No April's fool this year...

The alarming world-wide situation that prevails in this spring of 2020 means that any April's fool prank would likely be in poor taste; but at the same time, those stressful moments are in dire need of jocularity. What to do?

Perhaps an approach might be something I call “virtual humour”; which are jokes that are funny just contemplating, but, because they will not be performed, can transcend the limit of acceptable and enter the realm of the grotesque. In fact, they can be funnier because they are NOT done, since the effect on a 'victim' is also imaginary and can be as disproportionate as any one could envision.

But well before we get to this, grant me the leisure to describe the setting, and the scope of what is discussed here, and add a fair amount of anecdotal narrative.

Those who know me also know that I am somewhat of a prankster. And perhaps also a humorist, as my few stints as a stand-up comic over the years should attest.

Jokes can take many forms, and one that I really enjoy is a style that I will call, for the lack of a better terminology, 'landmine jokes'. Those are contraptions, settings, odds and ends that do not target anyone in particular, and everyone in general. They are jokes left behind for someone to eventually encounter, while perhaps never. In my years, I have had the chance to encounter interesting characters; some became friends, some moved away and went by their businesses, falling into an anonymity that the environment of a few decades ago, lacking social media and internet, allowed.

One such character was a student at the School of Aerospace Study in Toronto, in the early 1980's. Let's call him Steve, because we do need to refer to him with some sort of a name, but also mostly because that happens to be the one he was using.

Steve was one of the several people, master and PhD students, who were provided with a desk in the Aeroacoustic Laboratory. This was an interesting place, as it had an anechoic chamber, not exactly a frequently encountered piece of equipment, which, if you closed the door, would subject you to a profound and almost eerily disturbing silence as long as you kept still, since the 'floor' was a mesh of wires that went “sproing-sproing” whenever you shifted your weight around. At the entrance of the office area, right by the door, there was a large timer knob with a power socket. I never saw it being used during my 13 month stay, but I venture that its purpose was being the power source for experiments of some sort which should be left running unattended for a preset period of time. At the end of the set period which, if I remember well, could reach in excess of 25 hours according to the numbers etched on the face plate, power to the socket would be cut. It, like the anechoic chamber, quickly became a hardly noticeable piece of furniture that we overlooked, but remained at the ready should the work of a specific scientific investigation called for them.

Steve happened to be seated right at my 6 o'clock (and I at his), and right at my left (and therefore at Steve's right) was the cinder block wall of the lab, with a wall mounted telephone. Now, a half dozen students, coming from all over the country, in the basement of a university are not exactly the most popular people in the universe, and that phone was evidently not ringing every hour. But when it did, I had noticed a peculiarity with that specific one. The ringing pattern of a telephone (—at least back in those pre iPhone days, as now anyone can have pretty much any sound clip as a call signal – which is somewhat odd when considering that, on the first hand, one should customize it so that it does not sound like everyone else, something that apparently few people do, given the over representation of the 'Marimba' tone; but also that, should it be customized, it would likely play the owner's favourite tune which one possibly would rather listen to, as opposed to interrupt it in order to speak with whoever is calling, making one perhaps less eager to answer—) is for the base to go “driiiiing” for 2 seconds, followed by 4 seconds of silence, with that pattern to repeat until the call is picked up, or the caller gives-up. But the ringing pattern is not generated in the unit; rather, there is an external wire in the cable that supplies current for 2 second, then cuts it for 4, and so on; the phone simply rings when it it gets an adequate voltage on that wire AND that some relay inside has made it such that the bell is electrically connected to the ringing wire signal, with the relay triggered when communication is established.

This is where it gets interesting (well, at least to us engineers). When the communication is established had therefore a 33% probability of happening during the audible ringing itself, something made apparent by sometimes having a phone starting with a partial ring, shorter than 2 seconds. The other 67% of the time, this connection occurred between the rings, and if you happened to pick up the phone RIGHT THAT MOMENT, you would actually have answered the phone without there being any ringing at all.

