Thanks, Gordo, for sending me the amazing prank call CD known as Melba Comes Alive, which I haven’t heard since 1997. And thanks, mysterious stranger in Nebraska for the post card.

Here’s the latest solo show by RBCP, which happened on Saturday night. It includes lots of photo customers and the brand new patented PLA trick of calling people on Facebook and doing job reference checks on their Facebook friends.

• Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or RSS.
  
• Visit Darkstranger’s Tinychat
  
• Join the Friday Nights By The Fire Facebook page
  
• Subscribe to these Facebooks: Prank Phone Calls, Telephone Falls, Phone Losers of America, A href=”https://www.facebook.com/darkstrangerr”>Dark Stranger
  
• To search for people on Facebook, type “cell” into the search box on Openbook
  
• Thanks, Madhouse, for the use of your shoutcast stream! Visit Madhouse’s website and their Facebook.
  

Here are a couple of our YouTube videos that contain pranks from the previous show…

• Visit Bonecage’s Facebook, his Soundcloud, his Reverb Nation page, and buy his album.
  
• Visit PLA’s Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter and Facebook. And subscribe to the RSS feed for posts and podcasts, over there in the sidebar and on the top of the page.
  
• KDK is the show that doesn’t make prank calls
  
• PSR is the group of people harassing RBCP
  
• Read the rules of prank calling so you know not to make SWAT calls.
  
• Here’s a PLA Forums post that links to a bunch of celebrity SWAT stories in the news.
  
• Laugh Track Matt’s been in the hospital. Click here to visit his YouTube channel where he’s posted a few videos of his hospital adventures.
  
• Visit PLA’s YouTube because a few new videos have been posted since last time.
  
• If you play Simpsons Tapped Out on your iPhone, add rbcp to it.
  
• If you play SimCity, add rbcp on the North American 4 West server. Also add carlitus-x (Carlito) and phoneloser (Samantha)
  
• BREAKING NEWS – Sears portrait studios are closed forever and a Waffle House employee pranks 911 for April Fools Day.
  
• RBCP’s new project is Telephone Falls. Add it on Facebook and YouTube.
  
• I wonder if it would be interesting for people to download the chat room log from the night of this show and read along as the show played. Probably not.
  
• Lindsay’s brother is going to fuck me in court!
  

I did another preshow on Saturday night, once again for Brent Westwood’s show. This one drags on for a little over 2 hours and includes calls to video store customers, pizza survey calls and I bust a girl for smoking weed at her job, which is what the image above is referring to. Near the end there’s a 2 hour break where Brent Westwood’s show happened, but there’s no indication of WHERE it happened, so you just hear me saying goodbye and then there’s a bunch of pranks right after that. So if you’re a little confused, that’s why. Enjoy the show!

In case anyone missed the announcement, Madhouse Live has moved to Sunday nights!

As I mentioned in the previous post, you can now listen to PLA’s audio content on Tunein, iTunes and Stitcher! Leave a comment if you’d like to see us on any other similar services.

There’s a new prank show on Friday nights! Join Tux, Polkja and IceGoose at 7pm Pacific / 10pm Eastern for Friday Nights by the Fire. Click on that link to visit their Facebook page and pretend that you like them.

Thanks, Darkstranger, for the “marketing fraud” picture that she found on Imgur and showed to me!

You might notice giant, ugly graphics for Tunein and iTunes over there on the left sidebar. Hornyelf was complaining at me today for not having a feed on Tunein, so I showed him the link to our Tunein page and I began a 20-minute long verbal beatdown on Hornyelf for not being able to find it. To save myself precious time on verbal beatdowns in the future, I’ve put these links in the sidebar to make them easier to find. I’ve also applied to Stitcher, so hopefully that one will be added soon. (We were on Stitcher on Cacti Radio, but never on this site.) What other music feed services would you like to see us on? Let me know in the comments and I’ll see about adding them.

Oh, and one last thing…WHY THE HELL DOES PLA ONLY HAVE TWELVE FOLLOWERS ON TUMBLR??? I know the Tumblr hasn’t existed for very long and I haven’t put much effort into letting people know it exists, but you people should just magically find this stuff on your own and add yourselves to it. Goddammit. GODDAMMIT! So go add yourselves to our Tumblr so you can see the exact same stuff that’s posted on YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else. Because you NEED to be reminded of new PLA content a dozen times each time it happens, right?

