====== HOTELS ====== Suppose you are staying at a hotel and get into a bad beef over the poor quality of the meal you get in their restaurant. After trying to be reasonable, here is how Ralph Charell, a champion-class advocate for the little guy, handled it. Seeing absolutely no satisfaction and no end of snobbish treatment, Charell took the following steps. He requested a deposit box in the hotel safe and placed the offending rib roast, which he felt was of poor quality, in the box and locked it. The box had two separate locks and two separate keys. One was held by the hotel, the other by Charell. "At this point, the hotel management has absolutely no idea what I'd placed in the box," Ralph Charell explained. "I told them it was valuable evidence in a possible legal action I was considering against an organization with whom I was having a disagreement about the quality of one of their products." In a short time, someone at the desk caught the disagreeable odor of decay coming from the area of the safe. Within another short time, Charell was called by the manager and asked to clear whatever was in the box out of the box. Charell explained about the "evidence" in this legal action. The hotel manager threatened to force open the box anyway. Charell reminded him of the laws against destroying evidence, then explained the whole situation. "What do you want from me, Mr. Charell?" was the manager's beaten reply. Ralph Charell then reported the details of the dinner he and his party had had at the hotel. It takes a real expert like Ralph Charell to turn a trick into something positive for all sides. In Homer City, Pennsylvania, a group of the locals told about the time a fellow had a room at a nearby boardinghouse. He was the pompous sort of smartass who just begged to be dirty tricked. The locals went to a junkyard and brought a huge gang plow. It was in pieces and was relatively easy for these husky lads to put in the mark's rooms. They assembled it and welded the pieces together with a small, portable machine. They and their machine left. There was a great deal of consternation on the part of the mark and the landlord, who parted company faster than the room and the plow. Automobiles and other bits of large machinery work equally well in rooms and apartments today. A collegiate trick reported by Whitney Clapper called for hiding small dead things, such as mice, sparrows, or moles, in out-of-the-way places in the marks rented room. Good secret places include light fixtures, inside switch boxes, unused overcoat pockets, and inside appliances. Within a few days, the mark will be aware that something is wrong. A few more days, and he'll be sure. Left unattended, this stunt will provide the mark with a mass of pet maggots to raise. =================== INSURANCE COMPANIES =================== In the intelligence business, access to insurace company files is regarded as an operational goldmine. A former executive explains, "These files contained detailed analysis of actual and potential weaknesses, trouble spots, and other problems of any sort facing clients. Insurance companies stand to lose millions of dollars in the event of an actionable accident or difficulty, such as the Three Mile Island fiasco. Obviously, these very thorough and detailed investigative data would be of immense interest to a saboteur. In other words, these companies want to know the details by which anything and everything could go wrong with a client. These data are like a printer on sabotage." Getting access to these reports and data may not be so easy for the nonprofessional. But if you have enough dedication and imagination you will find a method. The kids who blackbagged the FBI offices in Media, Pennsylvania, were nonprofessionals, and look what they pulled off! They managed to liberate entire files of illegal domestic espionage, which later blew apart COINTELPRO, the blackest eye Hoover's FBI ever suffered. Now let's get to the insurance companies themselves. Suppose you get turned down for insurance and you want to know why. By law, the insurance company must show you the file it has on you. Suppose you learn that all sorts of misinformation and other lies are in there. There are organizations and lawyers that deal in just that sort of thing, and a load of simultaneous lawsuits for such things as invasion of privacy and slander would be great. Deborah Bodenhead hates junk mail, especially mail-order insurance hustles. So she answers these requests with affirmative orders; "I'll buy," she tells them. Then she runs salespeople and clerks through all sorts of scheduled, broken, rebroken, etc., appointments. She settles finally on a policy, then waits for the second billing to cancel. Why the second billing? "They rarely send out the policy before the first billing," Deborah explains. "I want them to go to the expense of preparing and processing the policy. I usually get a second bill with a polite dunning letter. That's when I cancel. It drives the salespeople to anguish every time. Usually when they whine and ask me why, I just tell them I really hate mail-order advertising and just decided to cancel on a matter of principle about junk mail." I asked an insurance agent about this stunt, and he cursed people like Deborah, saying these people drove our rates up. I