person, a service person, a building inspector, or someone on a work crew.
You can also hire an accomplice in the building, or you can bribe the door
guard.
Suppose you are the victim of a nasty landlord who evicts you for no good
reason. There are lots of legal ways to get your tenant’s rights, but there
are also many quasi-legal and illegal ways that are much more fun. For
example, you could simply “sublet” the place, on your own, to a bunch of
dopers, bikers, drunks, hookers, runaways, or twenty-four-hour party throwers.
Make this extracuricular subletting your going-away surprise.
Another person I know went to the local animal shelter on several
different days and got a total of fifteen cats for twenty-five dollars. He
bought a bunch of cat food and a bushel basket of fish, and filled his bathtub
with water for them. He then nailed every window and door shut from the
inside before crawling out the tiny casement window in the basement. He had
previously nailed the basement door shut behind him. Obviously, he had moved
his things out several days previously. His eviction notice was effective the
next day, but the landlord didn’t check on the house for five days. My God,
what a mistake that man made. To say that that cat house was an uninhabitable
mess is an understatement.
Tim Carroll was tossed out of his apartment by the landlady because one
of Tim’s many lady friends stayed over for the whole entire evening. This
upset the old biddy who owened the building, and being a staunch, God-fearing
charter member of the DAR, she canceled his lease and ordered him to leave the
building.
Displeased with the abitrary and unilateral treatment and the upheaveal
caused by her dubious moral judgement, Tim didn’t get angry; he got even. He
had a trusted friend place a large sign in a hallway window of the landlady’s
apartment building. The seventh-floor window faced a busy business street,
and the sign was quite visible to many hundreds of people.
The sign read: TIM CARROLL SUCKS.
The landlady didn’t see the sign, so two days later, Tim’s friend
positioned another sign, this time in a sixth-floor-hall window.
The second sign read: TIM CARROLL IS A FAG.
The landlady saw both signs and removed them. Two days later, she got a
letter from Tim, with a picture enclosed showing her building with the signs
easily visible. The letter was Tim’s complaint about personal slander and
harassment. He asked her please to desist.
Sometime early the next morning, in time for rush-hour morning traffic, a
new sign went up in the window: TIM CARROLL BLOWS DEAD BEARS.
At 8:30 A.M., the unsuspecting landlady recieved a call from an attorney
friend of Tim’s, citing the original slander and warning the woman against
further incidents. Shaken, she swore her innocence. Ten minutes after
hanging up, he called back, sounding furious because Tim had just called him
about the latest sign. Flabbergasted, the old lady swore she would remove it
and loudly proclaim her innocence.
Another sign went up that afternoon in time for rush-hour the other way:
TIM CARROLL IS A FLAMING HETEROSEXUAL.
The landlady got the lawyer’s call just after dark, when the sign was no
longer visible. She was almost in tears because of his threats to sue. She
begged to just talk to Tim, to tell him none of this was her doing. The
attorney told her that he had advised his client to have no further
discussions with her.
The next day’s sign read: FOR A GOOD LAY, CALL TIM CARROLL.
That evening, a new sign went up. The landlady, frantic, according to
Tim’s friend who was putting up the signs, got to it fifteen minutes after it
went up. The attorney called her five minutes after she go back to her own
apartment.
Tim related, “You might feel almost sorry for the old lady, except that
she had told me earlier that she was going to keep my security deposit and
that I would have to forfeit the month’s rent I had paid in advance because I
had violated the morality clause in my lease. The was no such clause. I
found out she had done this same thing to two other guys a year before and
some guys before that. She also tossed out a couple because they weren’t
married. She’d come into your room when you were gone and snoop, too. That
bugged me.”
No signs went up for the next three days, although the woman checked the
windows every twenty minutes or so. On the fourth day, hundreds of passersby,
accustomed to the signs weren’t disappointed.
The new sign read: TIM CARROLL’S WHOREHOUSE.
Although it took her an hour to discover and remove it, the lawyer friend
of Tim’s didn’t call until the next morning, when a new sign was in the
window: WHOREHOUSE UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT. The landlady’s telephone number was
listed.
A second sign was placed on the sixth-floor window underneath: TIM
CARROLL COULDN’T BEAT THE COMPETITION.
In his best tones, the attorney explained that enough was enough and that
on behalf of his client, Mr. Carroll, he would be filing an action. The woman
was distraught. He told her to have her attorney present for a meeting at
three the following afternoon. He asked her who attorney was and said the
meeting should be in his office. Tim and his attorney postponed this meeting
several times, then told the woman that since she had stopped putting up the
signs, they would hold the suit in limbo for the time.