Oh, and there’s just one more thing…(that was my Steve Jobs impression)…I set up a Facebook GROUP for PLA last week. So join it and post somethings – it works a lot like the PLA forums, except that people actually use Facebook so there’s more activity on them. facebook.com/groups/goawaypla

This weekend there was no Madhouse Live show, but RBCP did a precum show anyway and Brent Westwood ended up taking over for Carlito. This resulted in about 3 hours worth of lube jobs. All that makes perfect sense, right?

Visit brentwestwood.com for DirtyAaron’s prank show.
Visit madhouselive.com for Carlito’s prank show.

Did you know you can get everything the PLA has ever done on a torrent? Below you’ll find links for the PLA 2012 torrent, some prank call torrents and a Rappy McRapperson torrent. If you think you’ve heard everything by the PLA, then download the torrent below to see exactly how wrong you were. A 2013 Media Pack should be happening at some point during the summer. To get even more torrents, visit our page of torrents. TORRENT!

2012 PLA Media Pack: This is the most recent version of the PLA Media Pack. It contains around 26 gigabytes of PLA material, including prank calls, Phone Shows, PLA Radio and other podcasts, videos, texts, pictures and more. If you want a giant collection of everything the PLA has ever done, then this is the place to get it.

Prank Phone Call Albums Torrent: This is RBCP’s personal collection of prank call albums. There’s lots of stuff in here, spanning about 20 years.

PLA’s 2012 24-Hour Marathon: In Early 2012, various Cacti Radio DJs broadcast nonstop LIVE prank calls for a full 24 hours. Tabachi split up all the best calls and put them in this torrent for us to enjoy.

Rappy McRapperson 2013 Media Pack: RBCP has put together this torrent of material by our Lord and Savior, Rappy McRapperson. It includes all of his albums, singles, collaborations and his public access television show from the early 2000′s. This isn’t prank call related material, but I’ve used his music in so much of my own material that I’m betting you’ll enjoy this torrent.

I don’t know if this belongs on the feed or not, but I’m putting it there anyway. Last night, as a favor for Rappy McRapperson, I helped award-winning superstar Wing record a few musical masterpieces via the telephone. Yeah, over the telephone. I guess some radio DJ in the UK is retiring and he loves Wing, so his coworkers requested some songs for him.

I pretended to be Bruce Boner from Rock Hard Studios and we did our best to give Wing the illusion that we were sitting in a professional recording studio, even though Rappy was sitting under a palm tree somewhere and I’m in my mother’s basement. When I agreed to do this, I had no idea she was going to sing each song three times. The touch tones you hear being pressed during the recording are done by Wing. The inappropriate commentary is by me and Rappy – Wing should have been able to hear us but she didn’t seem to notice anything we said as she sang.

I know it’s not exactly a phone prank, but it is a pretty bizarre thing that happened over the phone. If you love the angelic sounds of Wing, click here to listen to her sing about not smoking crack.

Have you received a strange call in the middle of the night lately? If you have, you are not alone. Essex County OPP is investigating a number of calls originating from the number 239-205-4843. In two incidents, the man on the other end made bizarre statements like “I’m standing here freezing”, “Need a tire changed” and the disturbing “I’m going to kill a baby.”

Isn’t that weird that a news site would publish the full phone number of a prank phone caller? That’s the only reason I’m mentioning this otherwise boring article. I tried to call the guy to tell him he made the news, but there’s no voicemail set up on the number. I also looked at the number on one of those phone number ID websites and that number has 180 complaints against it. Some of the comments are pretty funny. Click here to read the full article.

I recently created a page on Facebook to troll Linux users. It’s called Linux is Garbage and is full of Linux users defending their precious OS and then the equally funny comments from other people who are messing with them. Linux users take life way too seriously, so join us in making fun of them at facebook.com/LinuxIsGarbage! Even if you’re a Linux user, it’s still lots of fun to upset your peers.

Roy and Staci do some crazy and horrible things to lube customers, hair salon customers and more! Here’s some show notes.

• Intro music called PLA Cactus by BrrrStickem. It was created last year and played on The Phone Show. Thanks, BrrrStickem!
  
