Let’s take a break from the more serious fare and spend a little bit discussing some random things that are popping into my mind at the moment, an opportunity to lighten the mood a bit after my last few posts.

Thanks to one of my best friends I was inspired to entertain myself at the Central States Fair one August in a way that had nothing to do with any of the rides. I spent a while wandering aimlessly through the midway until it got dark enough for my purposes and I was prepared to have some fun…and my experiences with scouting at an earlier age had taught me quite a bit about being prepared.

I had a few Alka Seltzer tablets in my pocket and a fountain drink I had purchased from a concession stand along the way. I picked my victims for this prank entirely at random, approaching them slowly, popping a tablet of the Alka Seltzer into my mouth, filling my cheeks with soda, and allowing the foam to begin spilling from my mouth as I latched onto the stranger, rolling my eyes back into my head so that only the whites were showing and muttering in a rasping voice, “Someone in here wants to talk to you.”

I got away with startling people with that particularly amusing prank five or six times before I noticed the obvious security personnel following me wherever I went. I had gotten my enjoyment out of the night and figured it was time to cut my losses and get out of there before I got into some sort of trouble, also the front of my shirt was pretty well drenched from the foam that had been spilling out of my mouth. If I had been thinking I would have hidden away in the haunted house and tried out my prank on the people in there…would have added a legitimate scare to the attraction perhaps.

The next prank was planned, but never implemented. My fellow musician and I wanted to rent or outright purchase full wet suits which would leave no skin exposed and sneak into a port-a-potty at the fairgrounds, lowering ourselves into the respective basins of two separate units, from which point we would fling feces back up at unsuspecting victims when they used the toilets…maybe even just slapping a handful of the waste against their cheeks when they sat down, potentially scaring the shit out of them in a far more literal sense.

We figured that we could safely escape from security or police because no one was going to attempt to tackle us, coated in filth the way that we surely would be. We could race, awkwardly as would be the case wearing scuba gear, to the creek where we would dive in to the relative safety of the water where we could swim away to a safe distance and escape to laugh our sick asses off in safety somewhere.

In retrospect I have to think it might be best that we never did attempt that specific prank since I doubt it would have gone anywhere near as smoothly and seamlessly as we imagined it going. Wouldn’t it have been grand, though? If it had worked out as planned, it would have been absolutely fucking brilliant.

Or maybe I’m just crazy…but you can keep your opinion to yourself on that matter.

We had many genius plans, my fellow musician and I, so many hilarious pranks that we never got the chance to try out.

We wanted to purchase nice, white suits of some thin, breathable material, dress ourselves up as fancy as possible, and swallow almost toxic quantities of laxative. The plan was to board an elevator, push our way to the front of the cab, and let loose in front of everyone before accusingly looking at every other passenger when the smell permeated the compartment.

After we had gotten bored with the elevator the plan would have been to wander around in a public place, shit stains on display, without acknowledging the situation. Having no shame could be liberating sometimes, and it would have been terrific fun to try out that little prank as well, if not also a bit degrading.

There was also an entertaining idea of staying with someone who owned cats and insisting on using the litter box instead of the bathroom with a totally unbroken nonchalance, regardless of the privacy level…I still consider trying that one out as an adult someday, which should tell you just how adult I really am…or am not.

We may have had numerous plans that were never fulfilled, but there were plenty of things we did for entertainment without any planning involved. My fellow musician and I had a coworker who became a friend of ours and she happened to live in an apartment downtown near where we would aimlessly find ourselves wandering a great deal of the time during the midnight hours.

It just so happened that the alley entrance to her building never seemed to be locked, and we decided to walk right in on many occasions. At the end of the hall where the apartments were located was a large cabinet with wooden doors, which were similarly unlocked, and we couldn’t keep from peeking.

Out of that sheer juvenile curiosity (though we were both supposedly adults at the time) we discovered that these doors opened on the breakers for all of the apartments on that floor. It should be obvious what came next, as we immediately tripped all of the breakers before restoring the power again.

We came back and did the same thing quite a few times, when we were walking downtown and happened to pass by that particular alley entrance. Perhaps our actions cost some resident their job because an alarm didn’t go off in the morning, but we didn’t care. We were amusing ourselves and that was the only thing that mattered to us at the time. The victims of our amusement weren’t even afterthoughts.

That sort of dissociative mentality informed a lot of our decisions…and especially mine, as you will learn (if you haven’t already), but that’s all I wanted to share right now. That’s it…move along, there is nothing more to see here.