“What The Fuck!?”
or, if you prefer, Prank Phone Calls
a random pagemonkey rant

 

I know very few people of my age, Gentle Reader, whom did not at some time in their adolescence bask in the sheer joy of The Telephone Prank.

I’m nosing up around the backside of 50, and back in the day - my day - telepranks were very, very easy.

Caller ID wasn’t yet available to consumers, so you really didn’t know who was calling or where from.

And nearly all of the phones in use at the time were Genuine Bell, which meant they were indestructible but had less audio fidelity than we’re familiar with in the 21st century.

Calls were peppered with noises made by the cord swinging, and people sounded like they had head colds.

 

For example, old lady Schmutz down the street never was able to recognize my voice on her black windup dial phone.

Especially not with her damnable blind in one eye rug-pissing yappy poodle going off like a warm, shaken beer in the background.

With that distraction going on, it was really pretty easy to speak with her.

And speak with her I did, on numerous times, not in any true official capacity you understand, regarding her opinion of the new L’eggs pantyhose.

 

The tapes of those conversations used to get my buddies laughing so hard they’d pee. We’d huddle-up around the trusty cassette machine, and roar with laughter at the cleverness of my questions, as well as her answers.

Especially the last teleprank in that series, in which Ms. Schmutz explained that she finally tried L’eggs, quite to her dissatisfaction.

She went on to explain that she actually tried them twice, having destroyed the first whole egg of them because they were too small and she hadn’t shaved her wobbly old stems in preparation.

“So I bought more, and a razor, and I shaved, and they slid right up where they were meant to go without fighting back too hard,” she told me (and via tape, about 50 of my goonish high school buddies) “but I got a rash of hairy eyes at church when I hiked my dress up to sit and receive the Lord.” She went on to explain that her normal hosiery was plain old black with garters, and while the color she had selected had looked fine in the store and had looked fine when slid her newly-shaved gams into them in her living room, her legs had glowed a bit red in the light filtering through the stained glass of her Methodist godspot.

“Everyone noticed, and I turned as deep red as my L’egged-up legs.” she said. “I looked like a woman of ill repute!”

So, my teleprank caused her to spend about $3, got her to shave her legs, and temporarily ruined her rep. Innocent fun.

To this day, I like to think it also intrigued her a bit, and perhaps got her to pay more attention to her self. She was a bitter old widow, a former school teacher, with virtually no friends outside her church - what I call a “Muffin Lady,” someone whose life has been reduced to baking for charity sales and not much more.

All my pranks, and those of my buddies, were aimed at getting someone to do something a little out of character, and therein was the beauty. Nothing vile, vulgar, or dangerous.

 

Fast-forward 35 years, and we have Tariq Malik, aka “Dex” - the Canadian scoundrel who has been making some extremely dangerous prank calls via Skype. Calls that incite frightened hotel and motel stayers to bash out windows, throw televisions out of windows, drive cars into lobbies, set off sprinklers, and just generally suffer for having answered the damned phone. In one instance, he was able to get employees of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaraunt to strip outside the establishment and piss on each other.

You have to give him credit for being a great motivator, and acknowledge his technical savvy in being able to mask his location well enough to befuddle law enforcement.

But you have to wonder why he misuses his skills so badly; he’s a man who lives with his mother, and they typically rent slumlord style flats in the $600 range for short periods. He’s not making any money with his endeavor, and the only friends he has won are of his same ilk.

~ pagemonkey