two weeks the underwear looked just like the guy had blown mud in his drawers.
Dr. Taurus went to his window and played bombardier, hitting the pitcher perfectly. After
his "bomb" splashed into the pitcher, he soon heard the loud, drunken louts screaming,
cursing the unwitting coach, and even a few vomiting.
"I slept well that evening and for several others. There was a major send-up about the
entire incident, but the assistant coach caught the shit, appropriately enough."
SEPTIC TANKS
A lot of marks live in the country these days, including the suburban country where they
still use septic tanks because city sewer systems haven't come that way yet. There are
many things you can do to a mark's septic system that will cause nasty, smelly things to
happen.
Grizzled relates an old farm trick from his childhood when kids used to fill the mean,
nasty neighbor's outhouse pit with lots of yeast. He says the same principle works with
today's modem home septic tank system.
"You can get to the mark's septic tank in most cases through the cleanout access, usually
a two-foot round cement or tile pipe that leads above ground from the tank itself,"
Grizzled explains. "You lift off that lid and dump copious amounts of dry yeast down
there. I'm talking several pounds. Close the lid and leave."
Now you know the value of that chemistry class in school. Right...the pressure builds as
the yeast works and the odoriferous gases begin to back up through the various water
traps meant to stop same from happening. When the pressure is strong enough, those
wonderful gases fall of foul odor will pump right back into the mark's home, making it
smell just like...? You got it.
SHORTS
Despite becoming a parody of himself, Johnny Carson has said some funny things. One
of the funniest to me is his use of the word "shorts" when discussing men's underwear. I
can't explain it but I find that word hilarious in his generational, Midwestern context. Or
maybe I just imagine Big Ed lumbering around guffawing at his master's voice while
dressed in huge, billowy, nearly knee length white shorts, socks, and garters. Oh well...
Ex-big leaguer Jay Johnstone also mentions shorts in his funny book. As a practical joke,
he once smeared Capsolin in a fellow player's shorts. For those of you who never played
sports, Capsolin is the hottest of the hot stuff that comes out of a tube. It is today's high
tech version of the fifties analgesic balm in the jockstrap.
One tip. Capsolin is red. You have to disguise it with some color-masking powder or
make sure your mark has red shorts or whatever it is you're loading with this Major
League heat.
I realize my token liberal reader will worry about the possibility of this substance burning
the mark's genitals. My answer is a simple and humble: Who the hell cares!
SKI WAX
Not being a skier, I take Capt. Video's word for this, since he managed it against a nasty
villain personally. The wax that skiers use on their skis is very slick, obviously. The
Captain had to deal with a nasty prick of a supervisor and after trying to be civilized, he
turned to the ski wax for relief.
"I had access to his boots in the winter and waxed the soles very thoroughly. He put on
those boots and stepped out the door onto a patch of ice. Whoooossshhhhh!! The fat jerk
almost broke a record for distance and impact," said the Captain joyfully.
Even better, the jerk got up and tried to walk four more times before he figured out it was
something more than ice that was causing the painful, embarrassing problem.
"It didn't change his attitude or disposition, and the knowledge that someone was after
him didn't civilize him at all. But it didn't detract from my feeling good about his slippery
misfortune or the other things I had done to this prick."
SMOKE
Eating and drinking with friends can be bad for you. Sometimes the food and booze are
so wretched that your urine will burn holes right through your kidneys. But don't turn
down invites to cookouts on my warning. Remember what our friend Smokey the Bare
said about trouble: Where there's smoke, there might be one of those liquid smoke
products, that stuff you use when you cook burgers and steaks inside but want them to
smell and taste like outside.
Smokey says to dump the stuff on your mark's car, furniture, office, files, clothes, etc.
The uses for this product, universally available in all supermarkets, is endless. From
personal experience I know that it really does, ahhh, have a very strong odor.
Nonetheless, there's nothing stronger or more obnoxious than the odor of cigarette
smoke. But you already know how I feel about smokers' intrusions into my air and life.
Houdini feels the same way and has devised a fun scheme to burn people who insist on
using their ciggie smoke to make his life miserable.
"I break the red tips off some matches, usually a half dozen or so, and insert them into the
mark's cigarette or cigar. What will happen is obvious and very amusing," Houdini says.
Houdini says his pal Eddie believes that the meek will inherit the earth, but only after
everyone else is done with it.
SMOKERS
When he gave up smoking, I applauded LTC Mac. He realized that giving up this vice
would allow him more time and energy for his others. In any case, I was visiting him not
long ago at a secret camp in Central America, near the small village of La Penga. As we
walked into his small quarters, many of his officers were smoking away, a time-honored
military tradition. My involuntary cough control center cut loose, sounding as if I'd just
chugged a mug of Tic Tac. Phew...
One of his bronzed warriors sneered at me and snapped, "If my smoking bothers you,
leave the gawdamn area!"
The rest of the brass chortled at the snappy put-down delivered to the arrogant civilian,
me. LTC Mac smiled his gas-pain smirk at me and said, "I apologize for my officers. You
must know that some are too old to remember their manners, while some are too young to
have any."
We laughed while he explained my work to them, how I was an area rep for the
Motilones and their Motilón Company from Venezuela.
Chris Schaefer is a bit more direct in his dealing with smokers. He likes to light up their
lives in an educational fashion. When Chris is bothered by rude people who smoke in no
smoking areas or who blow smoke on other people, he pulls out his small artillery.
"I have a tiny squirt gun filled with lighter fluid. When a smoker escalates his activity
beyond rude and gets aggressive about it, I just pull out my squirt gun and zap the guy's
smoke. Poof!"
Chris says this stunt is most effective in crowded, noisy areas where the mark is not
likely to catch where the blast came from.
Madman Mike has his own menu for dealing with obnoxious people who actively intrude
their smoke upon our lives. Some of his safer suggestions follow:
Bury several match heads deep into a cigarette. The smoking mark will have
miniature Roman candle in his or her mouth.
Fingernail clippings will do the same thing as horse hair when hidden in a
cigarette, i.e., make it stink worse than normal.
Need to booby trap an unopened pack? Mike says to use a pin to peel the pack
open from the bottom. Do it neatly and carefully. Sabotage the ciggies, rewrap the
pack, and use a tiny dot of clear model cement to seal the cellophane.
SNOT
Mention snot to most folks and they ugly up their faces as if they'd just kissed the wrong
end of a freshly wet baby. That's sad, because as I've pointed out before, snot is so very
appropriate for making a grand statement. Versatile, it goes well with food, clothing,
personal products, dental equipment, visual aids, etc.