• Roxy has 2 new videos on her YouTubez. Listen to Staci steam dinner in her sauna and ask her landlord about her grow house.
  
• There’s also a new video on PLA’s YouTube.
  
• Answer this question in the comments – should we have let that senior citizen lady wash her hair with ketchup?
  
• Thanks for the help, Brandy and Kayla! And I guess Spencer.
  
• CoolRob has THIS to say about possums: “They are also commonly called possums, though that term technically refers to Australian fauna of the suborder Phalangeriformes. The Virginia opossum was the first animal to be named an opossum; usage of the name was published in 1610.[2] The word opossum was borrowed from the Virginia Algonquian (Powhatan) language in the form aposoum and ultimately derives from the Proto-Algonquian word *wa˙p- aʔθemw, meaning “white dog” or “white beast/animal”.[3] Opossums probably diverged from the basic South American marsupials in the late Cretaceous or early Paleocene.”

For the past few weeks, I’ve been broadcasting on the Madhouse Live stream before Carlito’s show, playing music, complaining about Carlito being late, listening to other prank streams live on the air, and occasionally making some prank calls. This week’s show is the first one that I feel deserves a release because a few funny things happened, most of it near the end of the show.

You can listen to Carlito’s Madhouse Live every Saturday night at 7pm Pacific / 10pm Eastern at madhouselive.com. And if you tune in an hour or so before that, you’ll sometimes hear me on the stream, loudly eating chips and salsa.

Earlier this week, on Thursday night, NotBrad messaged me on Skype and asked if I’d help him test his microphone. I should have known it was a trick because the next thing I know we’re on the air and doing pizza calls for 90 minutes. There’s some fun stuff in here, especially NotBrad’s Checkers analogy near the end. That guy is FLABERGASTED and it’s ALLLLLL Gregory’s fault!

In the beginning you hear us talking about a girl I tried to call because I dinged her car. Yes, I actually dinged a car last summer, right in the midst of all my car ding pranks. Damn karma! Also, the website we were talking about where you can work from home filling Pizza Hut orders is pizzahutishomejobs.com. Go apply and see how long you last at it! Our pranking fun in this episode begins at around 20 minutes into the 90 minutes.

In other important news – TONIGHT (Saturday, February 9th, 2013) RBCP will be on the air at around 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern, making some prank calls and kind of holding the fort down until Carlito shows up to do his weekly Madhouse Live show. It won’t be nonstop prank calls – there will be music too, but it should still be a fun couple of hours before Carlito’s show. If Carlito is late, which he ALWAYS is, then I’ll keep going until he boots me off the air. Plans tonight include lots of lube, so be listening!

You know how I never shut up about Rappy McRapperson because I love him so much? Well guess what? There is now a Rappy McRapperson Media Pack for you to download with your favorite bittorrent client! It includes all of Rappy’s albums, all of his collaboration albums, his artwork, photos, and episode of his TV show from the early 2000′s. If you’re missing any important Rappy material, then this is definitely the place to get it.

Hi there, readers of RSS feeds. Have you been feeling neglected since I quit 2 of my podcasts last summer? Do you love the YouTube videos, but hate fascist YouTube because you use Linux and smoke American Spirits, goddammit? Then have I got some great news for you! I’ve been feeling like a huge jerk for ignoring the RSS feeds on my website lately, so I’ve decided to take the video that I’ve created using audio files, and convert them into audio files for you so I can release them on the phonelosers.org feed! Isn’t that genius!?

I’m going to make this a regular thing, rendering my videos not only to MP4, but also to MP3 whenever I make them, so you can expect plenty more of these. I’ve even made a directory on my computer called “Videos to convert to audio” and filled it with all of the videos I’ve created in the past year, to nag me into doing all of the older videos. So for realsies, lots of content will be happening regularly on our main RSS/podcast feed.

If you’re into listening to podcast feeds on the billions of podcasts apps available today, all you need to do is search for things like “Phone Losers of America” or “PLA Radio” or “prank calls” until you find our feed. If that fails, then manually set your podcast listener to www.phonelosers.org/feed. Or if you’re an iTunes users, click on this link.