asked him if it wasn't really the companies' own obnoxious marketing techniques that drove up rates! He cursed me, too. Don't ever pity or sorrow for insurance companies. They make more profit in an hour than any of us make in salary in a year. === IRS === Mark Mertz knows a few special things about the Internal Revenue Service -- it can be used to furnish a hard time for your mark. Mertz knows his way around government agencies, and here's one of his IRS offerings. "You'll need your mark's Social Security number and some other obvious personal data. Once you get those data you're on your way. "Call a regional IRS office and 'confess' that you have cheated on your income tax, you conscience has bothered you, and you want to make things right by this great nation. Make an appointment with an auditor, using your mark's name, Social Security number, address, etc." The kicker comes when the mark doesn't show up to keep the appointment, for obvious reasons. The IRS will send a visitor around to talk with the mark, and chances are he will be audited, regardless of his explanations. So much for using IRS to hassle your mark. Many more folks would prefer the IRS were the mark. As in dealing with any large bureaucracy and its people, many of the stunts mentioned in other chapters may be brought to play against the IRS. However, there are a few specefic tricks that may be used to bring rain on the IRS picnic. You could start by picking up a bunch of blank returns and filing them in the names of your least favorite people. I have been assured by a former IRS field auditor that someone will have to make an effort to verify each return. With the help of your printer and your newly found forgery skills, prepare some financial documents indicating that some person or corporation has received some substantial income. Make copies of copies several times until you have a fifth- or sixth-generation copy that is not too clean but is still easily sharp enough to read. The idea is to make it look like copies of a purloined original. Call an IRS office from a phone booth and tell them you are an honest employee of the mark and you think he is evading taxes. Offer to send the IRS person the papers. Get off the phone very quickly, then send the papers. If the IRS gets nasty they may find themselves in court. I got this idea from a man who worked for a company that did fight IRS in court and won big -- through an honest IRS error. Think what could happen to IRS if you fed them a dishonest error! ================ THOMAS JEFFERSON ================ A quote by Thomas Jefferson can be used to confuse your friends or critics if they question your activities as a dirty trickster. A very sharp man who would be as upset with things in America as you are, Jefferson is quoted as saying, "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." Let the authoritarians and their domestic gestapo choke on that one. It's enough to make them thump a few Bibles. What would be Thomas Jefferson's views on revolution, anarchy, busing, the draft, marijuana, and excessive taxation? ======= JOGGERS ======= Overweight and overwrought motorists drive by in their Detroit Dinosaurs, pass a jogger, and mutter, "Damn stupid schmuck." It's the human way to hate what and whom you don't understand. Joggers are often thought of as nuts, oddballs, and kooks to be dealt with. Marty Jones, a landowner, is more specific, saying, "They run across a corner of my property, using a path I put in for my own use. I posted the land, but they ignored the postings. I have tried to talk to them, but they may or may not even stop to listen. If they stop they keep running in place while I'm raising hell about trespass. I think most joggers are rude, self-centered, and selfish. I was thinking about hiding in the bushes and ambushing them with my kid's BB gun." For a variety of reasons, many people don't like joggers. Some folks even actively plot against joggers, using cars and motorcycles, then arming themselves with boards, pies, and other objects with which to strike the runners. There are less barbaric ways, however. Tire spikes are a World War II relic. During the hostilities, they were dumped from low-flying aircraft onto enemy airfields and main transportation roadways, where they caused havoc. Your use may not be so widespread, but with equally exasperating results. The tire spike is a simply made piece of one-eighth-inch-thick steel cut in the form of a four-pointed star. Its purpose is to puncture rubber tires. The original wartime models were three inches in diameter and had four points at forty-five-degree angles. One of the points always stuck upward, ready to impale a vehicle tire. Even today, there are many uses for tire spikes. One anti-jogger has already suggested that these spikes be reduced in size and dropped strategically near the running habitat of these long-range exercise buffs. The purpose, I presume, is to penetrate the expensive bottom of expensive jogging footwear and, perhaps, the expensive foot of the jogger. One critic called this tactic "a really sick pain in the metatarsus." Ultrathin piano wire strung shin high on a pathway is excruciatingly nasty. That's another World War II stunt redrafted for this book by Colonel Jake Mothra. Many military manuals offer equipment and