Jerry Jeff Walker, that reknowned singer and substance receptacle, is a man whose fun
and music I admire a lot. The man who wrote "Mr. Bojangles" Brother Walker has had an
amazingly interesting life. He is also a Master Snot Spreader.
During an interview, Walker once said, "Yeah, I have a lot of mucus up there, and I
sometimes use it to decorate the offices and homes of folks I'm pissed with." Friends and
other witnesses told me they'd seen him blow it hard five or six feet straight on the wall
of a major record company's New York executive offices, in the private office of a major
Hollywood producer, and in the pastel living room of a fussy major celebrity.
As long as you give credit, it isn't wrong to steal Jerry Jeff Walker's mannerism and skill
of being able to forcefully blow snot all over anyone and anything that deserves to be
your mucus-laden mark.
SOURCES
I get very few letters of complaint. Those that do come in complain most about
companies listed in this Sources section either not responding to calls or mail, having
moved without leaving forwarding information. When I list these companies, all I can
assure you is that they were in business when I wrote this section, usually two or three
months before the book comes out. I really have no control over what any of these people
do or don't do. If I've dealt with them personally I will note that in the text. Otherwise,
you're on your own. I offer these solely as a helpful service.
However, as Capt. Video also points out, be careful with whom you deal by mail or
telephone. Some mail drops, for instance, require you to complete a postal service form
before they'll handle your business. The next to last thing you want in a mail drop is a
trail of autographed paper the feds, can trace back to you. Overall, just use common
sense, honest dealing, and care, lots of care.
American Fireworks News, Star Route, Box 30, Dingman's Ferry, PA 18328. (717) 828-
8417.
A lot of you would enjoy an interesting publication from this publisher. It's the Fireworks
Buyers Guide and Trade Directory, an annual compilation of fireworks wholesalers and
retailers, plus component product suppliers and dealers. A lot of how-to-buy info is found
within these pages.
E.J. Dailey's Lures & Baits, P.O. Box 38, Union Hill, NJ 14563.
Brother Dailey sells potions to attract animals genetically beyond cute 'n fuzzy, i.e.,
heavy duty critters like raccoons, coyotes, lions, bears, et. al. Between your plans and
Dailey's products, your mark's yard, office, or whatever will become a very wild zoo.
Executive Protection Products, 1834 First St., Suite 1, Napa, CA 94559. (707) 253-7142.
These guys sell some pretty big league stuff, e.g., gas grenades, smoke grenades, real
bugs and antibugs, taps and tap traps, laser sights, and other paranoid goodies.
Johnson Smith Co., 4514 19th Court E., Bradenton, Fl, 34203. (813) 747-9754.
Anyone over the age of forty remembers these guys--great pranks, tricks, and class-clown
paraphernalia for us, and the bane of our parents. JS is back, moved from Detroit to
Florida, and has the same silly, insane stuff for practical jokers and, of course,
Haydukers. Yes, I still buy from them.
Universal Electronics, 15015 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, CA 91403. (818) 906-7789.
This place is the K-Mart of high-tech tools, weapons, combat equipment, electronic
surveillance gear, explosives, and dozens of books telling you just how to use all of these
goodies and much, much more. This is the kind of book your good parents would never
let you keep when you were a chronological kid.
STEREO
Noise is where it finds you, which is often when and where you don't want it to be. I refer
to the nasty neighbor with the loud stereo that keeps you awake or distracted at the wrong
time, usually when you don't want to play Haydn seek, or have someone's noise rock your
roll.
The Razor will help you cut out that source of irritation. He tells me that musicians used
to purposely poke small holes in their amp speakers to get really good sound distortion in
the days before such effects became technological options. This bit of musical history
knowledge is power for you.
"Use a sharp razor knife, ice pick, or paper clip to poke small holes in your mark's
speaker system. Obviously you have to remove the outer grill to do this.
"Once in there, just poke two holes in the woofer and one in the tweeter. Replace the
grill. Wait to hear the results of your modification," Razor says.
Unless the mark is a hearing-blasted heavy metal freak, he or she will know shortly that
the system is ruined. With luck, they might blame their own loud use of the system. With
luck.
Actually, any sort of sound system which uses a speaker can be hit with this stunt.
Consider radios, telephones, cassette players, headphones, ghetto blasters, hearing aids,
etc. In any case, Handel with care.
STORES
Ray Heffer says he should have known better when he tried to shop at the furniture store
in that famous city. The salesclerk got so excited about Ray coming into the store that he
actually looked up from the paperwork he was reading, looked at Ray, yawned, and
nodded. The rest of the visit went downhill from there.
"Basically, they sold me used merchandise as new, then refused to give me my money
back when I complained," Ray said. "The manager said I had damaged the sofa and that it
had been new when I got it. Not so, I told him. He told me to sue them."
Instead, Ray remembered a friendly neighborhood druggist from his childhood, an old
chap who'd told him all about Nux Vomica, a chemical compound in powder form that
can be used to induce vomiting.
"It smells awful and leaves a strong odor where it lands," Ray explained. "The idea is to
go back into that store and have a distraction created so you can sprinkle some of that
powder on the couches and other furniture on display.
"It will stink very much and has to be professionally cleaned. Be careful not to inhale
fumes or any of the powder because it will make you physically ill," Ray adds.
In thinking over Ray's last warning there, I think I could come up with some other uses
for Nux Vomica that would be appropriate for the Additives or Chemical sections of this
book.
The Prankster got really urinated-off at a store because the owner fired his friend for
suspicion of stealing money from the store. Truth was, it was the owner's son who was
the thief. Worse, the owner bad-mouthed Prankster's pal. Prankster and his pal had a neat
way of washing out the owner's mouth.
Prankster said, "I got into the store (nobody knew me from any other customer) and went
to the soda cooler. I got two cans of soda out, opened the pop-tops just enough to drain
them, and did so. I used a hypodermic to refill each can with soapy detergent water mixed
with urine, pushed the tab back and resealed it all with less than a drop of Super Glue.
Then I put the cans back in the cooler."
Another of Prankster's paybacks for this owner was to borrow the store brooms and snow
shovels, sneak them away for a brief time, and saw through half of the handle near the
base or bottom. He then filled the saw line with coloring.
"That way, when the mark or his clerk goes to sweep or shovel, the handle will snap off,"
says Prankster. "Do all of his handled equipment while you're at it."
