Its party time!

[Lit...@dish.com]

PARTY TIME

It's always fun to drop into a number of what I call olde phart
bars -- the seedy downtown places where
drunken men hang around from morning to evening, pouring down oceans
of booze but never seeming to get
falling-down drunk. The place stinks, and they stink. It's a great
place to make up a guest list for your
mark's party.

Have a couple of beers and talk with the old duffers, unless
everyone's uptight about a stranger being
there. Usually, though, old pharts in bars are friendly. After a bit
of social ice has been clinked, tell them
about a keg party "you're" having. Obviously, you use the mark's name
and give his address. Early Sunday
afternoon is a good time to schedule the party.

If you hit enough bars on Saturday and talk to enough old drunks,
your mark should have a helluva
wingding show up at his house Sunday afternoon, all hung over and
roaring to get started again. Salud!

Remember Donald Segretti, Richard Nixon's unofficial classless
clown? Apparently, he could have easily
written this book from memory. In any case, Segretti came up with a
party "on behalf of" the late Hubert
Humphrey, thought to be a threat to Nixon back in 1972. Segretti
printed up thousands of invitations to a
luncheon with Humphrey, set for 1 April in Milwaukee. He had the
invitations
distributed all over the black ghettos of that city.

They read, "FREE! -- All you can eat -- lunch with beer, wine or
soda. With
Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, Lorne Greene, Mrs. Martin Luther King."
He gave
a time and place, too. Of course, there was no lunch, no drinks, and
no people
there other than hundreds of hungry, thirsty, and highly irritated
people. Should we
say they were non-Humphrey voters?

The next stunt demands that you or your personal agent arrive at
a party thrown by the mark. Among
your mark's other munchie dishes you should include a selection of
candied laxatives. You can serve a
commercial product, which is already adequately disguised as candy, or
you can make your own by coating
and/or coloring stronger constipation-relief medicines. Be creative
with the disguise. The result of having
people eat mittfuls of these bowel busters is breathtaking.

Woolsey Newcomer and Enos Pomerene remember a party a number of
years back in which a barrel of
beer washed down the thirst of the folks gobbling bogus candy, which
was really a powerful laxative.

"The digestive hell began the morning after the party and lasted
up to four days for some people,"
Woolsey recalled. "The guys had been stuffing those laxatives in
their mouths and washing it all down with
some draft beer. What a combination! We had some sick folks."

Woolsey always wondered who had infiltrated the candy dish.

A more subtle relation to the dish full of laxatives is to get a
candy mold from a confectionery-supply
house. These are usually in the form of little animals, Santas, etc.
Molds for chocolate Easter bunnies are
probably the most common example. You simply melt a little bit of
real chocolate and a good bit of
chocolate laxative together, fill the mold, and turn out some homemade
candy with an explosive punch to it.

Finally, if you know your mark is having a party any given day or
night, that would be a splendid time to
cause the utilities to be shut off or otherwise disrupted.
Contemporary civilized socializers just can't handle
disruption of modern conveniences like power and water, and they tend
to remember the host/hostess (your
mark) and identify him/her with the failure. It's a good, subtle,
nasty trick.

PEN PALS

Men are fools when it comes to being conned by the game that
proceded even prostitution. For
example, if you could create a fictional lady, she could be as
seductive as you wanted her to be. After all, to
the mark she is an image brought on by the words you put down on paper
or maybe use on the telephone.
You want him to become her pen pal.

As this scam progresses, you hope the emphasis will turn to
personal matters. It's even more fun if the
mark is married, because then he'll make a bigger ass of himself.
Your fictional pen-pal lady must build a
desire in the mark, by doing just what comes so naturally.

The climax is an assignation setup in an exotic city as far away
as reality will allow. Setting up this sting
calls for teasing creativity and all sorts of facades like flowers,
hints of gifts, Fredrick's of Hollywood
apparel, bogus sexy Polaroids, etc.

The next to last thing you will do in this stunt is discontinue
your post-office box or whatever mail-drop
address you were using for his return messages. The last thing you
will do is mail, call, or telegraph this final
message, "Meet you at the Sin City Hotel, suite 625, tonight at 10
P.M. I'll have the tub and me all warm
and wet."

Naturally, only one of you will arrive, and he'll hardly be in
the mood to start without "you."

PERSONAL

You can easily turn your mark into a fabled thief, according to
former private detective Trowridge
Bannister. You need a full-face photo of your mark, plus a furtive
longer shot of the type usually taken by
surveillance cameras. Take these pictures and your WARNING copy to a
trusted printer to get some
posters made.

Bannister explains: "You make up posters warning
mechants and customers to be
on the lookout for the mark. Display his name and
picture on the poster in a prominent
location, along with the big headlines about this
person's being a thief, shoplifter, or
pickpocket. A small amount of copy could explain some
brief history of your mark's
criminal career. Make it sound realistic -- don't get
cute. Sign the thing by the local
community's merchants association or something like
that."

Bannister says the final step is for you to take
these posters to various stores and
carefully post them around the stores. Avoid being seen. Doing this
in a large shopping mall or in a busy
downtown area ensures tha thousands of local citizens will get your
message about the mark.

You could use the same tactic and mark your mark as a sex
offender, child molestor, or worse...a
pornographer.

You can write horrible "news" stories about your mark and have
your printer set them in newspaper
style, complete with column-length lines and, perhaps, border rules
and datelines. You should make the
dateline a town in which your mark fomerly lived. In these bogus news
stories, she/he could be the subject
of almost any sort of exercrable activity, such as child molesting,
sexual perversion, child abuse, killing
kittens, starving and beating puppies, poaching fawns, self abuse in
public, and on and on.

Naturally, the more authentic you make the story, the better the
scam will go when you send Xerox
copies to the mark's employer, family, and friends. Have your mail
postmarked from the mark's former city
and include a short note from "a friend who thinks you ought to know
the truth."

During World War II, the British SOE made use of a harassing
substance that became known as "Who,
Me?" It was later adopted by the American OSS. Essentially, it was a
tube of obnoxious-smelling liquid that
would be squirted onto an enemy's clothing or body during some time
that would not cause alarm, such as
while she or he was sleeping or bathing, or during the jostling of a
crowd. Exposed to the air, the liquid
immediately gave off the pungent odor of strong, fresh human feces.