Enjoy the new audio and try not to be too annoyed when you hear things that have already been released in some form on this site. There are definitely going to be some duplicated things at first. If you feel you’re missing anything because these podcasts tell you to look at things in the video, then you should find the corresponding video on our YouTube page at www.youtube.com/phonelosersofamerica. This first episode contains the two portrait studio videos I did over the Christmas holidays, which you can find here and here.

Grab your cup of coffee and start your mornings right, with Roy & Staci! In this episode we discuss the 2013 Prank Call Marathon that never happened, nurses suiciding over prank calls, and we call up some apartment managers and anger them with our questions. If you’re subscribed to the main phonelosers.org feed, then you’ll see these shows pop up in your podcasting apps. Or you can listen in the links below…

• January 18th, 2013 Roy & Staci ask hotel desk clerks about the secret door under their carpet

• January 21st, 2013 Roy & Staci say good morning to landlords

• January 22nd, 2013 Roy & Staci talk to more landlords.

Laugh Track Matt has been hard at work on new cactus art. Here is my favorite of his new batch. It’s based on an old Facebook group that trevor set up to anger thousands of stay-at-home moms that had nothing better to do but visit Facebook pages that made them angry. I bet if you set LTmatt some beer money, he would set you drawings, which would fund even more drunken cactus drawings.

Visit Matt’s Facebook where you’ll find more cactus drawings.

Visit Matt’s YouTube where he posts the pranks that RBCP is too afraid to post.

A lot of new material has been posted on PLA’s YouTube lately. My personal favorite is above, where calls are made to recent customers of an oil change business. But you also need to watch our drive-thru pranks, our psychics and phone sex operator pranks, our portrait studio pranks, our Christmas Eve pranks, our convenience store pranks, our kitchen appliance pranks, and Rob The Hyena’s security cam prank. Just subscribe to PLA’s YouTube so you don’t miss all these amazing things!

And speaking of YouTube, you’ll also want to subscribe to Madhouse Live’s YouTube – a prank was just posted where Carlito and RBCP get an employee to kick random customers out of the store. And Legend’s prank call YouTube, where he posts a lot of good pranks by other people and himself. And Laugh Track Matt’s YouTube, where you’ll find plenty of PLA shenanigans.

Perhaps the most exciting recent news is that on Friday, January 18th, RBCP and Staci (from The Fun Show) did an impromptu prank show that lasted 90 minutes. If you’re subscribed to the main phonelosers.org feed, you’ll see the show appear in your podcast readers. Or you can click below to hear it now.

Below are a bunch of prank calls for the Christmas season. It turns out that any portrait studio in the U.S. will hand out any customer information you want if they think you’re their boss. Big surprise. Listen to us ruin Christmases across the country, but only for a few minutes until they realize we’re full of crap.

Lots of thanks to Madhouse Live, who hosted a special Christmas Eve prank show this week, which is where all of the calls from the second video came from. You can listen to the full Christmas show at Madhouse Live’s YouTube page. Or at least the parts that drunken Carlito managed to record that night.

Last week this lady was all over the news for being dumb enough to pay $200 for a sealed FedEx box that some guy at a gas station claimed had an iPad inside of it. Then, when she found out it was just a mirror and duct tape, she went crying to the news, hoping that the public would have sympathy for her because she got ripped off while attempting to buy stolen merchandise. The video above contains a phone call I made to the lady, where I pretended to be Apple and offered her a free iPad. Of course, a lady dumb enough to buy a FedEx box full of trash is also dumb enough to hand over all her private information to a guy on the phone.

In other recent news, a pizza delivery man in Des Moines, Iowa was upset that a lady didn’t tip her, so he peed on her door. And I just happened to do a followup on this story with prank calls too. You can blame Dark Stranger for both of these videos since she’s the one that suggested I call these people.

Lastly, here’s a series of phone calls we made earlier this year where we became obsessed with Starbucks employee numbers and what could be done with them. Listen in horror as Starbucks employees give us absolutely anything we ask for!

Yes, I know my YouTube stuff on this site is getting out of hand. No, I won’t stop. Go watch all the other stuff I’ve been obsessively posting for the past few months!

If you want to see the full-sized versions, click on the pictures. Duh. Thanks a ton, Bookapoo!