directions, he adds. Another contribution to joggermania would be to sprinkle marbles on their special little pathways. Another nasty trickster, Hidell Crafard, told me about an acquaintance at the Hunt Sporting Club in Dallas who actually put ground glass into the running shoe of a bitter enemy. Perhaps that's where filet of sole originated. There aren't many counteractivities a jogger can use in retaliation. Once is to carry MACE for obvious use. Another tactic is to carry cans of garish-hued spray paint. These can be directed against attackers' automobiles. =========== LAUNDROMATS =========== In addition to the dryer for a pizza oven, as outlined in another section of this book, you can use laundromats to harass an individual mark, or the business itself can be your mark. It is not very hard, for example, to dump several packets of dye into someone's wash, ruining his/her clothing. Doing this at random will bring grief to the owners of the laundromat. One antisocial chap used to put small piles of moistened rust particles in the dryer used by his mark so the mark's clothing would have large rust stains. Roadkill may also be used to good advantage in these operations. Additives that are positive ingredients for a good time at the laundromat includes raw eggs, fish, peanut butter, and fiberglass. If your mark is the operator of the business, you will find a variety of his/her ancillary services to bugger, including vending machines, customer seats, and restrooms. Small nails or staples driven partly into seats, and restrooms. Small nails or staples driven partly into chairs make good items for customers to snag themselves and their clothing on, for example. And vending machines can be made to steal money from patrons. ==== LAWN ==== Our outdoor correspondent, Lother Gout, came up with a scheme to hassle your mark's lawn. It's a simple matter of spilling quantities of tomcat lure on the targeted lawn. The urine of Felix Domesticus will do wonders for the lawn and the mark's disposition. There are also a number of commercial lawn-care products that may used to good advantage by the serious dirty trickster. One stunt is to select a large, open chunk of you mark's lawn. Using concentrated weed killer, you spell socially offensive words on the lawn with the defoliant. The grass dies, and a nasty word or legend is spelled out for all the neighbors to see. This works best on a slight slope facing a street for maximum exposure. Salt or vinegar will work almost as well as commercial vegetation killer. If you're the sort of fun person who's read this far, I'm certain you'll need no suggestions as to what to say in your little message. Serious defoliation is one of the many techniques our Vietnam experiences made available to the dirty trickster. Defoliation is the most potent way to get back at dastardly people who also have unreasonable pride in their lawns and ornamentals. These are usually the type of fussy people who also own small, yipping, bitchy dogs the size of rats -- more on that later. This time we're going to take out everything that grows. There are many commercial products available that will kill anything growing. Look on the label to see that it says the stuff is nonselective and/or that it makes the soil barren. You just load up your sprayer -- or the mark's, if you can get to it -- and fire away. Like a good guerilla, pick out what he loves most and hit it first and heaviest. Don't leave a single blade or stem standing. No prisoners. Be cautious, though, that you stay upwind from the spray. At night you can't tell how much of the gunk you are inhaling or getting on your skin. We have enough Agent Orange victims without adding you to the list. Reinhard Ray, a former special-operations man for the U.S. navy, suggests a selective use of the weed killer in a psychological battle against a mark who is a true worrier, fringing on paranoia. You apply the solution fairly heavily around the mark's natural or LP gas meter; then, broadcasting a bit more lightly, you follow the fuel line directly to the mark's house. A final, heavier dose would be appropriate at the jointure of home and line. Within a few days the frightened mark will be convinced that his entire gas system is leaking badly. Obviously, this is effective only if your mark's house uses natural or LP gas. But you could also do this to a water-supply line coming into the house or a buried electric line. A related scam would be to spray the stuff in a circle around the house. Then, on bogus official letterhead you've either duplicated or had printed, send the mark a letter from the Nuclear Regulatory Commision explaining how they've just discovered some long lost records revealing that the mark's home was built over a former repository for nuclear wastes. I'm sure your imagination can embellish the rest of the letter's content to convince the mark that he, his family, and home are now radiation victims. Obviously, you can't use this if the mark's house is more than twenty years old, because nuclear waste dumps weren't built much before then. ======= LAWYERS ======= Punxy Phil Ferrick decided to get back at a dishonorable attorney who decided to try hoodwinking the public by becoming a politician. Ferrick got hold of the attorney's legal letterhead and got it duplicated