That particular phone was weird because, through some odd wiring or poor electrical insulation, it would emit a small, isolated 'ding' as soon as the communication was established. I was curious to test that theory, so the next time I heard that feeble ding, I immediately picked it up and answered, noticing that I was indeed able to talk with someone who displayed some level of wonderment. This was too rich to keep for myself, and I shared my findings with the other students, and we henceforth strove to answer the phone in record time. Steve, particularly, managed to turn this stunt to an art form. While the phone was on my left, it happened to be on his right, so he could frequently get to it before I could. Upon hearing the telltale 'ding', he would push his caster chair with all his might, sometime hitting my backrest which was in motion in the opposite direction (that was part of our deal, whoever gets to it first!) yank the headset from the base, and with the most matter-of-fact, unemotional and self assured intonation, would answer with the usual “Aerospace Studies”. We knew we had it good when the call was for another student, and the side of the conversation we overheard was an explanation to what ought to be a bewildered correspondent that we somehow had perfected the art of answering the phone before it actually rang. Steve and I refrained from laughing out loud, but we did smile a lot.

Back in those days – that was before the rise of the mighty laser printer, the prodigious device that allows any bad writer to make complete literary rubbish look good – the way to make a report of some sort involved getting it typed by a professional. And for the charts, well, there was graph paper, and the need for a steady hand. And that was perhaps sometimes an issue. Often, charts require intricate labels and captions to be added. If you had access to that kind of stationary, one would use a sheet of special sticky-back paper on which the professional typist would have entered the required text elements, and it was up to you to cut those into small confetti that were then properly affixed in the required position. But the School of Aerospace Studies apparently had a rather neat contraption at its disposal: a manual film transfer label maker. This interesting device relied on the pressure transfer of a opaque film onto a transparent one. This was evidently a laborious process, as the composition of the caption required selecting the proper symbol on a wheel, which was then pressed on and transferred to the sticky film, but offered the advantage of several font size and style by changing the embossed press wheel. On the other hand, the results were extremely clear and neat, and the sticky film being transparent made it appear as if the text had been printed on the chart itself. I remember seeing Steve completing his thesis document, painstakingly entering the required characters on the transfer tape and staying late. And then, one day, Steve was gone. At that time, it would be a couple of months before the beginning of the next session, so his “right next to the phone” desk spot was to remain free for a little while until a new student came in, who would have to be appraised of the peculiarity of the telephone and its potential for an interesting running gag.

It was a couple of months later, and I was chatting with my lab partner Normand, with whom I was involved in preparing a fluid flow solver program based on the Bristow panel method for one of the course we were enrolled in, and the then future doctor Ball's desk happened to be right besides the entrance door, and therefore besides the seldom used timer knob apparatus, and standing there meant that I had an unusual perspective view of it. That is when I noticed something peculiar. Something barely noticeable because it did not really seem out of place, but definitely was not there before. On the experiment power control timer knob, in an area that was previously bare, was a professional looking, neat and perfectly aligned caption reading, in all caps Helvetica sans serif font, “ORGASMATRON”.

It has been 36 years since then, and I hope that no one ever felt this label was so out of place to need having it removed. I wish it is still there, like a spider in its web, just waiting for the next 'victim' to notice it and have a puzzled grin. And because it was anonymous, unattributed, just a handful of people to this day would know the story behind it. But just in case time took its toll on it, turning the label yellow, flaking off, or that remodelling of the basement area of the Institute would have had the wiring redone and the timer removed and scrapped, it deserves to live on in memory, at the very least because it introduced me to the concept of 'landmine jokes'. Steve, wherever you are, I salute you, your creativity and your truly admirable sense of humour. You left the University not knowing who noticed the caption, not even knowing if someone ever would. But you showed me that there is amusement from the mere evocation of what could be, and for that, I am grateful.

Some would say that the best jokes have to be short. Perhaps not always; jokes should be as short as necessary, but not shorter; and sometime, in absolute need of a long preamble and elaborate setting. It has been my experience, when I was preparing stand-up comedy acts, that the most that was left out for the listener to 'contribute', the funnier the joke is—as long as the audience is able to effectively fill in that blank, but that is only for the punch like. Basically, the humour is mostly in what is left unsaid. For instance, in my act of 20 some years ago, my character—some kind of mad scientist expert in everything—boasted to having a plan to address the global warming situation that would be driven to an unbearable degree in the next 500 million years by an increasing level of solar activity on the progressive transition towards the red giant phase that would engulf Earth five thousand million years from now, and proposed to “simply” push the planet away from the Sun. The professor then assured that he intended to get back to implementing his plan as soon as the psychiatrist and the probation agent would restore his access to sharp and exploding objects. What is neat about this formulation is that the real joke was left completely unsaid; the funny part lies in the back story that the listener has to imagine. Accordingly, after this longish introduction, this here should be the funniest joke ever possible: “ ”.