The product was manufactured by Federal Laboratories near
Pittsburgh under an OSS contract. It
proved to be quite satisfactory and, as it was packaged, a user could
eject one cubic centimeter of Who,
Me? as a thin liquid stream at distances of up to ten feet. There was
little danger of self contamination if it
was handled properly.

According to OSS records, two different formulas were used -- a
fecal odor for the European theater
and a "skunky/body" odor for the Pacific theater. The research-backed
reasoning is that because the
Japanese often used human wastes as agricultural fertilizers, they
would not be as sensitive to the odor as the
Germans. Both forms were found to be "noticeably lasting for well
over a day, despite frequent washings."

You probably want to know if you can buy surplus Who, Me? from
your local army-navy outlet. No,
but you can produce it yourself using the following formula:

919 g. mineral white oil 20 g. skatol 20 g. n-butyric
acid 20 g. n-valeric acid 20 g.
n-caproic acid 1 g. amyl mercaptan

That will produce a kilogram of the fecal-smelling liquid. You
could alter the amounts to produce as
much or as little as you think you'll need. If you prefer the skunky
odor, here's the formula on a
relative-percentage basis:

65 percent mineral white oil 10 percent butyric acid 10
percent mercaptan 15 percent alpha
ionone

Another great pretender to aroma of woodpussy is
3-methyl-1-butane-thiol. It is easily obtainable in
chemical-supply stores and smells almost as terrible as the real
thing.

If you are assertive enough to get the chemicals and mix up of a
batch of composition, you probably
already have the applicator selected and don't need further help. If
not, use this as a lesson in becoming
more self-sufficient. Happy squirting.

If you're too insecure to become a home chemist, you could obtain
some formaldehyde, which is
popularly known as embalming fluid. This stuff is bad news. It
stinks and cna burn your skin. According to
some folks, if enough of it gets into the air it will vaporize. If
this takes place in a room, that room will be
cleared of all breathing objects for several hours.

Being a liquid, formaldehyde may be squirted from any appropriate
applicator. It is fairly devastating
stuff, but you can get it in small amounts if you are involved in
biological or chemical experiments.
Sometimes, a white lab coat makes a good cover when you go shopping in
a drugstore or medical-supply
house outside your neighborhood or town.

A bit more personal, but nowhere near as dangerous, is to dip
your fingers in warm water, come up
behind you mark, and as you deliver an ear-shattering sneeze, fling
the water on the mark's neck or back.
This works well with backless dresses, at the pool, or almost
anywhere, for that
matter. Escape may be a vital concern here, depending on your mark's
sense of
humor.

If your mark is one or both members of a young couple, Dana
Bearpaw had
a policy of calling the parents of one or both. Playing the role of
an older, irate
neighbor, he would shout, "Look, I don't care how much [description of
carnal
activity to be left up to the discretion of the caller] your
son/daughter engages in
with every male/female/whatever every damn night. Just keep them out
of our
backyard when they're doing it. If you're any kind of a parent you'll
talk to them about all this."

Parents usually take this sort of thing to heart...which causes
all sorts of communications and credibility
problems with their youngsters.

If you want to endear your mark to his/her neighbors, go to the
local library and consult the
street-address or cross-reference city directory to learn who your
mark's neighbors are and their phone
numbers. If you can't find such a directory in a more rural area,
just drive and list names from mailboxes.

Later, call some selected neighbors using your mark's name and be
sure you identify yourself as a close
neighbor. Then, launch into something like, "I want to come over and
talk to you about [Communism,
homosexuality, child pornography, drug legalization, busing,
whatever]. I want you to sign a petition
demanding fair treatment under the law for [whatever topic you've
chosen]."

Be pushy and really work to make your mark's reputation a
deserved one.

Many times women are certain their men are out somewhere adding
significantly to the statistical rate for
sexual infidelity. When one lady had absolute proof of her man's
bombastic bedding habits with other ladies,
she devised a scheme that would guarantee his sticking around. On one
rare night when he was in their bed,
his mate waited until he had fallen into his usual deep sleep, then
gently applied one of the new superglue
products to both his penis and his leg and held the two together for
the short bonding time so well advertised
on television.

No elephant, tractor, or pro footballer could break that bond.
It took the delicate skill of the family
physician to make the separation, a move matched that afternoon by the
vendicted lady, who also cut out on
her very sore ex-man.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Ask any competent photographer who also has some sense of humor,
about composite photographs.
They're easy to make -- the tabloids used them for years. It's a
photo where someone has been added to a
group, someone's face has been used on the body of another person, or
an entirely new photograph is
created simply by using composite parts.

This is a very useful dirty trick and one that bears the stamp of
approval of the CIA and the FBI.

Unless you're competent in photography, including copying,
darkroom technique, and minor retouching
and airbrushing, or unless you have a very trusted friend who will
help you, you'd best forget this one.
However, done well, the uses of composites are limited only by your
imagination. Here are some examples
passed along by some of the sources of this book:

o A "photo" showing the mark leaving a motel room with a person of
the opposite sex.

o A "photo" sent anonymously to the police showing the mark or the
mark's vehicle engaged in some
illegal activity -- like poaching, dealing drugs, or corrupting
the morals of minors. Be sure the license
number of the vehicle of visible.

o A "photo" showing the mark's spouse nude and in a compromising
pose with a companion --
human, animal, or whatever.

o A "photo" showing the mark in a compromising situation with a
person of the same sex could be
sent to the mark's employer. This will surely mark your mark a
gay who will live in infamy.

Like other topical areas in this book, this one is strictly a
technical suggestion. You will have to furnish
the motive, rationale, and application for your own photographic
nastiness.

POLITICS

As public jesters from Jerry Rubin to Jerry Ford to Hunter
Thompson to Frank Rizzo to Nobody have
discovered, any fool with twenty-five dollars and twenty-five
signatures can run for public office. As Rubin
asks, "What better way to make fun of the political system than to run
for public office?"