by a printer who was equally outraged at this crook's trying to capitalize his larceny by becoming an elected thing. Using the letterhead for starters, Ferrick sent out blatant dunning letters over the mark's signature demanding campaign contributions from politically sensitive people. Another mailing was a group of threatening letters to local civic, church, and charity groups about their winked-at illegal bingo and 50/50 fundraisers. In the bogus letter, the lawyer threatened action. The bogus mailings made the local newspaper when the lawyer -- who had been a big booster, campaigner, organizer, etc., for Nixon in '68 and '72 -- complained of the dirty tricks. The newspaper treated the story straight: The attorney's denials only aroused more suspicion. And no one ever suspected Ferrick...until now. Another scheme is this: Get a blank deed of trust, fill in your mark's name and address, use your notary seal, and you have a legitimate-looking phony document. File it at the courthouse, and you have an action in the works against your mark. It means the mark has defaulted on a mortgage or some other promissory note and that "you" are filing against it. "You" can be an attorney if you wish when "you" sign this form. Days of frustration, anger, and bureaucratic disbelief directed at the mark will follow before things are straightened out. Don't get caught doing this one. The best point here is that no one ever does things like this illegally, so the bureaucrats will never suspect it as a dirty trick. But there's more. If you have access to a law library or law-library materials, you can play games with the mark's mind, claims Oswald Helms, an observer of the legal scene. He suggests, "Law libraries have standardized legal-practice forms, form books, and routine stationary forms that lawyers, clerks, judges, and the like use to help draft legal letters and proper legal forms. A dummy form or letter, photostated with some dummy legal notices, using, for example, arrest warrants, summonses, condemnations, search warrants, etc., can often pass for the real thing. It will shake the mark very much. "The secret behind this," Helms explains, "is that real legal people sometimes use the Xerox machine and routine forms, too. It saves time and money. It will easily fool the target and will probably force his or her attorney to at least follow it up." Time and money, time and money. Good torting. ============== LICENSE PLATES ============== There are many sophisticated and clever ways to obtain additional vehicular license plates that aren't registered in your real name. However, it's not necessary to fool around with all that esoterica. Be like a street punk and simply steal what you need. A bad guy who needs a plate simply removes one from someone's car or truck. That simple. This is also highly illegal. But if you're careful and use a bit of common sense, can you think of a simpler and safer way of getting the extra plates you need for dirty tricks? ======= MA BELL ======= Did you ever see those office signs that say, THINK? In one telephone-company office I visited, I saw signs saying, SNEER. People have been messing with Ma Bell for as long as that corporate dictator has been monopolizing telephone service. For years stories have been circulated about using strips of Scotch tape on coins, which allows their use again and again in pay telephones. Do you know what a number-fourteen washer will accomplish in a pay telephone? The Yippies and other groups have developed marvelously ingenious ways of sabotaging telephone-company operations. Some of their literature is sheer technological genius, almost as if it were written by a Bell Laboratoris dropout. I once spoke with a radical who had become a "mole," an agent of his political beliefs who secreted himself away in five years of deep cover working as a technician for Illinois Bell. His purpose was to learn about the technical side of the company so he could later control or destroy telephonic communication. Gordon Alexander presents an alternative manner, simple but novel in these complex days. A professional dirty trickster for more than twenty years, Alexander uses the dangerous but simple method of physically cutting telephone lines. If you are looking for instructions on how to safely cut Ma Bell's lines here, forget it. Unless you know what you are doing and have the proper equipment you could easily light up like an insect hitting an electric bug trap. I said it was simple; I didn't say it was easy or safe. Lee Jenner, an accountant, suggests that you overpay your telephone bill if you're alienated from Ma Bell. He says, "Overpay by a constant seventeen cents a month. Make it consistent. Then, after a few months, underpay by seventeen cents. Start another pattern for a while of overpayment; then underpay again. It drives them nuts." Jenner continues, "The local telephone company had screwed a client of mine and refused even give him the time of day. He started this seventeen-cent bit, and before the year was out he had the manager of the local company begging him to stop. It worked totally to his satisfaction." Meanwhile, on other battlefield fronts, Bell-hater Leo Garry says you should have your printer make a bunch of OUT OF ORDER signs with the local Ma Bell's logo on them. Hang them