SUCCESS STORY
As Branch Rickey used to say, "Luck is the residue of success." That's why I am always
happy to receive reader mail with clips about successful Hayduking stunts from around
the world.
This story was sent to me by Leann Melanzana and is a clip from the China Daily News
from Beijing, August 1987. It tells of a Beijing restaurant owner who got even with three
teenage boys who hassled his customers and molested his daughter by killing the lads,
cooking some of their body parts, then serving them to the unknowing parents when they
came in his establishment.
After three days, the parents reported the missing boys to the police. After investigation,
followed by a neighbor's complaint of awful odors coming from the restaurant kitchen,
police found the remains of the boys in the walk-in freezer. The man got a life sentence.
SUPERMARKETS
His name is Dr. Zombie and he is a First Time Hayduker. His story is that he was hired
by the local branch of a large supermarket chain for a summer job. Normally, Dr. Zombie
is a nice young person who works hard, well, and honestly. This time, though, Dr.
Zombie got a NO SALE when it came to merit raises at the payroll office.
"The manager gave what paltry raises there were to his daughter and three of her pals,
plus one boyfriend. It sucked. Several of us worked a lot harder, but got nothing. One of
my friends asked the boss about it and got laid off," Dr. Zombie said.
What followed was an elaborate and effective payback, the details of which follow.
"The checkout system involved scanner-type pricing units based on the Universal Price
Code (UPC) system. A friend and I had been switched to night shift because we were
identified as being with the complainers even though we'd said nothing about the pay
raises.
"We invested in a couple of very inexpensive permanent color markers and began to
black out the UPC bars on random selections of merchandise, doing large numbers of
some items and fewer of others," Dr. Zombie reported.
Using that as a warm-up, they waited for any improvement in working conditions. When
conditions grew worse and more suspicious instead, they began their magic marker
warfare in earnest, increasing the numbers of items blacked-out.
"By one Sunday we had the store managers who had to work that day in a panic. There
was chaos at the checkout counter. And nobody suspected us, a couple of stupid stock
boys. I hope we taught that jerk a lesson, but I doubt it."
SWEETIES
A friend who feels minimally negative about his divorce from his paid-more, laid-more
ex-wife once told me, "Alimony is like pumping gasoline into another guy's car." Or as
King Francis I is supposed to have said, "Often does a woman change and very foolish is
he who trusts her." I imagine you could have gotten the same reaction in gender reversal
from some of the ladies around him.
My old pal, Ray Heffer, told me about being in Divorcetown, Nevada, and seeing all of
the ex's lying around hotel pools, waiting like snakes to slough off the old husband or
wife skins and seek new prey for mating purposes. Ray says he knew one especially
obnoxious lady who carried her own vaginal jelly on dates. Ray wanted to do his part.
"I got some fine, bleached sand and her tube of jelly at the same time. I poked the sand
down into the jelly with a wooden match, then put the top back on the tube. I probably
don't need to mention any clinical details about the results."
Meanwhile, the Midnight Avenger got the shaft from his ex-girlfriend in a most
uncivilized fashion and decided to get back after a sensible cooling period. In his school,
locker inspections are both fashionable and predictable. As his ex-sweetie had become a
semi-wild bird, his plan was easy.
"I was able to get to the file where they kept all of the combinations for the built-in locks
on students' locker doors. I found my ex-lady's combination and got to her locker before
school started on the day I knew an inspection was scheduled," Mr. Avenger recalled.
His next step was to place some very explicit porn books in the locker with a faked
inscription in each, something along the lines of "Wish we could act these out again
soon," and signed by a teacher who had also unfairly done in Mr. Avenger. He also put a
small amount of local weed in the locker.
"As usual she was late for homeroom and didn't get into her locker. The inspection came
an hour later and she was called into the office. I smiled a lot. Her folks had to come in
for a conference and that teacher was even more grim and hard-assed than usual for a
couple of weeks. Me? I smiled a lot."
Millard Turd was dumped by his girlfriend because he couldn't afford to take her to the
swanky bistros in their town. He told me this girl was a real bitch--very greedy, self-
centered, and all the above.
"She was also a mommy and daddy's little girl type of woman. You know, she's twenty-
seven, but acts ten when the folks are around. That was sickening, too. But I was able to
use all of this," Millard reports.
Millard did a lot of business travel and had access to various telephones. He would place
a collect call to the Little Princess, as he called her, and tell the operator that he was the
girl's daddy. The old man was always on the road so this worked.
"She'd come on the line and ooohh and ahhh her way through five minutes of goo, then
ask me how I was. I'd imitate her father's voice and start talking about all the gross and
very sexually explicit stuff I'd like to do with her body.
"She'd be hysterical and start pleading for me to stop. Then she realized it wasn't her
daddy and she really went to pieces. I kept at it until she hung up."
Millard did this several more times, then had a new girlfriend, who also had a very nasty
mind, do the same basic stunt, claiming to be the girl's mother. It worked even better that
way.
I have mentioned Pyridium before, but not with the devastating force that Carla Savage
brings to the game. If some prick of a mark deserves it, this warm young lady can break
his balls at one hundred yards without blinking one of her lovely eyes. She's tried this and
it works well.
"I had one of those sweeties who thought it was fine for him to whore around while I had
to wait at home all wrapped in protective double standard," Carla said quietly, reaching
for her supply of red Pyridium.
"Carefully, I slipped some of this goody to my roaming sweetie, and golly, his urine
turned this sickly reddish color. The best part is that he could see directly where it was
coming from."
The kick is that most of these macho marks won't go to the Doc. They figure it will go
away. So Carla dosed off for a week. Her mark/sweetie got the cocky roamings again.
She dosed him again.
Carla says this happened three times before the jerk went to the medical folks. Carla said
she was, at this point, hanging around only to enjoy the fun. By the time he went to the
Doc's, she was tired of the game and split for good.
Carla's dosage: two tabs the first time out. Pyridium is not cheap and has a short shelf
life. In most states you need a prescription, but in most instances that is easy to get. In
Mexico you don't need a prescription.
As a postscript, Carla says, "If your gentleman attempts to inflict his 'diseased instrument'
on you during his 'crisis,' that is proof that you've made the correct decision."
Speaking of macho jerks, as a working athlete, CD knows all kinds of that species. He
reports a wonderful put-down delivered by a wonderful lady to a particularly obnoxious
sports cretin. The drunken lout was boasting of his bedroom prowess in his usual
English-as-second-language style when she interrupted him.