He's right. It gives you a legal platform to attack and ridicule
the institutions and people who deserve
such attention. If you have either sophisticated or totally rustic
local media, and know how to manage and
manipulate media people, you will get oodles of free publicity. That
isn't very difficult, as many people
demonstrate daily.

Neil Mothra, who understands politicians, came up with this
stunt. If your mark is a candidate or
political VIP, if his coterie doesn't know you, and if it's a very
hot, shirtsleeve day, you're all set. Slip into
the meeting or reception area, walk briskly up to the mark, and offer
politely, "May I take your coat, sir?"
The impression is that you are going to hang it up for him. It will be
best if you are dressed up or in some
form of institutional-looking uniform. You simply take the coat away
with you. If you also have the person's
wallet, you must do what you think is best and most honest to all
concerned.

One of the grandest tricks of all time happened in 1960, when a
beaming crook named Richard Nixon
was posing in San Francisco's Chinatown with a group of Chinese
youngsters holding a large banner spelling
out a slogan in native characters. The photo ran locally and was
picked up by both wire services and
network television and disseminated to the entire nation.

The very next day, a worried staffer told canidate Nixon the
Chinese banner had said, "What about the
Hughes Loan?" It was a reference to the Howard Hughes cash payoff to
Nixon's brother Donald, in the
form of a "loan." At the same time, Nixon found out
that thousands of fortune
cookies had been passed out at the same rally, each
containing the same message,
this time in English: "Ask him about the Hughes
Loan."

The antics of Donald Segretti, court jester to
the Committee to ReElect the
President (CREEP) in 1972, should fill your
imagination with enough fertilizer to
devise tactics of your own, should you wish to
advise a political candidate.

For example, during the Florida primary, one of Segretti's
raiders paid a young lady twenty dollars to
streak naked outside Ed Muskie's hotel room, shouting, "I love Ed
Muskie!" and "Father my child, Ed!"
During a Muskie picnic, a Segretti trooper had a chemist mix up a
batch of butyl percaptan, which is, as you
know, a grossly foul, stinking mess. The after-action report to
Segretti noted that among the guests,
"everybody thought the food was bad."

If the bigshot candidate is having one of those
hundred-dollar-a-plate fundraisers, your candidate should
hold a ninety-nine-cent, blue-collar special -- chipped-ham or
bologna-and-cheese sandwiches. Blue paper
plates and cups would contrast nicely with the power establishment's
fancy eatery. The theme could be
"Why pay a hundred dollars for bologna from [other candidate]?"

Here's some further nastiness at the expense of three marks -- a
politician, the Postal Service, and the
citizen you've chosen. You secure a franked postal envelope from your
political mark. Carefully steam and
remove the original mailing-address label. Using a rented or public
IBM electric typewriter, carefully type in
the name of your citizen mark on an IBM address label. Stick this
label on the envelope.

The rest of this stunt depends on how nasty you are and how much
revenge you feel you must squeeze
from the mark(s). Some general suggestions for the contents of this
envelope include: Heavily anti-Semitic
propaganda for a Jewish mark; fanatical antireligious material for a
religious sort; very explicit pornography
for a very straight person; homemade Polaroid photos featuring
closeups of dead pet animals -- roadkills
and mutilations -- for sensitive animal lovers; Polaroid closeups of
genitalia, both human and animal, for very
proper people; and on and on.

Most marks will blame all this on the person whose return address
is on the envelope -- the political
candidate.

Congressmen (there are rarely Congresswomen) have postal franking
privileges that allow them a lot of
free mail. A longtime politician baiter, Ted Shoemaker, decided to
help a least-favored Congressman.
Obtaining a franked envelope from his own mailbox, Shoemaker had a
printer duplicate the postage-free
envelope. By the way, this is a serious federal crime. He also
prepared a mailing in which the
ultraconservative congressman announced his backing for abortion and
legalized marijuana, saying, "Times
have changed, and we old farts have to change with them." Further,
the letter had the politician saying, "You
get drunk on booze -- why not let the kids get high on pot? You cheat
on your spouse -- why not let the
kids get a little free fun too?"

As you might imagine, the constituency was terminal Bible Belt.
Shoemaker addressed, stuffed, and
mailed a thousand of these messages, including copies to many media
outlets. It only took two days for the
old pol to claim fraud, but by that time the bogus letter had received
lots of media attention, and more than a
few old voters had made up their minds their good old boy was actually
guilty of the whole thing anyway.

Shoemaker says, "He may have gotten some sympathetic backlash,
though. This kind of thing can
backfire, so be careful."

Barclay Skinner, the activist who championed women for membership
in the National Jaycees,
developed a frothing dislike for an especially weasel-like political
candidate. This man's major credentials
were that he'd served as a legal advisor for the Warren Commission,
which tells you a lot about his lack of
honor, intelligence, and integrity.

Skinner hired an actor who was a real lookalike for this
politician and had the ringer travel the state giving
speeches and press conferences in the real politician's name. The
actor made all sorts of oddball,
controversial, and asinine statements. He insulted local leaders,
heroes, and institutions. He came off as a
real sphincter.

Because the real politician was not really well-known either
personally or visually, the impersonation
worked well for the planned week. The real candidate found out about
this and tried to stop it, but he was a
week too late. He did not do well on election day. By that time,
Skinner and his actor friend had faded
back into the shrouded mists of heroic anonymity.

"Ah, politicians, God's unchosen people!" Skinner beamed.

PORNOGRAPHY

Buy some really sleazy skin magazines -- ones featuring kiddie
porn, animals, etc. Use an IBM
typewriter and some pressure-sensitive mailing labels to prepare phony
address labels in your mark's name.
Place them on the porno magazines. You can start by leaving a few
magazines in doctors' or dentists'
waiting rooms, Sunday-school reading rooms, and the periodical shelves
of your local library. The public
will think your mark is passing along his used literature.

You might also get some paste-over copyright stickers printed
with your mark's name and address. Buy
some raunchy porno, put the stickers in somewhere on the title area,
then take the goods to local grade
school and junior high school areas and sell them to the children. Do
this
only once. If you do get caught, swear the mark paid you to
distribute his
pornography.