The Wikipedia article also mentions that, “In June 1972, the magazine printed the wiring schematics necessary to create a mute box (a variant of the Blue box). All sold issues were recalled or seized from newsstands by police and officials of Pacific Bell, causing financial loss to the magazine.”

It’s a neat article about a phone company trick that hasn’t worked in at least a couple of decades now, so I’ve scanned it in for everyone to see. So enjoy the article below! And to whoever sent me this magazine, thank you! You should let me know who you are so I can at least give you credit on this post. You can click on the scans below to see full sized versions that are easier to read.

Guess how difficult it is to call various large-chain stores that repair computers and trick them out of their customer information? This SPS episode contains calls to these customers by RBCP, Carlito, Zyklon, Rappy, Petty Pranks and Trev0r. All music in this episode is by The Pool Boys.

Click here to visit the Snow Plow page where you can subscribe to the podcast feeds.

And click below to hear the new episode!

If you like the car ding concept, the end of the video has links to our other 738 car ding calls. Other car dings are located at phonelosers.org/ding/ but that page is already a little out-of-date.

I happened to find another time travel prank call a few days ago, by a guy called The Amazing Prankster. Click here to listen to the call.

Have you been to CactiRadio.com lately? Instead of being forwarded to Madhouse Live, I’ve turned it into a small list of mostly live prank call shows. It will stay this way probably until Carlito decides to do something interesting with the domain. Also, I repaired the links I broke for The Fun Show and The Prank Show so you can now go there and listen to all of their shows and use their RSS feeds again.

The Snow Plow Show is the latest podcast by the PLA is hosted 12 times a day by RBCP. Just like PLA Radio and The Phone Show, this show focuses on pranks, hax0ring, and whatever else the PLA is currently up to. The plan is for it to be a mix of both new material and old. This show can be watched on PLA’s YouTube account or listened to at The Snow Plow Show page. Or by clicking on the first episode below.

Episode 001 – Car Ding Calls: The very first episode of SPS includes a bunch of car ding calls and is about 20 minutes long. The background and ending music is Speedos and an Abraham Lincoln Hat by Rappy McRapperson. You can listen to other car ding pranks at phonelosers.org/ding.

I’ve forwarded the old RSS feed for The Phone Show to the Snow Plow Show’s new feed, so hopefully you’ll have this new show in your iTunez already. If not, here are some very important links for you.

www.phonelosers.org/snowplowshow – this is the official website for The Snow Plow Show

www.phonelosers.org/rss_snowplowshow.xml – this is the podcast feed for the show.

www.youtube.com/phonelosersofamerica – this is the PLA’s YouTube page. All episodes will be posted on there.

Cacti Radio was once the home of the unbelievably cool live show known as The Phone Show, which ran from early 2009 until July 2012. You can click on that link to view the complete archives of The Phone Show and listen to its awesomeness – for the first time ever, the TPS archive is COMPLETE and all 3.5 years of episodes are available to listen to. There will never be another episode of The Phone Show, so quit holding on to hope, you dumb n00bs. TPS had an great run and we did some fucking amazing things and now it’s time to move on.

Hold on to those TPS iTunes and RSS subscriptions, though, because bigger and better things will be happening soon and you don’t want to miss out on an opportunity to hear what I consider to be bigger and better before unsubscribing in complete disgust of whatever I come up with. You’ll also want to keep an eye on PLA’s YouTube, because whatever new stuff happens is sure to end up there. I promise to miss the hell out of doing the show, though, and I’ll miss the whole community thing even more. You guys were all awesome!

So what about the shoutcast stream, you ask? I’ve downgraded the stream to a 50 person capacity and it is now broadcasting PLA and TPS stuff on it 24/7. There won’t be live shows on the stream anymore – not even by cool people like Carlito and R0xy, so please don’t ask me for stream access. The stream is now located in the sidebar of phonelosers.org and it’ll be updated often with new and old PLA material. I’ll be throwing the old Prank Show and Fun Show episodes on there too since they were so closely intertwined with the PLA.