"I've heard of you," she said in practiced awe. "You're the one with the jockstrap made
from a peanut shell and rubber band."
Midwestern Will met a young lady once whose sole delight was tormenting other people.
She would pit young men against each other in the most cruel and base fashion. She was
mean and catty about other young women. She played friends off against each other.
Does the word "bitch" come to mind? Will thought his fun would be to help her live up to
her reputation where it counted most, at home with good old mom and dad.
Will's first step was to concoct a letter from a macho jockjerk at school and send it to the
girl's mother. The letter basically apologized for "a moment of unthinking passion
between two adolescents on five occasions...realization that daughter is with child." Will
had the unsuspecting secondary mark, also a bully and a scoundrel, explain to mom that
her daughter had wanted an abortion, but he, the father-to-be, wanted her to have the
child. Would mom help him to convince daughter to have the child? We'll leave the
outcome of this touching, real-life family drama to your imagination.
Isn't it amazing how valuable a silly little thing like sex can be to a dedicated and creative
Hayduker? I mean, the fundamental components of sex are almost trivial: the proper mix
of friction and lubrication, some personality and body temperature, all as trace elements.
The main ingredient is probably a sense of the dramatic. Of course, there is the matter of
packaging, marketing, and advertising.
SWIMMING POOLS
Just when you thought it was safe to dip into your pool, The Klingon Bastard shows up to
give your mark a hosing. It worked like this. Mr. Bastard's pal lived next to a guy with a
swimming pool in his yard. This attractive nuisance drew crowds of the neighbor's noisy
and nasty friends who partied all night and threw trash into our pal's pal's yard.
Turning all the various cheeks and trying to be a good neighbor failed and the ultimate
cheek-slap happened when one portly poolside guest mooned the sleepless neighbor.
Outraged, our victim called on The Klingon Bastard.
"I advised my friend to take a small vacation and toward the end of it I would make my
move after studying the situation," Mr. Bastard told me. "The act itself was simple. I
drained the mark's pool, figuring it was the central actor that was attracting all the noise
and bad manners."
Mr. Bastard is being modest. It was how he did the job that's fun. He created a simple
siphon using a hose, water, and a funnel. He brought the large funnel and hose with him.
The water came from the pool. Here's how it works.
Stick one end of the hose in the water. With the funnel placed in the other end of the
hose, hold it above the water level of the pool. Dip some water from the pool and start
pouring it into the funnel, always keeping the funnel filled.
As you do this, keep your eye on the end of the hose that's in the pool. Air bubbles should
be coming out of it. Keep pouring water into the funnel until the air bubbles stop coming
out the other end of the hose.
At this point you are ready to empty the pool. Mr. Bastard and I suggest removing the
funnel from the hose and attaching that now-empty end of the hose to another piece of
hose. The other end of that hose should already be inserted into the basement window of
your mark's home. With hook-ups complete, you should soon have water gushing out the
other end of that hose, creating an indoor pool for the mark.
Walk away.
TELEPHONE
We are slaves to this wonderful invention. It interrupts the most important moments of
our lives, like lovemaking, dinner, sitting on the can...
Consider. You've just sat down to a wonderful dinner and the phone explodes into your
culinary happiness. You answer and some commercially happy voice tells you that you
need to buy aluminum siding, or your roof needs to be redone, or there is a special on
dictionaries that you can't pass up.
You can hang up, curse, scream...but they keep on calling. Here is what one man did to
get back at his telephone tormentors.
"I found out who the CEO (a.k.a. the boss) of the solicitation company was and started to
call him at inopportune times. I told him I was selling vertical burial vaults as life-after-
death condos. I had my wife try to sell him custom-fitted condoms. Later, I called very
late at night to sell him sleeping tablets.
"He finally blew his stack at me and screamed why? since I was obviously the same
voice doing all the calls. I told him I was one of his company's involuntary customers and
what more right did he have to invade my home privacy than I did his?"
Mr. Owner told our hero to come down to the office and have his name/number removed
from their computer bank. It worked.
There is a commercial outfit also willing to help you. There are many times when you
want to hang up on a caller who is bothering or boring you. The list of specific callers in
this category is endless. There is a product called "Hang Up Helper" which is a special
paper that, when rubbed near a telephone receiver, sounds just like telephone line static.
So when that talkative bore calls and you want off the line, just rub a little Hang Up
Helper near your phone mouthpiece and announce that you can't hear a word your caller
is saying. Then rub the paper louder. Scream in a very faint voice, "I'll try to call you
back" and increase the static sound. Hang up.
As of this writing, this neat stuff is available from Hang Up Helper, P.O. Box 5474,
Austin, TX 78763.
The French playwright Ferenc Molnar solved the problem of really unwelcome callers
with whom he never wanted to speak by instructing his secretary to tell them, "I'm so
sorry, he's not in. But he just left a moment ago, so if you rush down the street you'll
probably catch up with him."
Our pal The Midnight Avenger has the number of those nasty unlisted telephones, too. Is
your mark tormenting you from his highly mobile phone? The Avenger says to have
someone who sounds official call the mark and pose as a telephone company official,
obviously using a pay phone (so the call can't be traced), and ask for the mark's private
code number for the mobile, cordless phone.
When you get that number I am sure you can think of all sorts of uses, including the 900-
series numbers, many of which contain explicit messages. Ahhh, ain't technology grand!
Lots of people have shared this next idea with me. Your telephone number at home is
similar to the number of a business, industry, or whatever. You get a lot of their calls. Do
what Ruddy Fart, Mr. Avenger, and Blam Blam did--simply answer the calls and be nice.
Ruddy Fart explains, "All of us gets these calls asking about hours, specials, and stuff
like that because our number is similar to that of the store. After begging the nearby 7-
Eleven to change their number and being rudely told to 'fornicate off,' I decided to have
some fun.
"Every time anyone called me for the 7-Eleven number, I went along with anything they
asked for or made it better. I offered all kinds of deals and discounts. Finally, their
attorney called me and I told him to fornicate off and leave me alone."
Three days later, the 7-Eleven management changed their local store's telephone number.
But the all-time nasty was related to me by Dick Smegma (who else?). He told me about
a guy who got a royal sodomizing on installation and service charges by his local
telephone company. He spent a lot of time, effort, and legal money to win his argument.
However, the telephone company was able to hire more expensive lawyers who knew
more expensive judges, same country club set and all that, so they won. The honest guy
lost in court.
