Ultimate Prank
For the past few weeks, I had reason to believe one of my Internet nerd friends was in a military jail for unknown crimes. An important distinction: having reason to believe doesn’t mean I believed it — not at first, at least. In fact, I was first told this by another friend, who said he was IM’ed with the news by a close personal friend of our li’l Marine. She signed on, said, “Oh my God, Peter’s in jail,” then signed off — and never signed on again.
“I don’t believe it,” I said. “He was just online, like, yesterday. I don’t think they give you online privileges in jail.” Still, it made me wonder. It’s perfectly reasonable for somebody to be online, then go out and commit a crime, then be found out and jailed for it. Or, perhaps, commit a crime many weeks ago that has just now been traced to him.
I remained cautiously optimistic until he fell of the face of the planet, and everyone kept going back and forth about what could have possibly happened. I found myself looking up news articles involving Marines, and when I couldn’t find any I wondered briefly if he had given us all a pseudonym (and since he’d sent nearly everyone in my online nerd hovel a package at one time or another, that would add mail fraud to his list of charges). It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility.
After all, my name isn’t even Stan.
[Cue dramatic musical sting.]
I do have issues, however. No denying that much.
After a few weeks of Peter disappearing, I didn’t know what to think…until tonight, when somebody using his moniker signed online. He remained for a few minutes, didn’t acknowledge anybody, then left. Was this a practical joke? FBI agents playing around with his seized computer? What the hell happened?
Then came the big reveal: he had sent one of us a letter. He didn’t want to mention it because he was afraid to even open it. It bore the typewritten return address of a USMC brig in San Diego.
Finally, he opened it, and…what the fuck? Baffled, he scanned its pages for the rest of us to try to understand.
That is some big-time craziness. I can’t argue with it.
If you’ll notice, page three has a reference to myself and this blog. For those too lazy to read, here it goes:
I am sure once that the Stanley cousin obtains the word of my situation thus it will launch and to then disseminate a diatribe of million-word on his under-ground-tighten the bulletin…
For a little while — too long, actually — I believed it, and I fully intended on posting the letter as some kind of plea for understanding. We spent far too long poring over the pages, trying to assess whether or not it was written in some elaborate code (and whether or not we could crack said code) or just the product of a drug-addled and possibly insane mind.
As uncomfortable as it made me, I still thought there was something off about it. On his worst day, Peter could construct a coherent sentence. Plus, certain parts — the section about iPods running from the bottom of page one to the top of page two, for instance — screamed “prank!” to me, but enough of it disturbed me and I suddenly started feeling guilty for shrugging at the alleged charges.
After awhile, Peter’s handle signed on yet again. This time, he started to talk. Plus, his IP checked out. It was him, and the whole thing was an elaborate, goofy prank. It was mostly just a matter of timing it with a period when he knew he wouldn’t have any Internet access for a few weeks.
How’d he get the appropriate level of crazy for the letter? He initially wrote out a “crazy rant” but decided it didn’t sound crazy enough. Solution: use Babelfish to translate it into French, then translate the French back into English and transcribe it onto note paper.
Why? Why not? I love a good prank, and this is probably the best one I’ve seen pulled since the time, several years back, that Jive “came out” to a couple of our friends.
The world needs more high-quality pranks, so Peter, I salute you.
Posted by Stan on March 20, 2008 10:47 PM | Permalink | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em | Digg It
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