This tactic is best used against bluenose censors and others who
would
impose their own personal beliefs upon you under penalty of law.
According to civil libertarian Townsend McFerrick, this piece of
counter-propaganda is almost always
effective against the personal outrages of puritanical dictators.

POSTAL SERVICE

M.J. Banks once sent her mother a Bible via the U.S. Postal
Service. By the time it arrived, seven of the
Ten Commandments were broken.

If you like your mail deliverer but dislike the U.S. Postal
Service, Loren Eugene Sturgis has good news
for you. He feels that ordinary citizens are already subsidizing the
big corporations and their junk-mail
advertising. He fights junk mail, which we'll get to in a moment.
But, here is one of Loren's ways of cutting
down on your own personal postal overhead.

Use Elmer's glue to coat the surfaces of stamps. This substance
defeats the cancellation imprint enough
that when you soak the stamp in lukewark water, both the Elmer's and
the cancellation ink come right off.
Then you reglue the back of the stamp and use it again and again and
again. This is a real money-saver for
those who use a lot of postage, Loren points out. Your local
postmaster would also point out how illegal
this stunt is. Whom would you rather believe?

Rufus and Ruthie Luv are true rebels. Ruf used to work for the
postal service, and he claims that
automatic sorting machines really can't tell stamp denominations. For
example, he said letters do go through
with Easter Seals in place of stamps. He also suggests placing your
stamp in the lower
right corner. That way, the automatic canceling device will miss it
and someone can reuse the stamp.

The U.S. Postal Service also furnishes you with games you can
play with your mark. If you've ever
moved, you know how happy USPS is to give you change-of-address cards.
OK, you get such card and
change your mark's address. It would be good if you had his mail sent
to another state. Don't get exotic,
though; keep it simple. Use a larger city, like Los Angeles, since
this increases the likelihood of further
screw-ups as the mark attempts to straighten out the mess when he
discovers his mail is no longer arriving.
You can double the trouble by changing both home and business
addresses. Stop a few moments and think
how fouled up your own life would be if your mail was suddenly
diverted and possibly lost. It's just a
thought....

THE POWER CARTEL

When Metropolitan Edison had to raise money shortly after being
embarrassed by its nuclear tinker toy
at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, the premier psychic semiologist
Doctor John McManmon joked that
they offered to sell used matches as an alternative power source.

In a far more deadly vein, Eddie Gast doesn't regard the giant
utility companies as public services. He
sees them as powerful monopilies who buy legislators, judges, and
commission officials as human
investments toward larger profits for the big stockholers.

"They don't deserve mere dirty tricks," says Gast. "Out-and-out
sabotage is all they understand. The
ecotage raiders had the answers -- cut power lines and blow up
towers."

Gast also advocates shooting insulators, trashing vehicles and
other power-company equipment, and
terrorizing their service workers.

"I also show people how to doctor their home meters to cut way
back on the amount of money paid for
electricty. Anyone can learn how -- a guy even has a book out on it
[John Williams, STOPPING POWER
METERS, available from Loompanics]. Do unto them before they do unto
you, I say."

Asked if this doesn't inconvenience and even hurt innocent
people, Gast says it does, but they must learn
who the enemy really is.

Other tricksters are less radical. Osborn Milteer suggests that
most of the tricks pulled on the telephone
and oil companies will work as well on the power giants.

"Leave the small rural co-ops alone, though," says Milteer.

Surprisingly, Gast agrees, adding, "The rural co-ops are the way
things should work. The people really
do own them. I want to destroy the mammoth corporations -- the
monopolies who own nuclear plants and
oil companies and act as if they own our government, too."

For example, J.W. Burke, Jr., writes from Virginia to explain the
monopoly between the State
Corporation Commission and the VEPCO (the Virginia Power Company). He
explains that in the middle of
May 1979 VEPCO filed for a rate increase of nine million dollars
citing financial losses caused by the
temporary shutdown of two nuclear units by the federal government.
They had already just had a huge
increase in March. Without a whimper, the Virginia "regulatory"
agency gave in.

According to Burke, that's not the end. Less than a week after
getting the nine million, the VEPCO
powers came around asking for an additional nine million.

A mite upset, Burke exploded, "They [VEPCO] don't give a shit
about public relations, and they don't
need to, because the newspapers here won't even squeak about this.
VEPCO also has the State
Corporation Commission in their pocket.

"It's worth noting that the SCC has never turned down a VEPCO
rate-increase request. We have a lot
of getting even to do here in the Old Dominion."

The power cartel is as vunerable to the same getting-even tricks
as are deserving institutions and persons
mentioned in other sections of this book.

PRINTER

You've noticed that a friendly, trustworthy, and perhaps devious
printer has been your staunch associate
in so many tricks. A printer can be your best friend, and having
access to one or more totally trusted
printers is an absolute must for a trickster. There is an old axiom
about the printing business that goes, "We
don't read the writing; we just set the type." Don't trust it.
Instead, trust a friendly printer you know. Often
it is easy to find a printer who thinks as you do. If not, your best
bet is among large printshops in other
cities. Although this is risky, many really don't censor your jobs.
But you're better off to cultivate your own
good offset printer.

Unless your printer is also a good graphic artist, don't rely on
him or her for such services as double
printing, counterfeiting official documents, retouching, or
sophisticated design work. That works calls for a
person who has the specific skills and knowledge to handle it. I
might add that those skills are not all that
tough to pick up. Speaking from experience, a solid background in
advertising and publications work will
give you the specific knowledge and skills.

RAILROADS

If a railroad line has been nasty to you and you want to get
back, you are welcome to follow "Bart's"
advice. A fan of Edward Abbey, "Bart" offers you the following from
his trickster's arsenal. Set the manual
brakes on railroad cars; this will cause a great deal of delay in
checking and rechecking, which ties up
people, time, and money. You can visit the railyard areas on cold,
cold nights in winter and pour lots of
water on the switch points. This freezes the switches, making them
inoperable.

RATS

Here's one where the price just has to be about right. You
invest a few dollars in some Norwegian rats
-- the big, dirty, mean ones. The idea is to get males and females.
Put them in some well-screened rabbit
hutches. Feed them on garbage and swampweeds. These rodents are
cheap to keep, and they multiply
quickly, and they make people really unhappy. Ask a New Yorker about
the Rat Raids of summer 1979! I
am sure the imaginations of many readers have already figured out
creative things to do with all those rats.
Good old Willard, revisited!