on every public telephone you find. Speaking of pay telephones, only punks and idiots damage them. Much as you may hate them, they're the only game in town. If you've ever needed a pay phone in an emergency, you know what I mean. You can play games with your local service representative (Ma Belltalk for salesperson) by ordering phones and equipment for marks or ordering service shutoffs. Always make these type of calls from a pay phone, for obvious reasons. Bandit calling may have been developed by the Yippies. Certainly they are among its champions, both as practitioners and as cheerleaders. Aside from the blue boxes, which make free calls for you, there is a tactic that can be used by the nontechnical wizard and doesn't cost you anything. It's the use of the bogus credit-card numbers, and it works like this. Always use a pay telephone and not always the same one. Next, you need a credit-card number. Here is where knowledge of Ma Bell's codes comes in. For that information check OVERTHROW, a tabloid published by the Youth International Party. A subscription cost you ten dollars a year, but each issue contains all sorts of other dirty tricks, as well as an updated listing of not only Ma Bell's codes, but also the complete credit-card numbers for many corporations, public utilities, and government agencies. To order a subscription, send ten dollars to Overthrow, P.O. Box 392, Canal Street Station, New York, N.Y. 10013. It's a good investment, according to most readers. After you get credit-card codes or numbers, the Yippies claim, the rest of bandit calling is simple. You simply dial the long distance operator from your pay phone and sound very, very businesslike when you say, "This is a credit card call, and my number is [give the operator the credit-card number]. I want to call [give the operator only the number of the party you are calling]." Be sure you can tell a suspicious operator the area code from which the card was supposedly issued. If the operator wants to know who holds the card, either make up a legitimate-sounding company name or use the name of the agency or company whose card number it really is, depending upon the circumstance. It helps if your party at the other end of the call knows what's happening. Talk straight and businesslike for the first five minutes, as a snoopy operator -- that's the way Ma Bell trains them -- might stay on the line that long to listen in. Avoid sensitive subjects like your name, politics, drugs, or dirty tricks since you never know who is recording calls these days. Break off the call within twelve minutes. Obviously, your callee should act very dumb when Ma Bell's security people do come to investigate a month or so after the fraud is discovered. And don't let them intimidate you or your friends, either. They're good at that -- many of them are former federal or state police. One Bell employee told me that their security people utilize warrantless wiretaps, blackmail, and physical surveillance to catch persons suspected of making bandit calls. The employee also told me these tactics are used against persons who even publicize such practices. I consider myself warned. So should you. Ma Bell can be one nasty mother. By the time you read this, though, the game may be up. In Washington state, the Supreme Court there upheld the conviction of a newspaper for publishing the telephone company's secret codes. The telephone company, which has both security and propaganda sections that rival the government's, was working furiously behind the scenes to influence the verdict. Abbie Hoffman suggested this next trick, so if it doesn't work, call him. Restrict Hoffman's idea to corporate, utility, or institutional telephone systems. Cut the female end off an ordinary extension cord. Unscrew the mouthpiece on the telephone in any one office. You will see a terminal for a red wire and one for a black wire. Attach one of the wires from the extension cord to the red and one to the black. Finally, plug the extension cord into a power socket. According to Hoffman, you are sending 120 volts of electricity back through equipment designed for six volts. He says this will knock out thousands of other telephones and the main switchboard, "if all goes right." Even if his numbers are somewhat exaggerated, you've had a good day. ==== MAIL ==== The Ku Klux Klan has some interesting strategies for spreading terror. One of these is to collect from regional newspapers clippings of unsolved arsons (or robberies, rapes, burglaries, assaults, etc.). If you need to fatten the file, include clips from national publications too. Place the clips in a manila envelope and tape it to an old gasoline can (or ax, bra, shotgun shell, jimmy bar, etc.), which you leave on your mark's home or office doorstep. David Williams is the pen name of a Texas state legislator who spends his working hours as a freelance writer. He told about Jim Boren (pen name of a friend), whose great idea for practical joking was to send single-entendre postal cards bearing personal, sexual, or medical messages to William's home. "Since I met Jim Boren, I hide from my postman," Williams notes. Williams is not Boren's only victim. Many of his friends suffer from postal cards such as the bogus Playboy Towers Memo that pointed out, "Davie boy, thanks for