A long preamble, an elaborate setting can be totally indispensable for a good prank, as can be serendipitous conditions. On November 25th 1988, the north-east section of North America was shaken for up to two minutes by a 6.2 quake. It caused limited damage chiefly because that part of the continent is one giant rocky slab that moved without much deformation, but move it did. This was a Friday evening. When the earth trembles for that long, you have the time to realize what this is, wonder how long it will last, look around for things to shake and possibly break, wonder how bloody long this is going to last, walk around and check more things for breakage, and wonder if this is EVER GOING TO END, BLOODY HECK!

Once it finally stopped, you could go around and make really sure there wasn't damage to your dwelling, and wonder if there was any damage elsewhere, including to your place of work, and if the furniture had been displaced... And then wonder what the reaction would be if the furniture at work had really been noticeably displaced...

The next Monday, I came in unusually early and proceeded to do what that darn earthquake had failed to do and rearranged the furniture. That was a fairly large task, as there were two dozen people in that specific office space – luckily that was before everyone was forced into tighter accommodations, with interlocking modular components and cubicle that allegedly allowed us to do “more with less” but would be impossible to budge – and that each desk had to be moved in a roughly comparable degree. I displaced cabinets, shelves, selected a few books that would have been tossed out and had landed open on the floor, making sure that these costly documents did not really suffer damage from the mock tremor. I had been at it for about half an hour when one colleague arrived quite early. I was a bit taken, as the “damage”was not yet credible in terms of affected area, more than a third of the desk had not been moved already. I therefore had to recruit the colleague as both an accomplice and look-out, helping to move enough remaining desks to enter the realm of plausibility. When the next colleague showed up, we stopped moving desks and pretended to be realigning them instead. And that is when the fun really started. “Did the quake really do this?” That was a question that I had not counted on. The point is that I am absurdly honest, at least with the people I know (I draw the line at telemarketers and crooks). I could not say “Yes” since that would be lying. And I evidently could not reply “No, I emulated the effect of severe seismic activity as a joke to you all”, so I fell back to the time proven tactic of answering with a question: “Well, what do you think?” This actually worked quite well, since the reaction to that challenge was for those engineers to come up with hypothesis explaining why something that merely rattled their place two days earlier managed to really move furniture to that degree. I bit my tongue more than once to avoid cracking a telltale smile that would have blown my cover. My problem at that point is that more people kept asking me, specifically; I do not know if they were asking everyone in turn or if they were focusing on me—I was not paying attention, since I was supposed to look extra concerned by the task of putting my books back in their place—but the guy sitting right behind me was hearing my “What do you think?” non-reply too frequently and detected a pattern. “You did this, didn't you?” he asked, and that allowed me to finally laugh out loud. But the amusement was not over yet, as one co-worker was visibly upset. I suppose that she must have called a few people on the phone, telling them how terribly her office space had shook up, and now had to call them back telling that she fell for a rather crude joke. So, if she reads this: Sylvie, I'm sorry for your discomfort. But you have to admit that was a good one mostly because of your and other people's reaction. I merely provided a setting...

This experience enhanced my perception of what an effective joke could be. If the setting appears huge, if it seems that someone would have to invest an inordinate amount of time and effort to prepare a prank, then their conclusion would be that this is not a plausible proposition. Seemingly, over an hour of desk moving for twenty minutes of amusement is not seen as probable; but the mathematics of jokes needs to be compounded by the number of 'victims'. 20 minutes from 24 people is 8 hours, so my 90 minutes as a furniture mover appear like a sound investment. Plus, twenty years later, I still derive amusement from remembering it.

In the concept of setting, of creating an environment for a joke to expand beyond its initial scope, famed comedic troop Monty Python had an amazingly funny skit about a lethally amusing joke, which was eventually translated into German during the war to serve as a weapon. No matter how funny this hypothetical joke allegedly was, the amusement provided was entirely at the meta-humour level, as the jokes were about the joke. The 'joke' itself, which we never actually hear, didn't even have to exist, it simply provided a canvas in which to establish meta-jokes, a canvas that lives on to this day as anyone having access to 'google translate' and specifying 'German' or 'Detect language' in the source language setting, and entering “Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!” can attest. What remains unknown is why the translation fails Google's server only when translating back to the original English the joke had presumably been written in; if one enters another target language, there is a translation, but it is gibberish. I presume then that the world remains safe in this respect.