Reportedly, she monitored the halls and windows of that building
regularly for five months. But more importantly, she also left her tenants to
their own moral lives.
@ENDNODE
@NODE ASSASSINATION “Assassination”
Suppose you have a mark whose ill temper has created problems for you.
Or perhaps this mark is simply an obnoxious nut whose obsessions have cost you
personally. A dentist I know spent many unselfish hours working to get
flouride into his community’s drinking water as a means of fighting tooth
decay in children. An apolitical and highly dedicated professional, he was
concerned only with healthcare for the kids in the community. A hyper,
rightwing zealot jumped on the issue and scared the town council with his
insane babble. He claimed that flouride was a Communist plot to poison
America’s drinking water and minds and that using flouride would lead to LSD
as part of the International Communist Conspiracy. The timid council voted
“no” on flouride.
Beside himself, the young dentist said he surely would like to get back
at the rightwing firebrand but just didn’t know what to do. Sighing, he gave
up his fight and put his time back into his practice. The kids never got
their flouride treatment, and as a result he had a lot of business. It’s too
bad that young dentist never met Maurice Bishop.
In the hypocritical piety following the assassinations of the sixties,
physical security was supposedly tightened to protect the chief executive
chosen by the power brokers who now control the United States. A former
law-enforcement official with a probable intelligence background offered an
astounding dirty trick related to this topic. To protect this source’s
identity we’ll use the cover name of Maurice Bishop.
Bishop says that the CIA, FBI and Secret Service all keep a list of nut
cases, radicals, and others who threaten political figures. Often, these
people are jailed, kept under protective custody, or placed under
twenty-four-hour surveillance by autorities when poltical targets are in the
area. Bishop’s idea calls for theatening telegrams to be sent to the
politician in the mark’s name. At the very least this telegram will bring a
visit by one of the government agencies, and perhaps it will result in a bit
of jail time if the mark loses his/her cool as a result of this dirty trick.
Bishop says this will also work with state officials, bringing a visit
from state police or some other law enforcement official.
@ENDNODE
@NODE AUTO_DEALERS “Auto Dealers”
If an automobile dealership screws you, on either the car, the deal, or
the service, don’t get angry–get even. Wait outside the showroom until a
prospective customer starts talking to a salesperson about the same type of
car you got. Walk right up to the customer and tell him you woeful story.
The idea is to screw up as many sales as you can (it will cost the dealer at
least $5000 for each screw-up). Be factual, be cool, and act as if you’re an
honest citizen trying to save another honest citizen some money and heartache
–as you wish someone had done for you. Sincere good faith is the thing here,
because the salesman is going to blow his about the second time you pull your
act.
When the manager asks you to leave and you don’t, he will probably call
the police. You had anticipated this earlier and alerted someone at the local
newspaper or television station–probably the action-line reporters.
Smalltown media usually won’t allow reporters to come–car dealers buy lots of
ads, and you don’t. A regional TV station may show up–if you promise a
confrontation with the law. So when the manager calls the police, you call
your TV reporter–fun and games for the 6:00 P.M. news.
If all this doesn’t work, wait off the dealer’s premises and approach
customers as they leave the showroom. Tell your story there and then. Offer
to help them avoid your mistake. But stay on public property. And keep after
the action-line reporters.
If you esculate the attack a bit, show up when the night salespeople are
on duty–they won’t recognize you. Look at new cars; wander around. Few
salespeople pay much attention to an obvious gawker. As soon as someone else
or a telephone distracts the salesperson, you can do things to the automobile
right there in the showroom. A bottle opener is hard on the finish. See the
file on additives for things you could quickly put into the fuel tank. If you
could smuggle some in with you, stuff roadkill under a car seat or in the
glove compartment. Or toss a condom (preferably used) on the front seat. By
the way, used condoms make wonderful plants in other locations as well, like
the boss’s desk, or in a customer’s car back in the service shop.
If you can manage to slip undetected into the service area along with
your bag of sabotage goodies, such as glue, wire cutters, paint, potatoes,
M80s, etc., you can run amok. Work quietly and quickly. This sort of
guerrilla warfare can literally wreck a dealer’s service reputation.
@ENDNODE
@NODE BANKS “Banks”
It could be time to make your bankroll. According to Townsend Alexander,
our financial intelligence agent, you can make good money buying some very
cheap foreign coins that are the same size as a quarters. Get a paper coin
wrapper. Wrap a few real quarters on the ends but fill the rest of the roll
with the cheapie import coins. Wrap the roll and with felt-tip pen write some
phony account number on it to add to authenticity.