taking care of my friend while she was in Austin. I was envious when she told me how things went down. Love, Elvira." Or this hotel postcard came from Hong Kong, addressed to Williams via his pen name at his real address: "She's no longer at the topless bar. But her sister at the massage parlor thinks she went to Seoul. I can pursue it at the embassy, but will have to disclose your personal interest. Please advise." It is signed by J. Harley, identified by a return address as "Harley's Detective Agency" in New Orleans. There is no Harley, no agency, no nothing at the return addresses. Jim also sends cards to people's wives. One said: "Sorry, couldn't make it this time. My wife came along." One of Harley's better efforts at postal assassination was this gem, sent from Toronto: "Thanks for your help with the bail money. You done better by me than President Nixon did by his boys for doing about the same thing. If I get the book thrown at me later, I'll ride it out, but I want a written agreement on the money and I don't want you saying ugly things about me in the papers if they learn about your personal role in this." From Cleveland, Jim Boren sent David Williams this postcard: "The cops found your name and address in one of the girls' diaries. They may be in touch soon. -- A friend." This next stunt is also accomplished through the mail. Posing as a medical researcher, Elmer Surehe says, you can probably con some crablice eggs from a supply house, for a price, of course. The eggs are inserted with an innocuous business letter into an envelope addressed personally to the mark. When the mark opens and unfolds the letter, the lice eggs drop onto his/her clothing and surroundings. It would make sense that nothing in this letter connect back to you, of course. Some people have used the name and return address of another mark. The resulting confusion will ensure that two marks are unhappy. A critic felt that this tactic would be unfair because an innocent secretary, business associate, or spouse might intercept the letter and receive the dose. Two observations -- first, people shouldn't read personal mail addressed to other people; and second, sometimes the innocent must scratch along with the guilty. A pulled-punch version of the lice-eggs letter is to use itching powder instead. It's easily available from novelty stores, or you can make your own following the directions printed in some of the formula books available. Sneezing powder is another alternative. A suggestion for a nastier ingredient came in from a former agent of the American intelligence community who got paid a lot of money for planning and implementing things like this. He suggests a chemical tear-gas powder heavily laced into an envelope, noting, "It will clear a mailroom or an office in minutes." ========== MAIL DROPS ========== These are essential if you're going to carry on any sort of correspondence with a mark or with suppliers of services and equipment. Depending upon the circumstances, you will need either a postal box or a regular street-address mail drop. Post-office boxes may be obtained in any name, although you will have to present some identification documenting your "identity." If your scam is a short-termer, pick an apartment with many little boxes. Choose an empty one, claim it for the duration, and have it checked daily. Put in your little name card and use that exact address on your returns. The mail-delivery person doesn't know or care who comes and goes. Or you can have a very cool and trusted friend front their address as you as a mail drop. However, this person must be prepared and capable of carrying off a very plausible denial. You'd better think this one through before involving another person. Deniability can be a tough rap for an amateur. ======== MARRIAGE ======== Marriage (catch) Carol Sludge and a friend decided they should stage manage an entire wedding for a mark. So they did. She handled the gown and bridesmaids' goodies, and he did the satorial bit for the men. They got invitations and arranged for a church, a reception hall, a caterer, and an orchestra. They did it all in the name of the mark and his fictious spouse to be. They chose a time when the mark was on vacation to send out invitations for the Sunday the mark was due back in town. Everyone showed up for the ceremony -- everyone but the "bride and groom." Guests were somewhat miffed, and merchants and others descended upon the mark at his place of business Monday morning, wanting to be paid for goods and services. Beyond that, what do you turn to after the old standard buns of wrecking the marriage ceremony have been batted around the bachelor-party table? Here are some quickie suggestions, brought to you by the Reverend Robby Gayer: 1. Hire a woebegone lady with a young child to troop into the reception and confront the groom-mark with the question of his continued child-support payments. 2. Hire an outstandingly healthy young wench who is just brimming over with sensual physical charm. She should cause heads to turn if she's costumed correctly as she vamps up to the groom-mark and plants wet soul kisses on him, cooing, "Don't forget our past, love. And when you're tired of that little girl next-door, you know where to find me." As she leaves, she stage whispers, "Last [night, week, whatever] was just super. Don't be such a stranger -- you're too much man for that." 3. Call the church office before the ceremony and say that a crazed ex-lover of the bride plans to destroy the reception. Just as the reception begins, arrange to have many M80s or grenade simulators exploded. 