Monty Python is responsible for one of the most insane level of laughter I ever went through, going back to the first time I ever saw “And now, for something completely different”. One of the skit presented in that compilation movie is “Ken Ewing and his Musical Mice”, in which a cabaret performer presents his “Mice organ”, with several rodent kept in individual slots of a box, those having been painstakingly trained over the course of several years to squeak at a selected pitch. He then produces two very large wooden mallets with which he proceeds to squish the mice to play a tune but—and that is the bit that gets this so completely over the top for me—he does so while HUMMING along, because he clearly is an artist who loves his art. As the public gets offended by this act of animal cruelty and starts calling out insults, a pair of ushers appear to forcibly drag Ken Ewing off stage. But Ewing resists, manages to escape their grip and returns to his organ for a couple of additional notes—still humming along—because he visibly cares about the show going on. In this instance, what I find so amusing is the complete dissociation between the perception of 'Ken Ewing' and that of the audience; he seems himself as an artist, and was sure that his performance would be appreciated, perhaps even celebrated.

The problem is that there are actual instances of such involuntary humour. Usually, in real life, this is someone falling victim of their own flawed perception; people who can't carry a tune trying for a talent show, making fools of themselves, for instance, and having agreed already to have their attempt broadcast. Is laughing at them actually cruel?

There was this socialite from the first half of the 20th century who, upon receiving a large inheritance that permitted her to do so, decided to actively inflict her complete absence of talent on the world. There are recordings of “Florence Foster Jenkins” that can be accessed on the web, and she was indeed irritatingly lacking any musical skill. Is such a blatant example of Dunning-Kruger effect not worthy of amusement?

Another instance that caused me to literally fall off my chair was a list of the worst country and western song titles. That can be easily found through web search, and if you are like me, pace yourself reading through it—there are hundred of them—because at some point people around might worry you are going to pass out from laughing. Granted, some of those 'gems' could be deliberate attempts at writing the worst possible song as some sort of challenge, but even if only a small percentage of songs such as “I Would Have Wrote You A Letter, But I Couldn't Spell Yuck!”, “Mama Get The Hammer (There's A Fly On Papa's Head)” or “You're The Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly” were penned by people who were genuinely convinced they really wrote the best song ever, such dissonance needs to be measured in parsec. And, I am not sorry to say, that is irresistibly funny.

Some pranks are much more than mere jokes, and those are perhaps the hardest to pull off as a very special set of circumstances is required for the occasion to manifest itself; a bit like the earthquake one. A couple of decades ago, after a team of engineers had returned from several weeks of flight testing and data analysis in the South-West of the US, one of them, Pierre, was telling me that he had seen Burt Rutan's business card in some sort of raffle box at a restaurant. For those not in the aerospace world who do not know about him, Rutan is a superstar, let's say he is to aircraft design what LeBron James is to basketball. If you never heard of James, I can offer Pelé and soccer. If you have never heard of Pelé, how about Michael Schumacher and Formula One car racing? Or Céline Dion for pop singing? Meryl Streep for acting, or Neil deGrasse Tyson for astrophysics? And if you have never heard of any of those people, you do need to get out more.

Anyway, as Pierre was telling me, Rutan's business card featured line art of several of his most famous designs, and the other engineer who was with him at that time was literally in awe, uttering that he wished he had one of those as a memento. Though being based for several weeks in a building on the same airport where Scaled Composites has its installations, they never met the famous engineer. That was an interesting conversation, bringing an interesting opportunity for a targeted prank.

At that time, I was really trying to find a publisher for my science-fiction novel, and had secured several US stamps of the required denomination for mailing to Canada for the required self-addressed stamped envelopes that had to be included for the customary rejection notice (ever tried to be a new writer in a world where publishers are only interested in already published authors, or claim that their 'lists are full' and would not even accept to read a manuscript? It is amazingly frustrating...), so knew I had most of the required elements for a quick execution. I needed the address for Scaled Composites, which a copy of the most recent “Jane's All The World's Aircraft” reference book from the company library readily supplied. I then wrote a letter that described the 'fan' status of my co-worker, his chance encounter with a business card, lack thereof for the person behind said card, and his desire for having one, requested indulgence if that letter was an annoyance, and mailed it away to Mojave Airport. A couple of weeks later, I was passing in front of the executive assistant's desk and noticed a letter with the unique typeface of my typewriter. The funny thing is that this was a day were the 'target' of my joke had decided to make a mild nuisance of himself, for fun, so felt it was entirely proper and fitting for me to dismiss him, telling him to go to his desk and attend his correspondence. From a few desks away, I watched him pick up the envelope, and warned the people around me to watch what was going on. The reaction on his face was priceless; Burt Rutan had not sent one business card, but two, one of them autographed. And since there was enough room in the envelope, he also had included an autographed picture of himself. Seems Mr. Rutan is a very nice fellow. And that day, I felt a bit like the genie in the lamp, granting wishes. Thank you Pierre, for having created the setting that allowed that one.