RELIGION

If your mark is a religious sort, you could follow the advice of
Lee H. Blakely, who suggests printing up
phony leterheads using your mark's name, address, and telephone number
under the imprinteur of a group
such as Atheists for a Stronger America or Nonbelievers Against God or
Gays Against God.

Blakely continues, "You then mail really bitchy letters to local
TV stations demanding equal time to make
up for 'Sunrise Sermonette.' You also write letters to local
newspapers. Sometimes, smaller newspapers
don't verify letters that come in on letterheads and are typed well."

From one of my regular religious correspondents, the Reverend
Fleisher McGeary, I learned that
hooligans have been carrying on near his parish in Packer, Alabama.
It seems their trick is to call or visit
one of the local whacko religious sects -- the goofier and more Holy
Roller the better -- and ask them to
come meditate with "you" and your family. Of course, you give them
the name and address of your mark.
Another variant is to suggest that the holy folks roll in during the
mark's office hours and save the staff.
Getting the fix set up here requires a great acting job, lots of
sincerely pious rhetoric, and all that glop. But
according to McGeary, it works.

If the mark is not well-known in his/her neighborhood, you can
call, using the mark's name, and say you
would like to come talk with the neighbor about communism, gay rights,
gun control, interracial sex relations,
or free drugs. The idea here is to be as obnoxious as possible about
the issues. Say that your mark
represents his/her local church.

If the mark is a Grand Liberal, you can use the same tactic, but
turn the topics around -- support for the
death penalty for most any crime, even tougher antidrug laws,
outlawing abortion, and making the ERA
illegal.

RESTAURANTS

It used to be annoying when a waitess accidentally stuck her
thumb in your soup while serving you lunch.
That was before topless waitresses, however.

Suppose you're really fried with a local eatery for charging you
for terrible food time after time, and are
ready to wash your hands of the whole place. Try silver nitrate
instead. If you can introduce a bit of that
chemical into the soap dispenser in the restaurant washroom, you will
have customers and employees furious
with the restaurant. Silver nitrate will leave their hands and faces
unwashably stained to an ugly, erratic
brown color. It does not come off easily.

Harry Katz, a prominent Pennsylvania socialite, frequents many
posh dining establishments in the
company of equally ritzy jet setters. He insists that this scam is
only a practical joke, which may be correct.
However, with a bit of malice aforethought,
someone could easily create a
nasty version. Harry carries with him a supply
of elegantly printed cards. He
spots someone he wishes to hassle and bribes a
waiter to carry one of the
cards over to the mark. The card reads, "The
management requests that you
and your party leave immediately before we have
to call the authorities."

Of course, we don't always have to be so
sophisticated. If there are entire
groups of people you don't like, you can always eat in restaurants
frequented by such people and put salt
into the sugar dispensers or unscrew the tops of the salt and pepper
shakers, so that the next diner gets a
plate full of seasoning. Of course, such stunts are perilously close
to April Fool amateurism, but they do
have some minor harassment value.

If you had a friend who would take care of the tab, you'd take
that friend out to dinner, right? In some
swanky and excellent eatery, order your finest repast. Treat yourself
to the best. About halfway through
your meal, you introduce that friend who's going to take care of your
tab. Your friend is a dead cockroach
that you brought in with you, carried carefully in your jacket pocket.
Place your late friend amid some food
on your plate and then turn on your theatrics. Make a noisy fuss and
express concern about your health and
the restaurant's cleanliness standards, and mutter about your lawyer
filing an action. After this, let the
management talk you into a free meal or two and some drinks.

This next trick will cost a few bucks, but if you consider it as
a perverted investment, the return will be
worth many times the outlay. For example, a small display ad could be
run in either a campus newspaper or
one of the small local newspapers or shoppers. Pick one that isn't
too professional, since they are less likely
to check the veracity of the ad.

The ad promises some fantastic dinner bargain, such as a steak
dinner for two at half price, when the
clipped ad is presented between 6 and 7 o' clock that night. Or
promise an All You Can Eat Special of
roast steamship round of beef for three dollars, with all the
trimmings, also with the clippped ad. Use the
logo of the restaurant with which you are feuding in the ad. Check
their regular ads so your layout looks
authentic. Take it in and tell them you're the new assistant who
handles advertising. Just don't spend too
much time talking or getting remembered. Be prepared to pay cash if
necessary.

Between 6 and 7 P.M. your mark will literally have his restaurant
crammed with very hungry and
soon-to-be-very-unhappy customers. By 8 P.M. the owner could have a
whole lot of ex-customers and an
undeserved bad reputation that will be hard to oevercome. Or the
owner may decide to go along with the
"promise," which will cost her/him a lot of bucks. Finally, there
will be an unpleasant scene with the
newspaper. This scam will also work with local radio stations.

Note, too, that this scam can be turned so that the mark is the
newspaper or radio station.

RICHARD M. NIXON

Richard Nixon has all the charm and warmth of an obscene
Christmas card. Let's remember him always.
For instance, whenever you are asked for your Social Security number
for no good purpose to you, and
when giving a false one will not harm you, give them Richard Nixon's
number. It's the least we can do for all
that he did to us. Richard M. Nixon's Social Security number is
567-68-0515.

RUBBER STAMPS

A stock of "official" rubber stamps is an important part of
documenting authentication. A good sampling
of what you need and what is available may be found in THE NEW PAPER
TRIP, a valuable reference
book for the dirty trickster. Most office-supply stores and many
mail-order outfits sell just about any rubber
stamp you need. You will need rubber stamps.

SECURITY

Mort Sahl once pointed out that people who were afraid of ideas
and thinking would label him an
outlaw. Yet, Sahl, who has a hell of a lot more understanding and
conscience than many people have
brains, says he thinks of himself as a moral sheriff. I think we can
tie into that.

Any person concerned with security needs a supply of chains,
locks, cables, and glues. Sometimes you
need to protect your mark. That might mean chaining his/her car to
the bumper of another car at a party, in
a parking lot, or on the street. A good padlock completes the
picture, and by the time you get some expert
there to release things, everyone is unhappy. If your mark is the
obvious target, then all the victims are
unhappy with him/her, too.