4. Consider bringing additives into play with the punch and the food. 5. Hire someone, grief stricken at the loss of the bride or groom, to messily and dramatically "attempt suicide" at either the ceremony or the reception. Be sure to have associates to carry the victim out quickly for "medical attention." 6. Hire someone to become physically sick during the ceremony or the reception. With luck, you can get a member of the wedding party to do this. 7. Use many additives in the groom-mark's drinks during the prenuptial bachelor party. 8. Hire someone to slowly and dramatically flash the minister for the back of the church while everyone else is facing front. This also works well if there is a singer in the choir balcony. Try to upset him or her during a song. 9. Call the state police or the drug-enforcement people and give them a complete discription of the car that will carry the bridal couple on the honeymoon. Report that the couple and the car are really dope mules, that is, couriers of the drug trade. ===== MEDIA ===== The mass media -- newspapers, radio, television, and magazines -- can be helpful tools in getting even, or they can be your mark in a dirty trick. I suggest you keep your media-as-tool aspect relegated to local events and local media. In general, newspapers tend to be conservative and stodgy and not much interested in your rousing of the rabble. Most newspaper officials play golf with corporate officials, and their common bond are advertising and profits. Television likes good, visual consumer stories, and local TV stations will go for local controversy more often than will local newspapers. Here are some basic suggestions for using the media to help you in your getting-even campaigns. If the editor says the event is news, then it goes out to the public as news. People don't make news; editors make news. To impress editors you have to keep coming up with fresh action. You have to be visual, outrageous, funny, controversial, and brief. Your message has to be catchy, visual, and packaged to fit ninety seconds of time in the six- or eleven-o'clock news slot. It's no wonder long-winded academics end up with "Viewpoint," or "Talk Out" at 3:00 o'clock Monday morning. They don't know how to use TV. Now, how do you get even with the media when they deserve it? There are several things you can do: O Take or phone in a fake wedding story, being sure to give them a legitimate-looking bride-groom photo. It doesn't matter who the people in the picture really are. Most smaller and medium-sized papers will publish without checking, which could lead to all sorts of wonderful things if you've been inventive in your choice of marriage partners. O Use a low-power mobile transmitter to add little bits of original programming to your community's commercial radio station. Some people did this in Syracuse, New York, and drove officials crazy with hilariously obscene fake commercials, news bulletins, etc. O Newspapers often have huge rolls of newsprint in relatively unsecured storage areas. It is a low-risk mission to insert paper-destroying insects or chemicals into those rolls. O Some small radio stations are often loosely attended at night. Often, only the on-duty DJ is around, and even he will have to go to the can sometime. You might be able to wait until then or have an accomplice distract that DJ while you place a prerecorded cassette with a message of your own choosing on the air. O With smaller newspapers, it is sometimes easy to get phony stories and/or pictures published. Using you imagination, you can certainly cause a variety of grief with their crime. According to media consultant Jed Billet, if you have a financially weak radio station in your area, you can often place ads for your mark over the telephone. Agreeing, Eugene Barnes recalls, "A couple of years ago, I wanted to get back at a doctor who'd really screwed up my family with some terrible behavior in a business dealing. So I designated him as my mark and had him 'open a pizza business.' I called the radio station and had them run a saturation campaign of twenty-five spots per day listing his name and home address and telephone number, plus all sorts of promotional gimmicks, like free delivery, free Coke, stuff like that. He had to have his telephone disconnected for a week. The station ran the ads for a day and a half before the doctor got them pulled. He had 'customers' off and on, though, for the next ten days." Newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV are businesses, very concerned about their profit-and-loss statements. Sales, both of advertising and of audience for that advertising, are vital to the media. Knowing this, old media hand Ben Bulova has a scheme that works well most of the time. "Most newspapers will start a subscription with a telephone call," Bulova says. "You call in and order a subscription in your mark's name and address." The next step, Bulova explains, is to call the mark and, using the real circulation manager's name, tell him