1. An element of misdirection.
2. An element of confusion.
3. No hurt feelings or physical pain.
4. No major inconvenience.

Here’s an example of a good prank I pulled a few years ago. But read on, because here’s an example of a great prank pulled on me last week.

I walked out to my car on Friday evening to find a layer of ice coating the entire car, so I was scraping the passenger side of the car when I noticed a sticker adorning the passenger door. My first reaction was that someone had placed a permanent sticker on my car. But I quickly realized that it was a large magnet, not a sticker…and that it had my phone number on it. I snapped a photo.

It was then that a few realizations struck me, causing me to laugh so hard for the entire drive home:

1. I had been pranked.
2. I had no idea when I had been pranked–I could have been driving around for days with that magnet on my car.
3. I had potentially been driving around for days completely oblivious that I had a magnet on my car with my real phone number and the revelation that I loved cats.
4. No one had yet to call me to take me up on the offer.

Of course, I had to post it on Facebook immediately. Within a few hours, the photo had generated more than 30 likes and over 40 comments. A few of my favorites:

From Jesus F: “I saw the magnet on Thursday morning and thought you were doing it on purpose for a blog post. I had one of those “oh, Jamey…” moments. Then it was still there yesterday, so I thought it was for real. And I thought, “Oh, Jamey…” again.”

My response: “That makes this even more hilarious, the fact that you (and possibly other people who know me) saw the magnet and didn’t even think it was a prank.”

And this one (I think I’m sooo clever):

From Sarah E: “I’d have loved to hear the story of when some girl with a cute phone voice called and you had no clue why she was asking you to “care for her cat”…now THAT just might take the cake!”

My response: “Especially if she uses a different word for “cat.”"

In the end, it wasn’t until today that the prankster (my coworker, Linda) stepped forward. She was disappointed, as were many of the commenters, that I had discovered the magnet so early into the prank. I might consider putting it back on the car until I get a call or two, just for the story. We’ll see. What do you think?

Google Library Search, as it was originally called, was created to promote the “democratization of knowledge.” For years, workers scanned around the clock to compile a searchable database of every book ever printed.

But, as Google Books director Piers Tiplan said today in front of a massive crowd, “We simply ran out of published books.”

Google is confident that the news will be well received. Millions of closet writers will immediately become published authors when the eight novels they’ve stowed away in their bottom desk drawer are scanned and uploaded.

But Google is aware of the inconvenience of having personal documents signed, and they have taken extreme measures to minimize the intrusion. “Our next-generation Elphel 423 cameras scan at the rate of 1,500 pages an hour, so we’ll be in and out of your home before you know it,” said Tiplan.

“You can even save time by leaving your yearbooks, diaries, journals, and old letters in a box on your front porch,” he added.

Google Books’ text-recognition software has advanced to the point that it can recognize any handwriting in any language, claiming a 99.9% accuracy rate. Chief analyst Patricia Schwartzmann noted that corrections could be submitted to customer support. “If we mistakenly interpreted your diary entry to say, ‘I find myself thinking about the babysitter when I’m in bed with my wife’ and it actually said ‘…thinking about Thebe Byslater when I’m in bed with my wife,’ we take full responsibility for the error and will correct it immediately.”

Tiplan indicated that Google understands the line between private and public property. “We would never think of digging through your garbage to scan receipts, cable bills, and medical documents,” he said. “But post-it notes and sketches on napkins? They’re public record.”

Google emphasized the searchable utility of the program, adding that it will sync with its social network, Google +. “Reunite with old friends, rehash long-forgotten memories, and reopen old wounds when you learn what people really thought about you back in middle school,” Tiplan said, adding a personal anecdote involving an old crush who he hunted down after reading a particularly insulting diary entry.

If you would like to sign up for Google Books’ beta list, simply go to Google and search for your own name.

Copyright 2012 The Ass Press.

“Specifically,” he clarified from his perch on a fjord, “I’m going to remake the novelization of the American remake of my original film adaptation of the  novel ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.’”

Oplev was quick to add that this would not be a shot-by-shot remake. However, while putting together a piece of IKEA furniture, he indicated that he was inspired by the American adaptation to cast “very attractive people, but to make them look as unattractive as possible” using makeup, costumes, and what he could only describe as “svenfjorgeborg.”

“It roughly translates to, ‘that thing that happens to a actor after they are woken up night after night by a naked Swedish man hovering over their bed,” Oplev said, wearing a navy blue and yellow sweater and eating a Toblerone.

The production company, Det Danske Filminstitut (really!), plans on releasing the film in 2014. American remake director David Fincher, although unavailable for comment, indicated on his Twitter feed Thursday that he would follow the remake of the remake with a claymation remake in 2017.

Copyright 2011 The Ass Press.

It began with a single drop of rain.

I had gone my first two days in Ireland with nary a rainfall. I skipped through the cobblestone streets of Clontarf, blowing kisses to milkmaids and spouting limericks in all directions.

And then came the rain.

I walked out the door of my castle hotel on Sunday morning to discover a moist substance falling from the sky. Knowing not what it was, I grabbed the nearest Irishman and insisted he tell me what it was.

He told me, and I apologized for the nuisance. We then exchanged pints of Guinness and went on our way.

The skies had opened, and the rain was relentless. I traveled to Dublin city centre by bus. Before I got off the bus, the driver grabbed me by the sleeve and said with a haunted look in her eyes, “Don’t go out there, lad!”

“I can handle it,” I told her. “I can handle a little water–I dilute my orange-mango juice with it at every dinner.”

She pointed to the fare box. “I mean, don’t go out there until you pay the fair. Elevensies halfsies is the fare.”

(All Irish currency is measured by how cute it is to say the numbers. For example, a penny is 1/100th of a Euro, while 10,000 Euros is pronounced with the sound a kitten makes when it stretches after a nap.)

By the time I had my midday tea, the rain was coming down at an angle. The normally crowded streets of Dublin were…well, still very crowded, because this was nothing out of the ordinary for them.

But for me it was a sign of doomsday.

With only my Oxford peacoat to protect me, I stripped down to my Irish loincloth (like an American loincloth, but shaped like a shamrock) and ran through the streets. I just barely caught the bus back to my castle hotel, which I stormed like you would any castle hotel (through the sliding glass doors).

I was home safe. But not for long.

You see, outside the waters were rising. Gaelic beasts of yore were rising from their slumber, tasting the toes of humans on the tides.

I knew I had to act, and fast. It wouldn’t be safe in my completely, absolutely safe castle hotel for long. I had to make a run for it.

So after sleeping in (it’s my vacation, after all), I dressed properly and  ventured into the heart of Clontarf (which basically consists of a grocery store and a few quaint shops). I stocked up on chocolate and fish and chips and headed to the wharf.

The time had come. With the help of a number of Irish Rovers and Irish Setters, I pieced together a crude raft out of former Cranberries singers and corned beef.

I tested my weight against it. “She’ll hold together,” I said while looking wistfully at the sea. “Oh, she’ll hold.”

One last piece was needed: The sail. So I threw my peacoat onto one of the Cranberries and lifted it aloft, leaving me flapping nakedly in the wind.

“Set me afloat, boys!” I cried, and the Irish Setters nudged the raft into the sea with their little noses.

I turned to the shore and raised me hand to salute the Irish soil that I had called home the last few days. Then I turned my eyes and heart to the sea, calling out to the wind, “You shall never take me! This day is mine, and I shall survive!”

(Jamey’s journal was discovered a few days later just a few yards from where he set sail. His last words were scribbled in the margins: “Corned beef was a bad choice.”)

For more of Jamey’s “true” tales of survival, click here.

This is my story.

I was driving back from brunch–something I’m guessing most rebels do on Sunday–when a police car pulled behind me, its lights flashing red and blue. Although I knew I could outrun it in my ’03 Camry, I decided to play it safe and pull over.

I handed the officer my license and insurance. He asked me if I was aware that my plates were expired.

I knew at that moment that he had me. There was no sweet-talking my way out of this one. You see, a couple years ago when I got my license plates renewed, I put on my Outlook calendar that I needed to renew them again in July of 2011. So the reminder popped up a few weeks ago, and I went to the DMV, and they told me to get an emissions test and inspection, which I did this past week. I then went back to the DMV on Wednesday, but the lines were really long, so I tried to renew online. However, I didn’t have a pin code because the state never sent me a renewal notice, so I e-mailed the state for the code. Their response was that my plates should have been renewed in January, and because they were overdue, I would have to take care of it in person at the DMV.

I am a man on the run. I no longer look anything like this. I look the opposite of this.

I was sure they were wrong, because when is my Outlook calendar ever wrong? But then I looked at my license plates, and sure enough, they say JAN on them, clear as day. Apparently I rely more on Outlook than real things right before my eyes.

I showed the officer that I truly had been trying to take care of the issue (I had the receipt for the emissions test and inspection), and he let me off with a warning. Which I don’t really understand. I broke the law, right? Shouldn’t I get a ticket?

So now I’m on the lam. I ditched my car as soon as I was out of sight of the officer, taking off on foot. I’m a marked man, with my expired license plate warning, and I’m sure all police in the area have “shoot to kill” orders.

Thus I’ve taken to the seedy underbelly of St. Louis. I live in the sewers now, eating whatever the rats leave behind, sleeping in puddles of urine and double beds.

Double beds. The horror.

I spent the first few hours of my new life as an outlaw in the most productive way possible, constructing a crude loincloth out of duct tape and cat hair. I shaved my head, grew a beard, and trimmed my fingernails so the police can’t identify me.

I am a shadow of my former self.

I roam this windswept land in search of…something. Is it love? A new start? Or perhaps a receipt of my 2009 personal property tax bill payment. No one knows.

No one knows how it feels to be outcasted from society, discarded like yesterday’s garbage. I turned to friends and relatives, and everywhere the look of disgust and dismay is the same: Why has he come to me? they wonder. Why is he wearing a duct tape diaper?

These are questions that cannot be answered.

I sleep with one eye open and the other also open. I tried to join a gang but I was too rough around the edges. So I started my own gang, the Sewer Ratz Fun-Time Solution Remedy. Initiation was brutal.

Do not try to find me. You will try anyway, as the reward money for my capture is surely in the tens of dollars. I will evade you until the end of days.

This is the last you’ll hear from me until tomorrow around this time. So until then, if you see a pale man cowering on a street corner, tufts of cat hair attached to his loins by what appears to be duct tape, please keep walking. Do not look back. Because he might not have had enough duct tape to cover his butt.

Show of hands among the ladies: How many of you have given birth to a baby that you told your husband was his, but it was actually the milkman’s?

As often as that phrase is used, you’d think that there would be milkman babies all over the place. But in reality, only 1 out of 5 babies born after 1980 are milkman babies (way down from 2 out of 3 babies born between 1950 and 1970).

So why do milkmen still have that stigma?

I decided to do a little research on this point by signing up for Oberweis home delivery thanks to a well-timed Groupon. From what I can tell, Oberweis (which I pronounce in my head and out loud Oberveis. It’s because I have a German name) is a local dairy farm that provided a milk and grocery delivery service. They come once a week and leave bottles of milk and whatever else you want in a cooler in front of your house.

I received my first Oberweis delivery today. I ran outside to greet the milkman and tell him where to leave the milk cooler (I’m receiving my deliveries at work). He introduced himself as Ken. Really nice guy.

Before he left, I said, “Hey Ken, how many milkman babies have you produced?

Ken wiped his forehead on the back of his hand and replied, “What?”

I gestured in the shape of a baby. “Milkman babies. How many women have you slept with while delivering milk, producing a baby with the union of your sperm and her fertile egg?”

He squinted at me and said, “If you were me, would you disclose that information?”

“If I were you, I’d have some dental work done,” I replied. “But that’s not the question.”

Okay, I’m kidding! Of course I didn’t ask Ken about his sexual proclivities. And he had perfectly fine teeth.

However, if I can find a polite way to ask it, I may actually ask Ken about the “perks” of the job. Any suggestions on how to ask? Or should I definitely not do that?

Every day, thousands of children are subjected to the infamous “birds and the bees” talk. But do we ever stop to ask ourselves if we really want to compare human sexuality to birds and bees? Consider the following:

• If humans had sex like birds, a male would accumulate sperm within their distended testes during the mating season, find an obliging or unguarded female, and then ejaculate from his phallus into the her cloaca.
• If humans had sex like bees, the sole purpose of a male’s life would be to have sex a single time with his female queen, upon which, after leaving his endophallus in the female’s body (similar to leaving behind your wallet at her place after a one-night stand), the male would die.

Sounds just like good ole’ fashioned human reproduction, doesn’t it?

The average American worker spends 27 minutes in the bathroom a day (Stegmaier 2011). Not only are workers moving bowels and excreting liquids, they are washing hands, examining blemishes in the mirror, and adjusting their hair so it looks like they didn’t just adjust it. Some even choose to spray air cleansers immediately preceding their exit, which serves to make the bathroom smell like freshly shampooed poop.

I don’t know about you, but I find that the primary time that my coworkers page my desk phone is when I’m in the bathroom. My bathroom is attached to my office, so I can hear my coworkers calling, and yet I cannot answer. Sometimes I’m so desperate to answer that I text the coworker in question from the commode: “In the bathroom! Indian food LOL .”

(Sidenote: Should punctuation follow emoticons? It seems that emoticons effectively end the sentence. Perhaps someday all punctuation will be replaced with emoticons.)

Thus I propose the following:

Henceforth, all employees will be required to wear adult diapers while at work.

Think of the hike in productivity! Rather than waste time walking to the bathroom every hour, workers can simply to their business at their desk while doing business. Instead of missing valuable time at meetings by taking bathroom breaks, employees can break the seal right there at the conference table. Companies could spend their discretionary funds on executive bonuses instead of the endless sinkhole that is toilet paper (I mean, what’s the ROI on toilet paper? I don’t see “clean butts” on the Fortune 500 criteria).

The advantages are endless.

I’ll run this by my coworkers tomorrow. I’m sure the response will be overwhelmingly positive.

The CPC, established in 1780 as a way for frustrated parents to incentivize their children to eat everything on their plate, has a membership of over 3 billion. It is widely regarded as the most important organization for the completion of dinner, with the If You Won’t Eat It, You Wear It Association and the No Son of Mine Fraternity coming in a distant second and third, respectively.

Spokesman Terry Argoe clarified that all existing memberships would remain intact with full benefits like dessert, playtime on the family Wii, and the ability to leave the kitchen table, but that no new members would be accepted.

“We understand all the hard work that goes into cleaning plates,” Argoe said to reporters from around the world. “We hope that children everywhere will proceed with the same vigor and enthusiasm to eat all of their food.”

“Even broccoli,” he added, making a face.

When pressed for reasons for why the CPC was closing memberships, Argoe had to take several moments to collect himself before replying.

“The sheer paperwork involved in running the CPC is daunting domestically, much less internationally,” he said, sighing. “Every time a parent tells a child that they’re about to join the Clean Plate Club, we have to log the promise and follow up with an inspection to see if the plate is actually clean.”

He acknowledged that many children are sneaky about their plates. “Some might smear their spinach quiche around the plate to make it appear like they ate it all. Others hide peas among chicken bones. That’s not a clean plate, people.”

Argoe outlined a five-step plan for the CPC to streamline their database so to reduce input costs. He mentioned several innovative ideas, such as a Clean Plate Club mobile app that parents could use to submit new applications and track incentives, as well as microchip technology that could determine if a plate has been fully cleaned.

“But those advances are years away,” he concluded.

In the meantime, Argoe encouraged parents to use other methods like idle threats and “good cop/bad cop” to get kids to eat their leafy greens and weird tofu.

Copyright 2011 The Ass Press.

I was young and bright-eyed once, back in the winter of ’10. An optimistic boy making my way in the world. I was back in the heartland of Virginia for Christmas break, and I had just dropped off my grandmother after watching True Grit with her (Grandma’s review: “I’m not sure about that movie.”). I drove home in my parent’s 1994 Dodge Caravan, eager to greet them with tidings of comfort and joy upon my return.

Little did I know of the terror that awaited me.

Before I had left for the movie, my parents told me they might be out running some errands when I returned. They said they’d leave the door to the house unlocked for me. Bambi-eyed and trusting, I believed their every word.

Having barely missed out on Jamey-meat, a wolf howls in anguish to the moon.

You see, my parents had spent 29 years coddling me, showering me with love and affection and support. But somewhere, deep down, they had plotted and schemed. They drew up blueprints, hired ex-Marines, and opened untraceable bank accounts in the Swiss Bahamas.

Finally, the fruits of their patience paid off, and they executed their plan to perfection: They “forgot” to leave the doors to the house unlocked.

Desperately I tried door after door, window after window. I even remembered the code to the garage door, but the pulley was off its tracks. My parents had planned well.

It was 3:00 in the afternoon, and I knew I only had a few hours of sunlight remaining before the wolves would have me. I was wearing naught but a sweater, jeans, and a peacoat that has garnered many a compliment.

But wolves don’t pay compliments.

The temperature hovered around 31 degrees in the barren wasteland of suburban Virginia. They say that if a man can stay warm, he can live 30 days on water alone. But I had no water and no warmth. And no iPhone recharger.

I dropped to my knees and released a primal yell to the arctic winds. With what little strength I had, I shook my fist at the heavens. That act of defiance sapped my strength to the point that I knew I wouldn’t last another five minutes without a Christmas cookie or egg nog.

Your mind can do amazing things when it’s pushed to the brink. With hope fading fast, I realized that I had three options for survival:

1. Get back in the minivan and crank up the heat and the radio.
2. Forge a new life in the forest in front of my house, making my own clothing from deer pelts (mostly loinclothes…okay, exclusively loinclothes) and foraging for bugs and berries.
3. Strip naked and climb into the hot tub on my parent’s screen porch.

My every instinct told me that #2 was the right choice. But before I left my old life behind, it occurred to me that hot tubs are awesome, and I was home alone.

Gritting my teeth, I tore off my clothing and climbed into the hot tub, which was nice and steamy. Oh, the ecstasy! I had leaned on the railing of death and said, “No! Not today, Death! I have a hot tub to enjoy in the nude!”

And so I lived. Oh, I lived. Twisting and twirling in the tub, my man bits slapped against my naked legs as I tried to regain feeling in my limbs. I even briefly considered emptying my bladder in the tub to defy my parents, but I vetoed the idea after realizing that it would have meant sitting in a pool of my own urine for an indeterminate amount of time.*

Instead, I sat in a pool of victory until my parents came home.

I was free. I was alive. And I was very, very naked.

But it was worth it.

For other true tales of survival, scroll down to the bottom of this page.

*I may have actually peed in the hot tub. I really can’t remember, but it seems like something I would do.