Locks, chains, and cables are great for closing lanes and
driveways, sealing vehicles in or out. They can
keep people in offices, homes, apartments, or even buildings. They
can fasten objects to other objects. The
horizon of your own ideas is not yet even in sight.

SLEEPY TIME

If you want your mark to sleep for a bit you should know that the
fabled Mickey Finn, knockout drops
of grade-B-film fame, is a very real item that you can incorporate
into your dirty tricks. The mysterious
liquid is simply chloral hydrate. Although it is no longer in general
use as a sedative, it is still available. In
addition, you can easily find the formula to produce your own version.
It's a bitter substance, so mix one
gram with several dissolved saccharine tablets before serving. Most
experts also suggest that you use the
chloral hydrate in connection with booze -- a very potent combination.

Another sleepy-time mixture is one capsule of Seconal mixed in
with the marks beer. But as Doctor
Christopher Garwood Doyle cautions, use only one capsule and never use
this drug with someone who is
really loaded or otherwise medically messed up. Seconal is a powerful
downer and can be deadly.

Other than that, according to Doyle, you take one capsule of
Seconal, the hundred-milligram size, and
empty it into a glass of beer. Stir gently and serve to the mark.
Sleep will take him away in about fifteen
minutes.

Sweet dreams.

SLINGSHOTS

Slingshots are useful tools for the dirty trickster. The modern
ones are as different from the
forked-limb-and-inner-tube variety of your youth as a Daisy BB gun is
from a Taser. They aren't even
called slingshots any more. The technocrats have renamed them hand
catapults. I bet Goliath is turning over
in his grave.

Any good sporting-goods store can outfit you with the proper
nylon-and-steel Hand Catapult to carry on
your missions. If you'd prefer to deal through the mail, write to
Wham-O, Box 4, San Gabriel, California
91778. If you want a giant assault model, there's one available,
according to Mike Hoy of Loompanics.
Mike reports that an outfit known as Information Unlimited, Milford,
New Hampshire 03055, sells plans for
a "giant slingshot," which is five feet tall and anchored into the
ground.

I recall some of the boys in my old neighborhood using an
improvised version of the giant slingshot to
propel large fruits and vegetables against the home of the
neighborhood grouch. They used the fork of a
walnut tree and an entire inner tube. A winch drew back the pouch,
which could load several cantaloupes,
pieces of watermelon, a half dozen tomatoes, or combinations of the
above.
Effective hits were scored at about 75 yards, as I recall. Perhaps
this technique
could be put to modern use by means of a mobile weapon.

STICKERS

John Hansen of Boulder, Colorado, takes a more passive but no
less creative approach in his revenge.

"Vexed by poor service in restaurants, vending machines, and
other devices or institutions that take your
money and don't deliver the promised services?" Hansen asks. His
response is called Creative Revenge.

He has had permastick slogans printed to slap on an offender's
premises or equipment. For example, if a
vending machine fails to deliver, Hansen slaps it with a sticker
reading, THIS MACHINE STEALS
MONEY. For restaurants, Hansen has stickers that read, HORRIBLE FOOD,
or LOUSY SERVICE.
The stickers can be placed on the table or counter, or on the windows
and doors of the establishment.

His other stickers include THIS MOVIE RATED BLAH for questionable
cinematic efforts, MY
TAXES PAID FOR THIS? to be placed on examples of government or public
foolishness, FILTHY
RESTROOMS, for either food-service or gasoline stations, and INEPT
NERD for offending civil servants
or irritating store clerks.

For the simpleminded who park supidly in one or more spaces,
Hansen tags their vehicles with WAY
TO PARK, ACE. He has a bunch of NO MORE JUNK MAIL -- RETURN TO SENDER
stickers to
affix to people's mailboxes. Enraged by the oil companies, John
Hansen printed a new sticker for the first
time in mid-1979 -- PRICE GOUGER -- which adorns hundreds of
service-station gasoline pumps. In
many cases, equally irritated station owners are not removing the
stickers.

Hansen has a huge variety of stickers, including examples such as
RIPOFF; PAID UNDER PROTEST;
YES I MIND, DON'T SMOKE; RUDE DRIVER; GAS HOG; and an entire selection
of adult stickers
that feature hilariously nasty slogans whose R rating places them out
of Family Hour. I have used Hansen's
stickers, and they are wonderful. For a worthwhile sample kit, send
$1 to Consumer Comments, Box 175,
Niwot, Colorado 80544.

SUPERMARKETS

Oswald Rankin doesn't like large supermarket chains. He has a
favorite game he plays with them, using
a least favorite acquaintance as an unwitting accomplice. Ossie
explains his game.

"I go to the bulletin board of a store out of my neighborhood and
remove a policy notice from the bulletin
board, since the statement is usually printed on corporate letterhead.
At home, I cut off the letterhead and
with rubber cement, dummy up a blank piece of paper under it to create
a new blank piece of letterhead. I
take this to a self-operated coin photocopy machine and get a few good
copies that are as clean as the
original with no smears or lines showing.

"I call the corporation and learn who a couple of the
vice-presidents are by name. Then I type, very
carefully and professionally, using a rental electric typewriter at
the local library, a very nice letter to several
of my least favorite acquaintances. I tell
each of them they have won some
fabulous prize at their neighborhood
store...like a small color TV set or two
hundred dollars' worth of free groceries,
something like that. I tell them
they should come in Saturday and claim their
prize. I sign the VP's name
and mail the bogus letter.

"They show up, and the local store manager is puzzled. He
doesn't know what to do. It's Saturday, and
he can't call the corporate headquarters. What does he tell the
customers? Will they get upset with him?
With the store? What do you think happens Monday? And beyond?"

Happy Shopping, Oswald Rankin.

If you're upset by a large corporation that owns a dairy, here's
an old trick milk truck drivers used to pull
on each other a few years back, before the mammoth agricorporations
destroyed competition. The driver
for, say, the Udderly Sweet Dairy used a medical syringe to inject a
few squirts of lemon concentrate into
the milk containers of the Joyful Jugs Dairy. The customer who bought
Joyful Jugs milk would find the
product sour as soon as she/he opened the container and would storm
back to the supermarket to sour their
corporate milk. It doesn't take too many stormy customers for a
supermarket to dump all over a dairy.