I’m trying to convince Carlito from Madhouse Radio to take the Cacti Radio domain from me so he can do cool, live prank call stuff with it. Until this happens, I’ve forwarded cactiradio.com to his site, to further pester him into taking it from me. If you miss listening to live prank call shows, Madhouse Live is still on every Thursday night, KDK Pranks is on Saturday nights and Friday Night Cranks is on every week, but I forget which day, and then there’s the awesomeness of Zolar’s pranks. There’s a ton of great prank shows out there, and I will see you in their chat rooms.

Luv,
RBCP

NEXT DAY EDIT: Thanks to NotBrad’s suggestion that I set up a feed solely for episodes of PLA Radio (which I did and it’s here), today I spent HOURS creating RSS archive feeds for all 4 years of The Phone Show so you can easily put them all on your iPod or other RSS reader/device. There are 4 feeds, one for each year. Here are the links: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012. Paste those into your iTunes and all the TPS episodes will magically appear on your iPhone. Very few of the after shows are in there, so you’ll still have to listen to those manually for now. I’ll get those put in there someday, though.

It’s been about a year since I last released a new PLA Media Pack, so I guess it’s about time to do that. This year I’ve completely overhauled the layout of it all. I’ve added categories in the video and pictures directories and I’ve made some changes to the sound directory.

I’ve added a lot of new videos, plus there’s another year of The Phone Show and The Fun Show (RIP Staci). I’ve also included all of the pictures from the PLA Photo album, new songs and I spent an entire evening cleaning up my messy hard drive to find miscellaneous PLA stuff to throw into the pack. There’s even both of the PLA books in various ebook formats so you can stop throwing your money at RBCP! There is an additional 11 gigs this year, totaling 26.4 gigs.

So go download it now! And when it’s done downloading, seed it for awhile if you can. I’ll do my best to seed it myself as much as I can. Below is link where you’ll find the new 2012 Media Pack torrent, along with RBCP’s giant torrent of prank phone calls and Tabachi’s torrent of the 2012 Prank Call Marathon pranks. Share and enjoy!

Here’s the show! Listen to it.

Here’s an aftershow we did once we were off the air which RTF and the HOPE crew had absolutely nothing to do with, so please don’t kick them out of New York.

Last week I went on a rampage against paper, throwing old documents away and offering you people a chance to take some of them for free. Today I’ve scanned in a bunch of these old PLA things and I’ve put them up on an archive page. You can visit phonelosers.org/media/documents to browse the archive, or choose from a few of the options below.

• AT&T charges back some illegal 3rd party billing in 1994
  
• AT&T charges back some illegal 3rd party billing in 1995
  
• PLA’s cassette before the first official album
  
• Lose weight on the phone phreaking diet!
  
• Dear RBCP, Stop asking for coin refunds. Love, ATT
  
• A guilt-ridden guy who purchased some 6.5536MHz crystals with a bad check sets things right with the PLA.
  

Thanks, Laugh Track Matt, for convincing me that I should archive this stuff. More things will be added as I find them. All of these scanned documents are now sitting in a pile, waiting to be stuffed into random PLA Store orders. If you’d like to own a specific document, PayPal $1.00 for shipping to rbcp@phonelosers.org and let me know what you’d like me to send you.

I also scanned in other documents that were more personal, but some are loosely related to the PLA or weird phone things, such as this letter where I reconnected a girl’s disconnected phone service. You can browse those documents at notla.com/media/documents.

Also on PLA’s YouTube are 3 more episodes of Sorry I Dinged Your Car and a Geek Squad prank, which are all embedded below. Apparently Geek Squad employees have been alerted to the video where we impersonate them because over 200 hits are coming from geeksquadcentral.com, which appears to be for employees only. If any viewers have access to those forums, please send us some screen shots so we can find out whether they’re LOLing or plotting their revenge.

Wal-Mart doesn’t seem too happy with our photo pranks, according to the memo below. This was spotted by a Wal-Mart employee who follows us on Facebook and was nice enough to snap a picture for us. The memo has done little good, though, because photo employees still give us anything that we ask for.

Attached to this post is the latest episode of The Phone Show, where you’ll find out what the word is if you listen long enough. You can click here to read the show notes. Don’t forget to listen to us live, every Tuesday night at 9pm Pacific / 12am Eastern.