Take the roll of coins into the targeted bank. If you dress like a
business person and go at a busy time, especially with the account number
written on each roll, and the rolls in a bank sack or your briefcase, the
teller will probably give you ten dollars per roll without checking.
If you could get a banker to tell the truth, he’d admit that they hate
college-student checking accounts. There’s probably a lot of justification,
since most services like this for college students cost far more than they’re
worth in return. However, that’s not our problem.
Suppose you have a gripe with the bank. Acting as the bank’s ad manager,
get in touch with the student newspaper at the school and arrange to run some
ads with banner headlines reading, STUDENTS WELCOME, plus such services as NO
SERVICE CHARGE, FREE CUSTOM-PRINTED CHECKS, INTREST ON THE BALANCE, NO MINIMUM
BALANCE, and so on. Offer to give away free albums or Walkman radios. The
day after the “bank’s” ad runs they will be swamped with unwanted students,
who are going to be very angry at the bank (and probably at the student
newspaper).
Modern banks now have cash machines where you insert your plastic money
card and the machine gives you the money. If that institution or its machine
has become your target, here’s a dairyland delight you could easily employ.
Take some tough, hard cheese and cut it the same size and shape as your
plastic card. Insert the cheese “card” into the slot of the machine and leave
the area. One banker told me it took a service person nine hours to clean the
machine and get it operating again when someone pulled this stunt in
Baltimore.
The bank still giving you trouble, or you didn’t give them enough? It’s
time to move things up the scale a notch. Rent a safe-deposit box under
another name. Pay cash for a three-month rental. That’s all the time you’ll
need to collect on this one. Go to the market and buy a couple of overripe
fish–I’m sure you’ll get a bargain price. Carry them wrapped in plastic in
your briefcase. Go directly to your safe deposit box. In the privacy of the
bank’s little cubicle, unwrap the fish and lay the big, stinky suckers right
in the safety deposit box. Close it, lock it, and store it. Then carry the
fish wrappers, briefcase, and yourself out of the bank. In a few days your
deposit will gain their intrest. You’d better do your real banking at another
institution for a while. It’s quite possible bank officials will have to hire
someone to drill the lock on the targeted safe-deposit box to remove the
contents.
@ENDNODE
@NODE BIKERS “Bikers”
You’re walking along a pedestrian sidewalk, and along come a bicyclist,
churning away his/her spare calories on that nonpolluting transportaion
device. Within moments you’re an involuntary participant in a game of chicken
with that cyclist, who swerves while you weave. You finally pass each other
in good dodgeum-car fashion. Maybe. Wonderful stuff, adrenaline.
On the other cheek, maybe you’ve been blindsided by an irresponsible
cyclist trespassing on your pedestrian walk right of way.
“No more turning the other cheek,” is the war cry of Mel Scafe, an
anticyclist who is fighting back.
“I’ve declared war on all two wheelers who trespass into my life,” Mel
says. “I’ll get the senior citizen bicyclist who forces me off my sidewalk on
the same day I get even with the teenage dirt biker who tears up the hill
behind my home.”
One of Mel’s tatics is to toss a length of chain into the spokes of the
dirt bike when it’s roaring by. Instantly, the bike stops going forward while
the rider continues onward until gravity takes over.
“I’ve also used a wire cutter to snip the spokes on a bicycle whose owner
has done me a disfavor,” Mel relates. “That’ll cause a real collapse in his
biking game.”
Another time he spread a large patch of grease on the path used by dirt
bikers.
He can’t even estimate the pounds of air he’s released from captivity in
bike tires. He’s used all the nasty engine additives mentioned in another
file for these machines that disturb his world.
“I liked that Burt Reynolds movie where the truck driver drove his rig
over all those goddamn motorcycles,” Mel grinned. Turning seriously, he
added, “I’ve thought about the old World War II trick of stretching piano or
barbed wire across a trail or bikeway, but I think that could be fatal, so I
don’t really do it.”
“If there were some way I could totally kill the damn machines and only
embarrass the people a bit I’d surely like to hear about it. Until then I
will stick to the old standards that have worked for me so far.”
He adds, “I know people may sneer at me for being mean to kiddies on
their bicycles, and I know bicycles are an in thing today. But maybe if those
young riders learn some manners early and stay the hell off pesestrian
walkways, they might grow up to be decent people.”
@ENDNODE
@NODE BOOKS “Books”
Did anyone ever borrow a book from you and not return it? Our private
library consultant, Roberta Russell, has a suggestion with an air of financial
finality behind it. For the first step, a printer should make you about three
or four dozen bookplates, all featuring your mark’s name and address, plus the
legend, “If this book is lost and you find it and return it, I will pay you