Enter aviation to the sense of restored justice. A friend of this man owned a Cessna
aircraft. Together, they devised a steel cable and hook which they fastened to the aircraft,
stowing the cable and hook inside the aircraft until airborne and ready to attack.
"They swooped down on rural, single-strand telephone lines owned by this company,
using the cable and hook to rip the wires off the poles. The two men and their merry
flying machine ripped out thirty telephone lines on their afternoon mission," Dick told
me.
Effective. Thousands of customers complained, lots of overtime was paid, and the PUC
got on the phone company's case. The FAA investigated and found nothing. This is not a
new stunt. The late LTC Phillip Cochran told me that his fighter pilots did the same thing
to Japanese military telephone and power lines in Burma during World War II.
Squeamish also delights in having fun with telephone solicitors who won't take negative
responses. He says he talks to them for a while and asks some questions, making his
voice a bit more excited each time he asks something.
"I then heave off a heavy moan and scream into the phone, 'I'm cumming, ohhhh, I'm
cumming,' and groan again. Then I clear my throat and say in my normal voice, 'Oh,
thank you so very much, that was delightful and felt so good. Thank you."'
Squeamish says this upsets solicitors of the same sex much more than the opposite
gender. I dunno, I thought it was pretty funny.
A serious user of pay telephones, Discordia Dea agrees that these useful instruments
should never be trashed. However, that doesn't mean you can't stick it to Ma Bell for the
coins involved. Dea suggests that you simply epoxy the locks on the coin boxes, which
does no damage to the instrument or its function. Super glue or liquid solder will do the
trick.
Rapid Revenge used to have a live-in who ran up his phone bills and refused to pay her
share. He got back at her by calling her collect from other cities where he traveled, but
telling the operator he was her father or one of her brothers. The markess would gas away
for five minutes or so while Rapid would mutter a few "uhhuh's" to keep her monologue
on the line.
"My best record was fifteen minutes for her yakking on one call. This always worked
because her family traveled a lot. I can imagine some of the scenes when her dad or
brothers got home and faced this ditzy broad about some bizarre collect call they'd never
made," Rapid reported.
Ray Heffer offers wonderfulness if your mark is an apartment person. He says, "You
know how thin walls between moms are and how tightly packed people are in modern
apartments.
"You pick a weekend or evening when your mark is going to be away. Go to a pay phone
and call the mark's home. Obviously, you will hear the ringing signal. Lay the phone
down...don't hang it up...and leave," says Ray.
The deal is that the phone will continue to ring and ring and ring and zing because
nobody is there to answer it and because you left the line open by laying down a ringing
phone. The reward is that so many neighbors will be highly urinated-off and complain
enough that your mark might be forced to move.
You surely recall V.P. Kowalski and his stunt of using suntan creme on the earpiece of a
telephone. He's back because he feels that he and I shorted the other end of the
communication cycle, the mouthpiece.
"I want to correct that oversight George," Kowalski recently told me. "So let's coat the
mark's telephone mouthpiece with something disgusting."
Some of the mouthpiece coatings that came to Kowalski's mind included phlegm, pus,
snot, ass-wipe, and wound-drip. I won't list the gross items, however. Kowalski also
suggested unscrewing the mouthpiece and filling the cavity with animal feces, ants, ticks,
fleas, or the like.
TELEVISION SETS
For a quiet guy from Missouri, Ray Heffer has a wonderful imagination, and I thank him
very much for all the helpful ideas he has shared with us over the years. One of Ray's
latest involves TV sets. Ever humane, Ray warns that you should be very carefully
selective with this one, as injuries could occur. That, of course, has my attention already.
As always, Ray's right on target when he says a lot of marks would be better off minus
their TV sets. He has a plan to help achieve that wonderful goal. Using a glass cutter and
access to your mark's TV set, make a very pronounced cut into the face of the tube. Do it
on the outer perimeter of the tube where it won't be so obvious.
Ray says to be sure you cut the tube glass and not any sort of covering glass. Check this
carefully. What happens next is that the vacuum in the tube will draw on the cut and
eventually implode the tube. Glass will fly. Your mark will be unhappy. Ray and I are
laughing already.
On the gentler side of humor, Tyra Pierce is back again to share his latest conquest of
inconsiderate and bullying roommates. His idea will work well with any mark whose TV
needs to be sabotaged for whatever payback you owe.
Tyra had roomies and guests who came into his place, used his cable TV, and stayed and
stayed and stayed. He got little rest, no studying, and was paying for the televised
entertainment for these drunken louts who were apparently too stupid even to qualify for
a fraternity membership.
He did this by wrapping a tiny piece of aluminum foil around the male wire that was
inserted into the female connector on the cable outlet. He left for a few days to visit a
friend.
"The roomies and guests got so upset they made me call a repairman and promised to pay
him. I did it. I also undid my foil scrambler before he arrived. He got there and the set
worked fine. They paid him $25 for doing nothing more than turning on the TV set. They
were very upset," Tyra said.
After the repairman left and his roomies went out to get beer to celebrate the return of
HBO and MTV, Tyra reattached the foil and left for the library. He says he recycled the
entire stunt two more times before his roomies and guests gave up on his TV set and left
for another victim's place. Clearly a case of déjà view...
Tyra also passes along the information that clear fingernail polish applied liberally on the
recording and playback heads of either an audio or video recorder will put an immediate
stop to unwanted noise and confusion if certain uncaring people persist in annoying you
with their cacophonic technology.
They call it simple and childish, but it made me laugh. And it works. They are Bryan S.
and Rob M. and it is the simple stunt of getting back at nasty neighbors by standing
outside their house or apartment and changing the channel selections on their TV sets
using your own remote. You can really screw up and annoy their viewing, especially if
you switch antenna sources on them. Most marks are too dumb to figure out what's
happened. The mark might even call out a repair service.
See guys, it wasn't dumb, silly, or childish. Your TV stunt is fun, easy, and inexpensive.
For us.
THERMOS
Squeamish had a work supervisor he didn't like because the guy bullied new workers and
hassled the ladies without cause. The guy also worshiped for long periods each day at the
shrine of St. Coffee. To this boss, drinking coffee all day beat working. Squeamish used
that to beat him.
You take the jerk's coffee thermos and fill the attached cup with coffee, screw the filler
plug back in, then put the full cup back on while holding the thermos upside down. After
two days of getting doused, the jerk-mark finally turns his thermos upside down to open
it. By this time, of course, you have removed the small plug from the main thermos body.
Hot coffee goes everywhere.