Today, of course, medical syringes are only a bit tougher to
obtain, lemon concentrate is easily available,
and delivery men don't do this to each other any more because their
bosses are all paid by the same
international holding corporation. But you aren't and can.

I once interviewed a supermarket manager for an article I wrote
on shoplifting. I wanted to find out
whether Homer Husband and Harriet Housewife were boosting expensive
food as a response to zooming
price increases. The very first words out of his mouth were, "Ahhh,
we refer to that sort of activity as
'inventory shrinkage' in this business."

Whatever they call it, a lot of people are doing it.

Abbie Hoffman has some interesting ways of stealing from markets
that have been targeted for whatever
reason:

o Empty out a pound box of the cheapest margarine you can find and
fill it back up with four sticks of the
best butter in the store.

o Sew a bag inside your overcoat to receive cuts of meat. Don't
be greedy; you don't want to look too
bulky.

o Two or three phonograph records can be placed inside one of
those large frozen-pizza boxes.

o Fake an epileptic seizure while your partner, who has already
cleaned out the meat counter, flees during
the confusion.

o According to Hoffman, stolen food tastes a lot better than
store-bought.

SWIMMING POOLS

If your mark has a swimming pool all sorts of additives and
accessories are available for your incursion
into a targeted recreation area. Dyes are a good choice, and there
are many chemicals avaiable to do the
job. Placing colored dye in the water could create quite an expensive
maintenance problem. Heavy doses
of salt will create difficulty for your mark, as will fertilizer and
the bacteria-inducing chemicals sold for septic
systems.

Another swimming-pool additive you could consider is an extract
of toxicodendrol, which is the
nonvolatile oil found in the poison-ivy plant so memorable to legions
of its fans from experiences in camping,
fishing, picnicking, loving, or whatever. If you've ever had a brush
with poison ivy, you can easily imagine
what the concentrated extract could do if introduced into the mark's
swimming pool.

It's not very creative, but you could put dead animals in his/her
pool. That's why you should always keep
several large trash or lawn plastic bags in your car -- you never know
when you're going to happen upon an
especially disgusting piece of roadkill. Generally, for swimming
pools, the larger the dead animal you can
manage to get into the mark's pool the better. Call the zoo; maybe
they'll give you their next dead elephant.
Use a fictitious name and have the animal sent to a safe mail drop!

Some of my acquaintances belong to esoteric military units like
Special Forces, SEALS, Blue Light, etc.
One of them recently told me about a non-issue application of the
orange dye marker solution that is
normally issued for air-sea rescue work.

My friend recalled, "It happened down South, when we were refused
membership in a community
swimming pool because (1) we were military types and (2) two of our
five were black dudes. Since these
civilian bozos were so color conscious, we decided to give the locals
some sensitivity training.

"A friend in Supply got us some orange dye marker, and a week or
so later we pulled a late-night recon
mission into enemy territory. We loaded us their lily-white pool with
orange dye. Man, does that stuff work
-- even better than we thought! It messed up the filters and pumps
something fierce, and it coated the
bottom and sides of the pool this vivid orange. Oh yeah, the whole
pool full of water was ruined too.

"This made local TV coverage, and were the city fathers pissed
off! They figured it was us military types,
but nobody had any courtroom proof. The local hoods were afraid to
mess with us physically, so the whole
thing was a draw. It cost them a few thousand bucks to get the pool
running
again. By then, we'd discovered we could enjoy the base pool anyway.
That
was our contribution to making some bigots a bit less discriminatory."

TEACHERS

Early one morning before their teacher got to the classroom, some
students painted a large black/brown
spot on the ceiling. With some deft art touches, it looked as if a
huge hole had suddenly broken through.
They piled broken plaster, ceiling wire, and hunks of lath on the
floor beneath the hole.

The teacher was a priss, and when he came in and saw the mess he
pranced out to inform the principal.
Quickly, the perpetrators cleaned the water paint off the ceiling and
swept up the floor. They disposed of
the residue and trash on the roof outside of the room.

When the principal and the teacher returned, the students acted
inoccently concerned about the teacher's
sanity. The principal asked the teacher to please stop in and see him
at the first available moment. As he
left, the principal stared at the teacher for a long, long time.

If you don't like a teacher, here's the ticket, according to that
veteran student of human affairs Doug
Dedge. You have to get your mark to a library where they use an
electronic sensor to catch people taking
books out of the place without proper checkout. Locate your mark.
Then go to the periodicals section and
page through several magazines until you locate and remove several of
the metallic sensor strips.

Carefully plant these on your mark or on his/her own books,
briefcase, overcoat, or whatever. The idea
is to get multiple plantings. Perhaps a diversion could be created to
allow you the few seconds needed to
plant the sensors. Stick around and enjoy the fun when the mark tries
to go out the door.

Your planted sensors will set off the bell. This will cause
extreme shock, upset, indignation, and
confusion. With luck, only one sensor will be found at first, and the
mark will try to leave again. Round two
is also yours.

Because teachers deal with children, they are especially
susceptible to child-molesting charges, deserved
or not. Claude Pendejo's son was accused by his teacher of cheating
on a test and given an F. The boy,
who was quite innocent, literally cried his innocence. No one
believed him but his parents. The teacher was
especially insolent about the entire matter, refusing to talk with the
parents. The teachers' union backed their
errant member, and that caused the principal to shy away from the
case.

Claude Pendejo decided that because the teacher had messed up his
son, it was only fitting for the man
to become a molestor of a different sort.

After giving the teacher a couple of months to forget the
incident, Pendejo acted. One morning, each
home in the neighborhood around this school was posted with a brief
letter, run off on a cheap mimeo
machine. The letter stated that the teacher in question had molested
the little child of the letter's grieving
writer -- a scared mother -- and only now did this parent have the
courage to come forth. The "writer" of
the letter said that the teacher had sexually abused her son on four
occasions, and finally the pain and shame
had made him come to his parents for salvation. The "humble mother"
said the police would do nothing, so
she, as a frightened mother, was appealing directly to other concerned
parents for their help in ridding their
neighborhood school of this horrible beast.