It was only a couple of months later that several coworkers and I were callously transferred to different departments, for political reasons that aimed at securing a bonus for management—the details of which are way beyond the scope of the current posting. This however allowed me to meet and befriend a few interesting characters with a different background, in this case, Ronald and Benoit, involved in IT. Learning is always fun, and that bunch had a few stories to tell of their own. One of those was that, a few years earlier, they had met with IT people from Germany for some project, and had gone to a popular bar for a few beers. They reportedly had a great time, and one of the German rep decided to teach a few essential sentences, something that could have been handy in those days long before those automatic translator. The one that they focused on was seemingly a most essential one: “Ich werde überall schei?en”; I will not provide the translation here—but Google Translate will work properly on that one, unlike the Monty Python killer joke. We derived a fair level of amusement from a sentence that was both somewhat obscure and pretty much completely useless in most circumstances; except that, like many other things, it could come handy at some point by being misused.

A few months later after learning this little German, I had to get in touch with an executive assistant—I believe it was some expense claim form filling—and she pointed out to the office of the director, who at that moment was out of town. In there was a young girl, around 12 year old, doing what appeared to be schoolwork. As the secretary explained, she was the daughter of an Austrian Airline pilot, currently on site for training on their latest aircraft model, who had decided to bring her along to see a little bit of the world. “That is nice”, I said, but I had a crazy smile on my face. When I got back to my desk, I explained to Ronald and Benoit why I was laughing, since I refrained from going into that office and telling that young girl the only sentence I knew in German. THAT was “virtual humour”, a joke that is funnier because it does not get done, where the amusement comes from just imagining what her reaction should have been to that “threat”. So, there was one instance of the sentence being somewhat “useful”, oddly by actually not having been used, I guess it is a matter of deliberately missed opportunities.

That was probably for the best, I couldn't be sure I could have done it, I might have cracked up and delivered only a garbled rendition that would have missed the point. In my imagination, I would have said it in perfect German, with a Schwarzenegger Austrian accent to boot. In reality? Not so sure. Which is why I sometime do not understand how I pull through and keep it all under control. Nowadays, surveys are mostly done through email, and opinion firms would have some kind of reward system, giving points for each poll filled, said points redeemable for a gift certificate or what not when enough are accumulated. But this was not always the case, there was a time where pollsters would be a nuisance, calling at odd time, stating that “your opinion is important to us” but only robbing us of several minutes in exchange for a big fat nothing. Turning down those annoyance was a drag, those were people badly paid for a boring job, provided with a rigid script and under strict guidelines to not stray from it (if you ever doubt it, next time you will be called for a survey and they give you the choice of “disagree completely, somewhat disagree, neither agree not disagree, somewhat agree or agree completely” try to answer using synonyms, like “utterly differ”, they'd never know which box to check and would repeat the choices again and again). One day, I decided to have some fun, as the format of the question allowed me just that kind of freedom. It went something like this (transposed from the original French):

—(pollster) What language is spoken the most often at your home?

—(me) Chinese (for the record, this was not untrue. My better half is of Chinese origin, and I always believed important that she relied on Mandarin to talk to our son, so that he maintains a fluency and does not cut himself from an important part of his cultural heritage. I never had the chance to master the language myself, but that still did not clash with the fact that the bulk of communication in our house was between a mother and her child)

—(pollster) Oh... Well, I have this questionnaire in French and in English. Which of those are you most comfortable with?

—(me, entering the realm of the surreal) Neither. I only speak Chinese.

—(pollster, apparently not very prime and stuck with his script) That is because I only have it in French and English. It has to be one of those two.

—(me, far from giving up) I see your dilemma. But there would be no point in you asking questions in a language that I cannot comprehend, and me giving answers that you cannot understand.

—(pollster) Yes, you are right. Well, sorry for that.

To this day, I do not know how I managed to retain a neutral tone. But the second I hung up, I was rolling on the floor.