THIEVES
I should dedicate this section to Sargento Smith, a truly wonderful law enforcement
officer I knew in Panama. His answer to the question of thievery was simple and a lesson
that could be well taken by all of us, regardless of race, creed, country of origin, political
party, sexual preference, American or National League.
"Eet always work, mens," he told George, David, the Colonel, and me. "I shoot
tievs...den dere no mo' problem."
I wonder if Sargento Smith is looking for work? Where was he when we needed an
honest Attorney General in the late eighties? Speaking of real justice, Mad Man Mike and
his pals, known as the Vengeful Angels of Justice, helped a friend who ran a small shop
in one of the nastier neighborhoods of an Urban American Battlefield, i.e., a city.
"Some gang goon was shaking him down and he couldn't afford that. We learned what
car the goon was driving and followed him to another location, where he was collecting
from a business that sold dope to kids. While the goon was inside we smashed his car
windshield and slashed his tires," Mike reports.
The same scenario was repeated two weeks later. Because they suspected the guy had a
tail, they let him ride for a month. Then they followed him home and gave his car an acid
bath and slashed the tires again.
"I heard he raised some hell with the bigger hoods on the turf, but he seemed to leave the
little guys alone after that, guys like our pal," Mike added.
TIGHTWADS
Sometimes you get bitten by a mark with short arms and deep pockets. You know the
type. The two or more of you go for snacks or beers and you always pay the tab. El
cheapo, deadbeat, Number 10.
CD got back at one of these guys, a man who had deadbeat him for years, a cheap slob all
the way. Being that both of them were basketball fans, CD fouled him that way.
"He knew I worked for a school district and asked me to get him a free or cheap
basketball rim and hoop. The cheap bastard wouldn't buy one," CD told me.
"I found one we were going to pitch out. I took it to metal shop and changed the rim from
the standard eighteen inches to sixteen inches. It was a perfectly finished job. I painted
the rim orange and had a used net fastened on. It looked new and neat."
CD helped the cheapskate mark put up his "for-free" gift. CD then left so the mark could
get acquainted with his new toy. CD told me that he has never looked back.
TIRES
When we need to bring the bad guys down, Ray Heffer is always there with a practical
idea. He liked the old OSS tire spike idea, but found the store-bought variety a bit
expensive. Ray made his own.
He uses 7D galvanized box nails. Cut off the heads and sharpen the blunt ends on your
bench grinder. Now you have a long spike, sharp at both ends.
Cinch them in a bench vise and with a ball peen hammer bend them to form a right angle.
Join two of the angles together, using an ordinary snap-spring clothespin to hold them
together away from your vise while you solder the jointure.
As Ray says, "Remember when you played jacks as a kid? Remember that the jack
always landed with a spike upward? So will your new, homemade tire spikes. Try it,
you'll see."
By the way, Ray, please let me have your new, full address so I can get a proper thank-
you to you.
TOILETS
I was going to refer to this section as Bathroom, but toilet is a much funnier word,
according to B. Alice Anderson, agent for the BertGen comedy team so popular on the
cable channels. Anyway, in some respects Americans are getting a bit more sophisticated
about their toilet hygiene, in that bidets are now fairly common in newer housing and
remodeling of bathrooms.
Funny story about bidets. When I was in the military service of my country, I was talking
to a friend who had been stationed in Europe. Because of a severe housing shortage on
base, his unit was temporarily housed in quarters formerly used for WAC personnel who
were no longer on post.
"They were real fine, Sgt. Hayduke, except I didn't appreciate those squatty little water
fountains you hadda get down on your hands and knees to get a drink," my friend related.
True story.
What the heck, it was a long time ago and the kid was from Mole Fart, Kentucky.
I can see all sorts of potential for using bidets to get back at your mark in minor ways,
like adding soap, chemical additives, skin-coloring dyes, small critters, wasps, etc.
My Italian correspondent, Catzo Figa, has a wipeout of an idea involving toilet paper,
a.k.a. bathroom stationery. Catzo says to impregnate your mark's TP with fiberglass,
which can be done easily if you get the stuff in its amazingly fine powdery form.
The result is an itchy hassle you wouldn't wish on your...uhhh, worst mark. I would and
so would Catzo. How can you go wrong?
You're in a public building. You walk by this door and see the nameplate logo on it,
proclaiming GENTS in large letters. You think, "Wow, they have offices all over the
world."
We've all been privileged to utilize the services of a pay toilet in our lives. Now, thanks
to my wonderful sense of fun, we can utilize the services of a pay toilet to flush your
mark right into a bad situation that he or she will have to take sitting down. It goes
something like this...
Your mark goes into the stall, slips down his or her pants, slacks, skirt, or whatever. They
are secured only around the mark's ankles. You stoop smartly down in front of the stall
door and very quickly, briskly, and with great vigor, grab the skirt, pants, or whatever and
yank them toward you as fast and hard as you can.
The immediate goal is to totally depants your mark. Hopefully, this will include the
mark's underwear as well. You then leave the bathroom area, keeping the garments,
giving them to some needy soul outside, or tossing them in the nearest waste receptacle.
Meanwhile, what of the mark, sitting there with no pants, skirt, underwear, etc.? Yes,
what of the mark? I know I'm laughing already.
I found a poetess among my friends, when delectable Barby Buns told me that Thomas
Carew once wrote that, "Love is the fart of every heart." Somehow I always thought that,
ever since I've known Uncle Gerry and Rusty. Anyway, it seems this gossipy person was
tattling about people all over the office, whether or not she knew any facts.
"She thought her ass was lily-white, of course, so we thought we'd reinforce that ego-
image," Barby Buns told me. "We took some powdered limestone and spread it all over
the toilet seat in her office john.
"After an hour's wait from her post-luncheon latrine visit, we noticed her scratching at her
ass. She was gone back into the can for about ten minutes and we heard a lot of water
running. When she came out her face was the only thing flushed. She took off the rest of
the day."
Barby Buns said that the gossip slowed down a great deal after the Great Thunder Throne
Whitewash Job.
Another simple additive to bathroom ambience was suggested by Bummer, who says you
can spread chocolate cake icing, brown shoe polish, or other appropriate stain on toilet
handles, bathroom doorknobs, light switches, etc. It's simple, but then so are the many
marks who will fall for it.
While a college student, Pepper was dumped on by his school's financial aid people who
wiped him out of some money due him by law.
