In addition to the dryer for a pizza oven, as outlined in another section of this book, you can use laundromats to harass an individual mark, or the business itself can be your mark. It is not very hard, for example, to dump several packets of dye into someone's wash, ruining his/her clothing. Doing this at random will bring grief to the owners of the laundromat. One antisocial chap used to put small piles of moistened rust particles in the dryer used by his mark so the mark's clothing would have large rust stains. Roadkill may also be used to good advantage in these operations.
Additives that are positive ingredients for a good time at the
laundromat includes raw eggs, fish, peanut butter, and fiberglass. If your mark is the operator of the business, you will find a variety of his/her ancillary services to bugger, including vending machines, customer seats, and restrooms. Small nails or staples driven partly into seats, and restrooms. Small nails or staples driven partly into chairs make good items for customers to snag themselves and their clothing on, for example. And vending machines can be made to steal money from patrons.
Lawns
Our outdoor correspondent, Lother Gout, came up with a scheme to hassle your mark's lawn. It's a simple matter of spilling quantities of tomcat lure on the targeted lawn. The urine of Felix Domesticus will do wonders for the lawn and the mark's disposition.
There are also a number of commercial lawn-care products that may used to good advantage by the serious dirty trickster. One stunt is to select a large, open chunk of you mark's lawn. Using concentrated weed killer, you spell socially offensive words on the lawn with the defoliant. The grass dies, and a nasty word or legend is spelled out for all the neighbors to see. This works best on a slight slope facing a street for maximum exposure. Salt or vinegar will work almost as well as commercial vegetation killer. If you're the sort of fun person who's read this far, I'm certain you'll need no suggestions as to what to say in your little message.
Serious defoliation is one of the many techniques our Vietnam
experiences made available to the dirty trickster. Defoliation is the most potent way to get back at dastardly people who also have unreasonable pride in their lawns and ornamentals. These are usually the type of fussy people who also own small, yipping, bitchy dogs the size of rats -- more on that later.
This time we're going to take out everything that grows. There are many commercial products available that will kill anything growing. Look on the label to see that it says the stuff is nonselective and/or that it makes the soil barren. You just load up your sprayer -- or the mark's, if you can get to it -- and fire away. Like a good guerilla, pick out what he loves most and hit it first and heaviest. Don't leave a single blade or stem standing. No prisoners. Be cautious, though, that you stay upwind from the spray. At night you can't tell how much of the gunk you are inhaling or getting on your skin. We have enough Agent Orange victims without adding you to the list.
Reinhard Ray, a former special-operations man for the U.S. navy, suggests a selective use of the weed killer in a psychological battle against a mark who is a true worrier, fringing on paranoia. You apply the solution fairly heavily around the mark's natural or LP gas meter; then, broadcasting a bit more lightly, you follow the fuel line directly to the mark's house. A final, heavier dose would be appropriate at the jointure of home and line. Within a few days the frightened mark will be convinced that his entire gas system is leaking badly. Obviously, this is effective only if your mark's house uses natural or LP gas. But you could also do this to a water-supply line coming into the house or a buried electric line.
A related scam would be to spray the stuff in a circle around the house. Then, on bogus official letterhead you've either duplicated or had printed, send the mark a letter from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission explaining how they've just discovered some long lost records revealing that the mark's home was built over a former repository for nuclear wastes. I'm sure your imagination can embellish the rest of the letter's content to convince the mark that he, his family, and home are now radiation victims. Obviously, you can't use this if the mark's house is more than twenty years old, because nuclear waste dumps weren't built much before then.
Lawyers
Punxy Phil Ferrick decided to get back at a dishonorable attorney who decided to try hoodwinking the public by becoming a politician. Ferrick got hold of the attorney's legal letterhead and got it duplicated by a printer who was equally outraged at this crook's trying to capitalize his larceny by becoming an elected thing.
Using the letterhead for starters, Ferrick sent out blatant dunning letters over the mark's signature demanding campaign contributions from politically sensitive people. Another mailing was a group of threatening letters to local civic, church, and charity groups about their winked-at illegal bingo and 50/50 fundraisers. In the bogus letter, the lawyer threatened action.
The bogus mailings made the local newspaper when the lawyer – who had been a big booster, campaigner, organizer, etc., for Nixon in '68 and '72 -- complained of the dirty tricks. The newspaper treated the story straight: The attorney's denials only aroused more suspicion. And no one ever suspected Ferrick...until now.
Another scheme is this: Get a blank deed of trust, fill in your mark's name and address, use your notary seal, and you have a legitimate-looking phony document. File it at the courthouse, and you have an action in the works against your mark. It means the mark has defaulted on a mortgage or some other promissory note and that "you" are filing against it. "You" can be an attorney if you wish when "you" sign this form. Days of frustration, anger, and bureaucratic disbelief directed at the mark will follow before things are straightened out. Don't get caught doing this one. The best point here is that no one ever does things like this illegally, so the bureaucrats will never suspect it as a dirty trick.
But there's more. If you have access to a law library or law-library materials, you can play games with the mark's mind, claims Oswald Helms, an observer of the legal scene. He suggests, "Law libraries have standardized legal-practice forms, form books, and routine stationary forms that lawyers, clerks, judges, and the like use to help draft legal letters and proper legal forms. A dummy form or letter, photostatted with some dummy legal notices, using, for example, arrest warrants, summonses, condemnations, search warrants, etc., can often pass for the real thing. It will shake the mark very much.
"The secret behind this," Helms explains, "is that real legal people sometimes use the Xerox machine and routine forms, too. It saves time and money. It will easily fool the target and will probably force his or her attorney to at least follow it up."