There is a group of people who deserve to be abused: the crooks and fraudsters. My reasoning is that whatever time I can make them lose is time they cannot use defrauding someone else. And if I can derive some entertainment from the process, it is a gain. But those low life jerks are persistent. Just two weeks ago, the same gang of criminals, pausing as representatives of Revenue Canada, called not once, but three times over a two day period. The way their system works is that they have some prerecorded generic message alerting of some 'irregularities' with your taxes, of an impending police arrest and judicial proceedings, and that this is the 'last call' and press 1 to talk to our agent. And only from time to time does pressing 1 on the phone gets you anywhere, meaning that their robot does far more calls than the human crooks can handle. If you press 1 and that they are already busy trying to defraud someone, the line will be cut. Those people try to be craft, and the display on your phone would indicate a spoofed number, usually a variant of your own area code and exchange prefix, which is flawed as the exchange prefix has a limited geographic distribution that does not correspond to where centralized governmental offices would be located. The one time that pressing 1 got me someone, I was greeted by someone with a foreign accent (already not a good sign) who started by asking my name. So I gave a completely bogus one. But the crook then proceeded to spell my actual name (evidently, he had no notion of how to pronounce it), and since I was victim of identity theft 18 years ago, I wasn't sure how well targeted this was, as opposed to him simply reading off a phone display. He then claimed that he had my 'file' in from of him. So, I said, “Really? Then would you care reading my social security number back to me to prove thus is so?”.

He hung up. Now I know they have nothing. If they call back again, I will take them through bizarro world.

For things like that, one has to be ready, and prepare a good back story. There is an informal group of 'scambaiters', they have a web site at '419eater.com', complete with a 'trophy room' (picture of crooks who had the table turned on them, pictured in ridiculous or humiliating positions) and a 'hall of shame' (particularly lame attempts at defrauding, extremely poorly forged documents that a 105 year old grandmother with advanced macular degeneration would not fall for – but just like in the case of Florence Foster Jenkins, seemingly unable to perceive their own flaws). Most attempts to defraud are those “Nigerian Prince” or Advance-fee scams, when someone contacts you, out of the blue, with a proposal to discreetly transfer a large sum of money (always expressed with unnecessary precision in number and words), with a percentage thereof set aside as a commission for helping them along with eternal gratitude by the grace of god and yadda-yadda-yadda. The person writing is frequently pretending to be a government official, but with additional and irrelevant titles such as 'doctor' (if you are lying about your credentials, might as well make it sound impressive, right?) and would always 'sign' with their title (even if it is only Mr. or Mrs.) Should you respond, there would evidently be some fees that would have to be paid, and they are counting on you to pay barrister so and so the amount that would, in the worst case, be only a very tiny percentage of the millions you should eventually get...

Scambaiting is a time consuming hobby, one presumes that this is a bit like fishing, you have to lure the would be predators by giving them a sense of security, let them think that they are in control, and have a ready story to explain why the payment they expect is delayed. It does not hurt to add some pathos and distress; your bank manager has advised you that this whole scheme is probably a fraud, and you ask up front for the crook to quiet down your fears, and so on.

The way the fraudsters used to do it was sending an email, worded in a such way to not include your name or email address, indicating that it could have been sent to hundred of people at the same time, without loss of generality. If 1% of people are foolish enough to take the bait, then each email sent would bring in a potential victim. However, since there is no indication as to who the email was sent to, there should be no problem for you to reply from a completely different account, one that you had just made-up for the purpose. While this could be fun for while, responding to criminals for entertainment value could get repetitious, there is a chance that the fraudsters would wise up to a counter attack; presumably experience in fighting back would be a factor, so it could be a while before the real fun could begin. Further, due to the drastic reduction in the number of Nigerian Prince messages I received in the last decade, it is possible that crooks have changed their methods or not be as active as they once were – I dare not think that learned about me and are actively avoiding me. It is also possible that potential victims be nowadays picked and contacted through social media like 'facebook'—which I never used and probably will never—or the contacts I have in various firms or companies are better protected than they used to be, and could no longer be mined.

I must have tried a dozen time to retaliate, and only once came close to a success. It might have been successful, I just do not know because I failed to secure the required picture for the trophy room. But unlike most of the cases that I know of, if my plan did indeed work, it should have resulted with the crooks getting arrested.