"I felt that they'd nearly flushed my college career down the dumper, as I had to quit
school for a year and work to make money to go back. When I did get back I became the
Phantom Toilet Seat Adjuster," Pepper says. "It was easy. I'd unbolt the commode seats
in the public restrooms but leave them in place. That way people would come in, sit
down, and go crashing to the floor."
He says he was a unisex saboteur and that his work made headlines and letters to the
editor in the school newspaper. His favorite hit was when one of the school's pompous
vice presidents slid onto a urine-wetted floor and was so surprised that his bowels let
loose on impact.
Sick Sid the Avenger had a problem with an employer whose responsibility included the
public toilets in the building. Sid enjoyed low-intensity revenge warfare in the water
closet. His plan was simple, quiet, and required few tools. Yet it was effective.
"I simply removed parts of the toilet mechanism without undue noise, tools, or
complexity. Disconnect a few chains, a lever or two, unscrew the ball, purloin the
plunger/water regulator," says Sick Sid.
"You have some laughs, because who looks inside the guts of the toilet tank before filling
the bowl? You get the laughs and your mark gets the bill."
You will recall my suggestions for using carbide, the old miner's lamp fuel, instant
fishing rod, etc.? CD has come through with another use that will add to the image of a
fine, classy restaurant to which you owe a massive Haydukery. Or simply do this at work
or school to enhance your own image among your peers.
Accompanied by your old pal carbide, go into the toilet stall. You may have already
muttered something about having a huge load of digested chili, beans, eggs, or beer on
board, and are so relieved to be relieving yourself of that load.
Inside the stall you are welcome to make appropriate sound effects, including bouncing
your feet up and down, hitting the metal side of the stall, etc. When you're ready to leave,
deposit some of the carbide into the toilet bowl, then toss in a lighted match. The mixture
will burst into a bright but harmless flame, like a magician's trick. It will also make quite
an odor.
CD says to be casual at this point, wash your hands, talk to colleagues, etc. Watch their
reaction. Especially, he adds, note the reaction of the next guy slowly into and quickly
out of that stall.
TOOL KIT
Grizzled is right. If You're going to do some serious Haydukery you need the proper
tools. And while he and I work on a layperson's basic guide to the various tools,
chemicals, natural products, etc., we've put together a basic kit of tools a beginner should
have in his arsenal of Hayduking supplies. Here, then, is our basic kit.
A set of pliers (including a channel lock, needle nose, and slip joint), and several
wire cutters of differing sizes.
Several types of tape, including plastic electrical tape, duct tape, strapping tape,
and masking tape.
A glass cutter.
TOOTHPASTE
Don Silverman, the amusing talk show host from WJNO in South Florida, was on a
camping trip with some friends, plus one other chap who was obnoxious, loud, and never
quiet. He did his best to ruin the trip for Don and friends. Don felt it was time for the jerk
to brush up on some courtesy.
In addition to being a motormouth, the jerk also ate more than his share of the food and
never offered to help clean or cook. Don decided to toss an oral stinkbomb at this mark.
"One of the guys with a medical problem had a spare syringe. I made the next shopping
run to the village for supplies and secretly bought some garlic oil," Don explained. "I
loaded that syringe with garlic oil and carefully injected it into the boor's toothpaste."
For the rest of the camping experience, the mark complained bitterly about this lingering
taste in his mouth. Meantime, his unwilling companions, who were using the guy's
campsite, complained to him of his bad breath.
TOURISTS
We were in Zihuatanejo, a delightful Mexican town, and decided to play a bit of a prank
on one of our companions, a rather reserved chap who was feeling some discomfort over
being accosted by the aggressive little urchins of the street, i.e., kids wanting to sell us
everything.
The man's son and I conspired to tell as many little kids as possible in a three block area,
in faultless Spanish, of course, about this "rich, powerful American tourist" who was in
the very streets of this town and how he was so very anxious to buy many American
dollars worth of trinkets, clothes, bracelets, baskets, and the other flora of the Mexican
street vendors.
We pointed him out to several children and referred to him as "El Senor Embajador"
(Ambassador) and again related how rich and powerful he was. Our friend had no idea
what we were saying about him until the siege of children began. Soon he was literally
surrounded by a plague of shouting, selling children. He looked panicky. Adults began to
gather, someone called a police officer. Our mark's son and I ducked into a convenient
cantina around the comer to wait things out.
Our mark wasn't very happy about what we'd done when he at last spoke to us on the way
back to our hotel. In true Hayduke fashion, we denied everything.
By the way, before any of you culture- or kiddy-sensitive souls gets on me for taking
advantage of these Mexican kids, please let me educate you a bit. These kids have
delightful senses of humor and laughed mightily about what had happened to our friend.
Indeed, the next evening when his son and I were out walking, the same little kids came
up to us laughing and asking us where was our friend, "El Gran Hombre" (the Big Man),
and was "El Senor Embajador" coming to town, too.
UNIFORMS
Many marks wear white uniforms, e.g., cooks, navy personnel, hospital employees, lab
technicians. Madman Mike advises that whites get really dirty very easily and very
conspicuously. He adds that a sprinkling of graphite dust or sand, available from most
auto supply shops and hardware stores, can make life conspicuous for your mark if
sprinkled on a chair, seat, or wherever else s/he might park the old ass end.
"There are a lot of other ways to introduce this stuff to your mark's whites...I'll leave
those details up to your readers, George," Mike adds.
One of my old military associates, a Brit named Sir Reggie Schmuck, OBE, PMS, AIDS,
had a regular drill he pulled on deserving military marks. He usually found these
bounders in one of the starch-laden units where correct form is more important than
actual combat prowess.
"I'd wait until uniforms came from the cleaners and we all had delivery access. I would
add a few unauthorized medals or ribbons to the mark's uniform, often from a foreign
source, and preferably that of an enemy of the Queen, you know," Reggie related.
He said the stunt worked to order several times during receptions, reviews, and
inspections where stuffy senior officers without humour pounced upon the hapless mark,
who had never checked his own uniform blouse and had no idea what was on it
U.S. POSTAL SERVICE
Every time we poor folks straighten up, the U.S. Postal Service, an odd misnomer,
decides to play pick up the soap with us again. Two friends, Mr. Angry Consumer and
Scifosa Maiale, have found a way to turn the USPS's cheek for a change. They suggest
getting one of those preprinted, free postage, For Official Business Only envelopes from
the jerk at a postal office window. It's easy. Buy a bunch of loose stamps and ask for an
envelope to put them in.