that you are with the circulation department of the newspaper and that they're going to give the mark a free trial subscription. That way, when the papers start to arrive, the mark thinks they're free. When the bill arrives, the mark will call the real circulation person. That conversation would be interesting to hear. Bulova says that this will work with magazines and trade publications, as well. He advocates an entire string of such gifts. ======= MEDICAL ======= Either steal real medical test-report forms from a hospital, clinic, or laboratory or have a friend get them for you. If this doesn't work, a trusted printer will make some for you. You will also need matching return-address business envelopes to mail the reports to your mark. Get some technical advice from a medical textbook or a very trusted friend with a medical background, then prepare a series of embarrassing lab reports for your mark. This could include positive identification of such problems as venereal disease, drug dependence, cancer, yeast infection, or mental illness. The mailing of the bogus report must be coordinated with a telephone call to the mark's spouse, employer, parents, parole officer, etc. Doctor Milo Weir, who helped with this idea, recommends that multiple copies of the diognostic report copy could be sent to public-health officials, and a drug-problem might go to the state narcotics bureau. If you're waiting in a doctor's examining room you will probably see all sorts of goodies stacked around -- syringes, common drugs, medical equipment, maybe a diploma or two. A couple of Yippies said they used to make appointments complaining of vague symptoms just so the could rip off goodies. Beyond simple pilferage, the opportunity exists here for introducing additives to various products. This should tickle the fancy of those true sadists among you. It comes from the Olde Medical Almanak of Doctor Jerrold Andurson. He removes some of the Preparation H from the regular container and refills that with tabasco sauce. Andurson guaratees that this will give your hemorrhoidal mark one of the hottest seats she/he could feel. Andurson adds, "That reminds me of the observation made by the man who caught his genitalia in a bear trap. He said that the second worst pain in his life came when he came to the end of the trap's chain." One summer, Will Gressle had the misfortune to be incarcerated in a hospital wing run by a nurse who made Doctor Josef Mengele seem like Santa Claus. An easygoing sort, Gressle was driven to revenge by this nasty Brigadier of Bedpans. Here's what he did about it. "In late November I was visiting my uncle's ranch in Idaho, where he raises a few sheep. I got about seven pounds of farm-fresh sheep droppings and put it carefully in an opaque, airtight plastic sack," he relates. "I put that in a box, wrapped it in bright Christmas paper, and stuck little happy-face and Christmas decals all over it. Then I wrapped all that in heavy brown paper and mailed it to the nurse, in care of the hospital. I put a fake return address on the package and a few holiday stickers on the outside, too. "I'm sure the parcel arrived at the hospital, where they have a little tree in each wing and a small exchange of presents. It is my sincere hope that Nurse Nasty unwrapped my gift in front of a lot of nurses, doctors, and patients. She would finally get to the bag of sheep shit and a little note, which read, 'Just returning a tiny little bit of what you are so fond of dishing out in great amount,' signed, 'A Former Inmate.'" Considering that the major side effect of medical treatment these days is terminal bankruptcy, it is little wonder that the medical institutions and personnel have become the target of so much getting-even thinking. In speaking with people on both sides of this fight, I have concluded that there are only limited stunts you can direct against these specific targets. Yet the range of regular stunts presented in a dozen other chapters of this book are as effective against medical institutions and people as against any other subject -- perhaps more so, given the self-held exalted status of the medical community. For example, it's one thing if your mark is a contractor and suffers from a venereal disease because of your getting even -- but think how it would work for a doctor! Gossip travels fast in the medical corridors. However, if you are thirsting for a few little goodies to toss at the medical community, here's a mini-list of suggestions: O Leave dead vermin at strategic points of a particular medical facility -- near the coffee shop, the kitchen, the emergency room, the visitor's lounge, etc. O Dressed in whites or other appropriate uniform, slip in with cafeteria or kitchen help and put some harmless food coloring into foods. Or if you can get in to where the staff food is prepared, more powerful additives may be used. O Borrow some medical-insurance identification from a cooperative friend or otherwise obtain someone else's identification. Use this to charge medical bills, either real or imaginary. The point is to get bills sent to a totally innocent or totally unaware third party. If it's your friend, he or she is part of the scam and will pretend to be outraged about the whole business. Either way, the medical facility is the real mark.