In Which I Die a Mysterious, Fiery Death
People 'round here sure are gullible.
As I've mentioned before, I live in the dorms. It being Halloween and all, the RA announced a door decoration contest. I like contests, so I promptly signed up. I think there are a total of two people signed up in the entire hall. My main competition has some pumpkin clip art and ghost-shaped tinsel on her door.
Being the reincarnation of H.P. Lovecraft that I am, I decided to go for realism and subtlety. So I printed this out:
I used 8 point font and there was a lot more Greek around it than I'm showing - I wanted to make sure the GIF was legible for you Web folks. I also printed it out on light green paper, so it'd Xerox kind of grey, like newsprint. I then tore it out manually and enlarged it on a Xerox machine.
After fiddling around with that for a while, I went back to my room and took everything off my door except the cheesy nametag the RA put on everyone's door before the dorms opened. I also left up my whiteboard and the doorbell I'd wired through the peephole, mostly because those would be a hassle to take down.
I taped the article to the whiteboard and I made a big bow with black crepe paper and used it to hide the doorbell. Then I made a big black sash of crepe paper diagonally across the door. I don't know what people would do if someone died, so black crepe paper seemed like the way to go. My work done, I closed the door and started playing Nethack and listening to David Byrne's Rei Momo.
That's when I heard a murmur in the hall. I saw shadows through the crack under my door and walked over to investigate. As I've said before, I have a doorbell wired through the hole where my peephole lens used to be, so this wasn't the most effective method of gathering intelligence. I swung the door open to discover a small group of girls who paled at my appearance.
In retrospect, I really should have told people what I was doing beforehand. Although this was much more in keeping with the Spirit of Halloween than cartoon witches.
Apparently this is a very passable forgery, at least among the young and trusting. And I couldn't figure out how to justify text in Word until very recently. That would have put the icing on the cake, realism-wise.
I wandered off and gave one of my spare copies to my pal Spider, which confused her greatly. My skill was such that she thought it was an actual article, even with the supposèd corpse standing next to her.
I should have just put up some skeletons for Halloween and done this the next time I was going to be out of town for a few days. Damn.
Being the reincarnation of H.P. Lovecraft that I am, I decided to go for realism and subtlety. So I printed this out:
I used 8 point font and there was a lot more Greek around it than I'm showing - I wanted to make sure the GIF was legible for you Web folks. I also printed it out on light green paper, so it'd Xerox kind of grey, like newsprint. I then tore it out manually and enlarged it on a Xerox machine.
After fiddling around with that for a while, I went back to my room and took everything off my door except the cheesy nametag the RA put on everyone's door before the dorms opened. I also left up my whiteboard and the doorbell I'd wired through the peephole, mostly because those would be a hassle to take down.
I taped the article to the whiteboard and I made a big bow with black crepe paper and used it to hide the doorbell. Then I made a big black sash of crepe paper diagonally across the door. I don't know what people would do if someone died, so black crepe paper seemed like the way to go. My work done, I closed the door and started playing Nethack and listening to David Byrne's Rei Momo.
That's when I heard a murmur in the hall. I saw shadows through the crack under my door and walked over to investigate. As I've said before, I have a doorbell wired through the hole where my peephole lens used to be, so this wasn't the most effective method of gathering intelligence. I swung the door open to discover a small group of girls who paled at my appearance.
In retrospect, I really should have told people what I was doing beforehand. Although this was much more in keeping with the Spirit of Halloween than cartoon witches.
Apparently this is a very passable forgery, at least among the young and trusting. And I couldn't figure out how to justify text in Word until very recently. That would have put the icing on the cake, realism-wise.
I wandered off and gave one of my spare copies to my pal Spider, which confused her greatly. My skill was such that she thought it was an actual article, even with the supposèd corpse standing next to her.
I should have just put up some skeletons for Halloween and done this the next time I was going to be out of town for a few days. Damn.