Within three days, the man was blamed (wrongly) for an actual
molesting incident totally unrelated to the
scam. Two other kids came forward and "confessed" he had made sexual
advances to them (he had not).
The man was waylaid by two fathers and pushed around, his car was
trashed, and the neighborhood cop
told him he would have his eye on the man. The teacher's wife was a
suspicious sort anyway, and this whole
thing just fed their marital fires. Finally, his supervisor told the
man he was too much of a problem and he
ought to consider either moving away or going into a new line of work.
This happened after the local paper
ran a "guilty or no" story on the whole matter. Since there was no
actual proof, the paper was somewhat
sympathetic to the mark. Eventually, the whole matter burned down to
a few embers of suspicion that
would never die out.

THEFT

Theft and other bits of guerrilla warefare by employees against a
despised corporation have long, deep
roots. Greedy, embittered, politically alienated, or just plain
loose-fingered employees took home an
unauthorized twelve billion dollars in 1979. This bit of larceny is
so easy and requires so little thought that
most experts regard it as little more than another expense of doing
business.

"We figure the cost of a certain percentage of employee theft
right in with our other costs like rent,
advertising, overhead, salaries," says business economist Ivo
Neglagenti. "Most companies add this cost
right into the amounts they charge the public for goods and services."

Does that mean if you steal from your employer you are simply
stealing from yourself? One
anti-corporate guerrilla has a ready response: "Simply steal more
than your share of the cost. Like the old
bromide goes, never steal anything small, and if you do, do it often."

Abbie Hoffman gives you the operational details in his classic
STEAL THIS BOOK. Good luck finding
it, though. It is apparently "out of theft," and no publisher wishes
to reprint it! Try used-book shops. It's an
instructive book.

If you're interested in petty larceny, Loran Eugene suggests you
experiment with various sizes of brass
washers in coin-operated vending machines. If you don't like a
particular newspaper, he suggests you use
number-fourteen washers in their vending machines, remove all the
newspapers, take them into bars and
other places, and sell them yourself.

Braden adds. "Hey, even if the washers don't operate the
machines there's always the hope they will jam
the coin slots. So you don't really lose in any case."

Obviously, some of the radical advocates of rights for ordinary
citizens are both preaching and practicing
theft as a form of fighting back. I was brought up to believe that
stealing is not nice. On the other hand,
maybe some of these antiestablishment tactics aren't really stealing.
I leave the decision to you.

Most modern philosophers recognize a major difference between
theft for fun, for survival, for a career,
and for protest purposes. As the premier corrections officer Wallace
R. Croup points out, "A common thief
will steal from anyone, whereas a protestor will steal only from his
institutional enemy -- a corporation,
utility, or some other establishment target."

Even so, maybe you still have a moral block about theft. If so,
think how thin the dividing line is between
business as usual and stealing. Some of the Detroit auto companies
know that their products are dangerous
death traps; yet they sell them anyway. You pay nine dollars for a
tiny container of a prescription drug. Do
you really believe that the compound drug costs that much? Talk to a
salesperson for a large drug company
if you doubt me. I wish you could see the breakdown of costs in
producing laundry
detergent. I worked in advertising. I saw those figures, and know
how many dollars
you have to pay for how few cents' worth of materials and labor.

There is a very thin line between business and theft.

TOILETS

If you enjoy playing in the potty without blowing one up,
consider this trick. Saturate a large dry sponge
with a thick starch solution. Squeeze it tightly as possible with
tough string. Allow the whole thing to dry
thoroughly. Then remove the string, and the sponge will stay in its
compressed state. Put it, or as many as
you've made into targeted toilets, flush the sponge down, and walk
away from the fun.

It may take a while for the sponge to become wet enough to expand
solidly. Have patience -- it will do
so soon. For your purposes, you probably hope it is farther down the
drainage system than is convenient
for a repairperson to get to easily. Holy backup!

If you have some of that poison-ivy extract left over from the
section on swimming pools, heed Ed
Hoover's story. As a kid, Ed obtained some extract of toxicodendrol
(poison ivy) and applied it liberally to
the toilet paper in the counselors' outhouse at his summer camp. He
said he later did the same thing to the
officers' latrine while serving Uncle Sam. Maybe Ed just has this
problem with authority figures. Even so,
that's a lot more comfortable than the problems his authority figures
got wiped out with.

Mower McMurphy sticks closely to commodes. Like the sticker man
from Boulder, McMurphy has a
very sharp, nasty mind and uses creative revenge. One of his classics
is to have official-looking warnings
printed on permastick stock. When, for some reason, he gets irritated
at someone or something in a bar,
office building, school, or utility, he will post each restroom stall
in the area.

Each sticker bears an official-looking seal and signature around
the message, which reads: DANGER:
THIS RESTROOM OFF-LIMITS DUE TO INFECTIOUS VENEREAL DISEASE. STAY OUT
FOR
YOUR OWN HEALTH PROTECTION.

In another campaign, McMurphy printed up graffiti-style stickers,
which he posted over toilet-paper
dispensers in the bathroom of least-favorite marks. The stickers read:
WARNING: THIS TOILET
PAPER HAS BEEN INFECTED WITH A HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS NEW STRAIN OF ASIAN
GONORRHEA. Uh-huh -- I know what you're thinking. But, would you
really take the chance anyway?

Now, if you wish to be discriminatory, this next trick works best
in a bathroom frequented by women.
According to nationally known sexist Butch Bryant, it is also an old
trick -- cheap bathroom humor, Butch
calls it. A gay sort, though, Butch will always settle for a laugh.
Butch once said, "A cheap thrill is better
than no thrill."

Lift the seat of the commode, then stretch and place Saran Wrap
very tightly across the top of the bowl
so no creases show. Then lower the seat gently. The trap is set.

Ideally, the mark will come dashing in, sit, and let loose. Your
humorous imagination can finish the rest of
this trick, when the trap is sprung, so to speak. Butch Bryant says
this works best in barrom johns.
Anything you say, Butch.