What I did was create an alter ego, with a 'loaded name'. He was Mr. Jesuce DesBites-Pourpascher. One not too familiar with French could conclude that “Jesuce” is an alternate spelling of the very valid “Jesus” name used in Hispanic countries. As for DesBites, that does sound French and plausible enough, and “Pourpascher” could be Haitian in origin; so Jesuce had to hail from the Antilles. I had to prepare realistic facsimile of a scanned passport, with a picture of an African despot found on the internet, using image editing tools; and have a valid looking excuse for not talking on the phone so that I could keep a record of the claims I made in order to remain coherent and avoid contradicting myself. For this, mister “I_suck_dicks_for_cheap” was officially hearing impaired. That was a lot of work, but there was indeed a chuckle each time I received an email with a “Dear Jesuce” greeting. The final chapter was for Mr. DesBites-Pourpascher to fly in on an Air France flight and meet with his 'good friends' at the airport. It was requested that whoever was to wait for him have a sign with the name of the expected party; but the favour of a photograph of the person holding the sign—so as to know what to expect and look for—fell of deaf ears, thus depriving me of a possible entry in the “419eater” trophy room. I also regret not having been able to assess if the crooks actually showed up at the airport, and if they would have gotten out of an accusation of solicitation for prostitution in a public place by admitting to fraud. But there is amusement in thinking that they did, and I have to be satisfied with “speculative humour”.

That said, if I have a workable idea, I do not mind investing a lot of time and energy, if I am reasonably certain it will work.

The grandest prank I ever devised was an 1998 April Fools scheme, that aimed at combining all the aspects I had tried before. It was a landmine joke and therefore not specifically targeting anyone but had to trap several people simultaneously to be worthwhile, provide a setting for amplification, involve plenty of second degree accomplices with whom I could therefore partake in the amusement, and feature the “undeniable disproportion” that had allowed me to pull the earthquake joke a decade earlier.

There was a department in the company that would occasionally receive or release proposals, requests and bids that were considered sensitive, proprietary and confidential, protected with strict non disclosure agreements. Accordingly, that department was recently moved to an enclosed office space with a single access door, and was to be accessible only to specific personnel outside of the normal business hours, thanks to a magnetic lock control that was opened only by the ID badge of approved staff.

On April 1st, early in the morning, a “finger print reader” 'device' was therefore added for enhanced security...

This 'device' was built from a large panel of clear acrylic that had been cut into several 25 by 20 cm sections, with those then stacked. Between the first and second layer was a printed sheet of paper bearing the caption “Gardian 5700 Flirpa” in a font that more or less would spell “April fool” in 'Leet', thought this detail was perhaps too subtle as seemingly no one picked on it. That sheet had also a cut-out in the shape of my right hand so would allow to see part of the second acrylic layer, which was painted silver grey and featured several etched lines that locally restored transparency. The next layers had their centre hollowed out, forming a cavity that housed a light bulb (which could then shine through the etched lines), an electronic circuitry with a 556 dual timer IC, and batteries. The whole stack was held together using 4 decorative bolts, and a golden plastic moulding was applied to the edge to conceal the inner working. But the best feature of the 'device' was the pair of red diodes that were blinking at a different rate, driven by the integrated circuit, since it is well known that anything featuring a blinking LED has to be real. So, imagine having TWO. Can't get any more real that that, right?

Purchasing all the supplies cost me nearly one hundred dollar, while design and assembly required several weeks of evenings and week-ends precision work, as it was necessary for it to look the part, or else would have lost its primary quality of being perceived as “it cannot be a joke, no one would be crazy enough to spend that much time for a joke. Right?”

On the afternoon of March 31st, before quitting time, all the people in that department were notified by email of what was coming, and that they could be enrolled as accomplices; all they had to do was to play the part of not looking concerned or annoyed by the appearance of a 'device' at the door—giving the impression that they had already been briefed on the need for additional security and warned of the installation of new systems—and casually putting their hand on the 'scanner' before entering.

I therefore came in very early on the 1st, carefully applied masking tape where the 'device' was to be positioned so as to avoid any damage to the paint of the wall, then used double faced sticky tape to install the 'Gardian 5700' unit—from the “reputed” Flirpa Electronics Corporation—on the wall, relying on the micro-switch on its side, now abutting the door frame, to close the electric circuit and activate the blinking effect, and took a step back. This was even better than I had envisioned, despite having had to drop the 'retinal scanner' that I originally wanted due to problems in sourcing components that could look the part, or the possibility of having electronic 'beep' sounds as well. The 'device' nevertheless just felt like it belonged there, just above the badge reader sensor, somewhat discrete, unassertive, but seemingly functional and purposeful.

I could not hang around to appreciate it being 'used', the door to that office space being in a busy corridor leading to the elevator, the washrooms and the conference and meeting rooms. Just like Steve nearly two decades earlier probably felt, I had to be satisfied with leaving something for people to trip on, and derive amusement from imagining the reactions.

As it turned out, the 'device' worked amazingly well at its real purpose. The Executive Assistant, who's desk was just at the entrance of the office with a clear view of whoever showed-up through the window of the door, was quick to add to the joke, in many variations. She would lock the door and signal to whoever showed-up to use the 'hand scanner' and, since that thing would evidently fail to release the lock, took a concerned and annoyed look to indicate that the guests had to present themselves to Security to have their hand properly scanned! Sally also reported that she saw the manager of another department leading several people to see the new security “thing” and try it out (I assume that she told him what it was really about so as to ensure he could mount a coherent narrative).

At one point, I was walking in that corridor and bumped on my friend Ron, and inquired about how things went, and he assured me that everyone was having a ball. Seconds later, there was an engineer from a different department who came up and, ignoring me, just went “Ron, that thing, is that for real?” I gasped, and discreetly walked away before I exploded, biting my tongue. When the coast was clear, I asked Ron how things went and what was discussed. He told me that he really went all out and heavy handed, managing to keep a straight face while explaining that there were issues with people lending their badges to otherwise non authorized people, that this had gone right up to senior management, and that the decision was to address a major security breach, and so on; and that guy was visibly upset, entered and started giving Sally a hard time. As I was told, this engineer was from a department that used to be located right besides before the sheet-rock wall was constructed, and was still relying on the fax machine now within, never having bothered to change the number on his business card and email signature. With the access restriction, he fell he would have to contact several people, and change his routine. He was so insisting, so forceful, that Sally could not keep serious any longer and had to tell him that he fell for an April's fool joke. Later, when I saw that engineer in the cafeteria, he looked at me with an almost evil stare.

In the early afternoon, the internal lighting started dimming, and assuming that everyone who could fall for it already had already done so, I removed the box. This, interestingly, had an aftershock effect, as now some people were wondering how it could possibly have vanished without any trace. When I said that I just pulled it off from the wall, they wondered: “But the bolts? Where are the mounting holes?” Seemingly, there is another rule that applies to contraptions—besides that blinking lights exist only on real items—to the effect that screws always reach deep, to the other side of a wall; I learned something new that day.

I am still laughing whenever I think about that stunt, twenty years later; that was time and money well invested, by my reckoning. The downside is that I had to give up hope of topping that. I tried and tried, came up with many new concepts and performed other pranks, but never had an idea or a setting for something that could equal that one while remaining feasible. It seems that I have to derive new entertainment from virtual jokes, stuff too outlandish to actually merit doing.

In their 3rd book “How To Play In Traffic”, famous illusionist and comedy duo Penn & Teller presented a virtual prank, being very clear that someone should NOT be doing it, ever. Their setting was that, when going through an airport, security people asked travellers to turn on their computer, reportedly not to verify if the computer contained sensitive data but to ensure that this was not a box for contraband disguised as a machine, arguing that they were satisfied by simply seeing a boot page. Penn & Teller then described what could be a nasty joke which, they repeated, no one should ever do: installing a small auto-launched program that would display “ARMED” with a countdown. If they envisioned a problem pulling that one in 1997 when the book was published, imagine how much worse it would be, post 9/11.

So, here is an equally grotesque trick, adapted to the current situation. Do not do it, please. It is nasty. And describing it here could actually render it inapplicable anyway, killing the surprise, if the description below was to become viral.

You have to take amusement only by imagining what it could look like in real life.

Here is what you DON'T do: get a coverall and a respirator mask, preferably one with cartridge and integral visor or goggles. You can add some high visibility reflecting tape to strategic places on the coverall, the idea being that it should look like a hazmat suit. You take a clipboard and a walkie-talkie or vintage cellphone, anything with an antenna that looks big and bulky, military grade ruggedized communication system, and wear gloves. Then you pick a quiet street, one where there would be very little to no traffic and arrive early, before anyone would have really gotten up and picked up the news, and you knock at doors until someone answers. When the door opens, look surprised and concerned, ask how many people are in the house and if they are all well, take your walkie-talkie (bonus points if you have accomplices to provide chatter on that channel, and that they use obscure jargon and acronyms) and call “Colonel, squad Charlie Niner Gold here. Send an E.D.E.T team. We found some survivors here!”