Make sure no fingerprints go along as a hitchhiker on the envelope. Your next step is to
carefully fill a cardboard carton with twenty or twenty-five pounds of something.
Carefully seal it, then fasten that For Official Business Only envelope to it. You have
already addressed that envelope to:
The guys suggest you might want to use the name and address of a secondary mark for
the return address section of that envelope. Hey, all of that sure sounds like " official
business" to me.
UTILITIES
Andrew McGeary tells us that in most states, natural gas companies are required by law
to send a crew to your residence whenever you report a gas leak. You could send their
repair crews to your mark's place at 3:00 or 4:00 on several cold, wet mornings to check
the "overwhelming odor of escaping gas." You beg them not to call back to verify as
"you," the mark, fear an explosion from static electricity when the phone rings. Sound
hysterical when you call.
After a period of these pranks, introduce some butyl mercaptan into your mark's
domicile. I have suggested the methodology in several other books, like through the
ventilation system. Obviously the real fun starts when the mark actually does call in to
report "another odd hour" gas leak.
The Wolf had a nasty co-worker who'd done some bad things to folks at work. He also
lied and cheated on and about everything. Wolf decided to get him into deep feces with
Mr. Electric Company. Here is Wolf's story.
Use a Bic lighter to melt off and undo the lead wire lock on the kw/h meter of your
mark's home. Then, using lacing wire or liquid solder, put a halt to that numbered disc
that rotates to indicate and record power usage. Reheat the lead tab and reseal the meter.
The deal is, according to Wolf, the mark will continue to receive and use power, but it
will not be recording. When the meter reader comes to check the monthly use for billing
purposes, the tampering will be obvious. The legal phrase here is Theft of Services.
If it's a first time deal and the mark has a clean rep, he'll probably not get into too much
legal hassle. The power company will reset the meter and go away. Wait a month and
repeat the trick. Wolf says to keep this up all year and maybe you'll get the mark canceled
or, even better, fined and jailed.
UTILITY COMPANIES
I first thought of this when I read a newspaper story about a midwestem power company.
As justification for another rate rape, they cited the increase in line repair costs due to the
proliferation of the small metallic balloons released by the thousands at mall openings,
ball games, political rallies, and so forth. It seems the little buggers hit the high voltage
transmission lines and cause outages.
My mind immediately conjured up various scenarios in which these little airborne boll
weevils could be used deliberately. About six months later, I read in EarthFirst! that one
of Pacific Gas & Electric's paid liars (a.k.a. a PR man) blamed these balloons for 140
power outages during 1987 in California alone. Southern California Edison reported 229
balloon-caused failures.
I also learned from the story that these balloons leave no trace because they usually
disintegrate when they bust the power lines. Hmmmmmm. These little Mylar balloons
have a one-thousandth of an inch coating of aluminum, a splendid conductor of
electricity. When they hit lines, they either short the line or cause arcing between two
lines. This usually melts lines and/or blows transformers. And these are just the little
balloons. Can you imagine what larger versions might do?
A sailor friend of mine referred to wedding bells as a storm warning, while Gary Hart
once called his wedding ring a tourniquet--stopping his circulation. Weddings generally
feature winners, losers, and personal acrimony. This is the stuff of pure Haydukery.
Thanks to such delightful friends as Hal Johnson, Dr. R. T. Scrotum, Ed Bluestone, and
Penelope Penophile, I have compiled a shopping list of fun things you can choose to do at
weddings, all of which are guaranteed to upset someone. The list follows:
Windows and glass doors belonging to your mark are always a fine target. Milk is a fine
weapon with which to attack that target. My pal Andrei Zymurgy told me how he had to
get back mildly at a friend who had tricked him. Andrei waited until January, when it is
still very cold where he lives. He took several small balloons and filled them with canned
milk, which is very sticky and thick.
He then launched his attack upon his friend's windows and sliding glass doors, plastering
them with milk bombs. The stuff stuck to the cold glass and soon froze over in a milky,
white film. Andrei says that the mark had to wait until late March until it grew warm
enough to clean the windows. Until then, he had to do a lot of explaining to curious
neighbors and visitors who asked about the ice-milked windows.
YELLOW PAGES
Do you have a nasty mark who is a also a prude, with his or her no's into everyone else's
business? The Indiana Church Lady knew one of these jerks and conspired to have some
fun by fingering the Yellow Pages. Here's how it happened.
"I used a local telephone directory to place an ad for my mark. I included some semi-
erotic hints offering personal services, indicated 24-hour outcall services and acceptance
of major credit cards. I named this business Bobbi's Little Angels Of The Night and listed
my mark's home telephone number. The ad was placed under Escort Services and paid
for in cash. It ran. So did my mark, for a new telephone number."
Church Lady says she did the exact same thing the following year in a neighboring town
using the mark's new phone number.
YOUR MARK
A mark is really more than a bully or a deserved enemy or someone to whom you owe
major revenge. A mark is also an easily recognized person who just demands to be
revenged upon. Your mark is someone who pisses in your beer pitcher while you're being
civilized in the restroom. Your mark is the kind of polyester pom-pom (aka lounge lizard)
who walks up to a woman, leers, and says, "Hiya sex machine, what's your sign?" She, or
you, looks back, right at its eyes and says, "Feces."
Your mark is the type of dipstick who goes for a Sunday drive so s/he can slow down to
gawk at fresh car accidents, or the sort of creep who'd go to a stranger's funeral for an ego
lift.
Remember, it really doesn't matter if whatever your mark fears above all else is really out
there, as long as your mark really believes it is. In effect you become a fanged tortoise
racing an unsuspecting or, perhaps, a very expecting paranoid hare.
Pay attention to your research and your intelligence-gathering. As people have pointed
out, chances are if a mark has been nasty to you, he or she has done dirty to someone
else, too. A slob is usually a slob, you might say.
Mr. Don't Know Him has some good advice for mark-dealing. He says to work your
stunts so someone else breaks the shell around the ego of your mark, e.g., the local
police, IRS, postal inspector, spouse, boss, or whomever.
ZYMURGY
Not only is this the last word listed in my dictionary, it also is the name given to the
branch of chemistry of fermentation, i.e., brewing. I've been known to quaff a few cold
ones from time to time. Anyway, my last words today are to ask you to please write to me
and share your stunts, pranks, successes, or needs. I am always happy to hear from you
and I do answer my own mail, all by myself. If you give me a return address when you
write me, you'll hear from me. And, if your idea is new, funny, or nasty, it will probably
appear in a future book.
I am: