Book review continued from the main page...
Some of the pranks are primarily to annoy the ‘victim’, and some will cause the average consumer to laugh out loud. In the corporation category, John takes on such industry behemoths as Wal-Mart (to challenge their stance on what they will and will not sell) and Starbucks (as a comment on the profusion of their outlets). Other chapters end with real and positive results – when faced with an incomprehensible power bill, the outcome of his interaction with the company appears to be a new policy resulting in an easier-to-understand bill.
One of my favourite chapters features John tracking down Dolf, a real-estate spammer, and phoning him at 4am to read the entire text of the spam email that Dolf had repeatedly sent him.
John says:
”…then I read him, word for word, the entire e-mail that he had been sending me relentlessly, incessantly, mercilessly, for the past few months.
It was a long message, especially since I insisted on reading out the 263-character unsubscribe link at the bottom, letter for letter. Altogether, it took about five minutes to read all that random junk to Dolf, since I recited each page of the e-mail at a slow, measured pace. I didn’t rush myself; I wanted to savor the moment.”
This is followed later by an attempt to reduce the amount of junk mail arriving at his door. John tried a variety of methods, including the popular option of ‘revengelopes’ – where postage-paid envelopes are returned to sender, their contents only limited by the outraged recipients’ imagination (and a few US postal regulations). John decided to see just how heavy he could make one of these envelopes and still have it delivered…
Although many of the pranks in the book served no practical purpose, they are nonetheless amusing, and the book as a whole is both absorbing and highly entertaining.
Prank the Monkey by Sir John Hargrave is available from Kensington Publishing, and will be released in February.
It’s available for ordering here.
(Thanks to Madmouse for her assistance.)