Isn’t that an amazing picture of the outline of a removed pay phone? I took that last year at a gas station, just outside of Corvallis, Oregon. Before they removed the empty pay phone stand, they were hanging advertising banners over the front of it. Did you know it costs around $700 a year to maintain a pay phone, even when that pay phone is only making a couple bucks a month? These are the kind of useful facts you learn by listening to The Phone Show every Tuesday night at 9pm Pacific.

Have you people been to the PLA YouTube page lately? I’ve been spending way too much time on there lately and I’ve uploaded a lot of videos recently, of new PLA material that you can’t find anywhere else. Below I’m going to post a bunch of videos that I don’t think I’ve posted on phonelosers.org yet. You are hereby required to watch every single one of them.

Have you watched them all? Good job! You’re not done yet, though. You still need to watch my video where I fail at hacking a cell phone and then videos of me opening mail from El Gordo Uno and opening mail from Laugh Track Matt.

Oh, so you like videos of people opening mail? That’s great, because lately PLA people have been on a rampage of sending each other random mail and then filming themselves opening boxes full of bizarre stuff. Here’s a video of Trevor opening mail from me, then opening mail from DS, then Laugh Track Matt, and then Tristan.

Here’s video of Laugh Track Matt opening mail from Tristan and here’s video of Evie opening a giant box from Tristan. Ugh, there’s no way I can post all of these so just go to this thread on the PLA Forums and watch our giant collection of PLA unboxing videos.

Just as I did on the last phonelosers.org post, I’m attaching a recent episode of The Phone Show to this post for the podcast subscribers. I don’t have any plans to do any new episodes of PLA Radio, but I’m sure one will happen eventually. The Phone Show happens every week and there’s a separate podcast feed for that, plus all the YouTube videos are kind of in the old PLA Radio format of just being different collections of prank calls SO QUIT COMPLAINING! Oh yeah, nobody was complaining.

Rappy was the only person to draw his buttons with ink pen and submit them via U.S. mail and that is why HE LOSES! The rules clearly stated to email them to me! You get NOTHING, Rappy!

I may have awarded So0ty/Tristan with this month’s prize, but his McDonald’s logo spoof is clearly an attempt to get McDonald’s to sue me. Not cool, especially after the incident with H4rl3y Dav1ds0n earlier this year. Stick to making awesome YouTube videos for us, So0ty!

It looks like Patch used his 486 Pentium desktop machine with Windows 3.11 to design this one. What, you couldn’t find a good AT&T logo to use, Patch?? And did Windows Paint not have a center feature for text? Go to the public library next time and use a real computer!

Forest claims that it only took him 5 minutes to throw the above button together, but I’m thinking he’s full of crap and he spent days in Photoshop, designing it. Nice try, Forest!

Rhys seems to think that grouchy old man looks like a 1950′s housewife. And did Mildred Monday ever use “I’m” to refer to herself? I don’t think so. Mildred is just like Lieutenant Commander Data – she never uses contractions. Way to prove that you know absolutely nothing about PLA! But I guess those, combined with the GO AWAY PLA button, make me like your set of buttons the best and I’m forced to award you the prize of anything you want from the PLA store.

Send me your address and let me know what you’d like! As for you other people – out of pity, I guess I’ll keep my word and send you the button that you designed, along with a couple other random buttons and maybe even an OBEY sticker if I’m feeling particularly nice. So give me your addresses, everyone! I want to add them to my giant notebook full of personal information on PLA people!

Thanks for the entries, everyone. Keep them coming because I’m going to extend the contest through at least the next month. I will announce a new winner on June 1st. It’s an easy way to win a t-shirt if you’re too cheap to buy one, so open up your pirated copy of Photoshop and get started!

(Linked to this post is the latest episode of The Phone Show for you podcast subscribers since I never make PLA Radios anymore. Enjoy it!)

Here’s a new PLA shirt that will become obsolete immediately after 2012 has passed. Don’t miss out on this amazing opportunity to be obsolete before everyone else! The front of the shirt has a white PLA bell on it and the back has a list of “tour dates” for important PLA locations, such as the Curtis L. Superhacker Arena and Roy’s Cactus Emporium. If you show up at any of these places on the specified dates, you will win the prize!

The shirts will be in my hands and ready to mail at the end of April or maybe in the first week of May. (The shirts above are Photoshopped – you can tell by the pixels.) Don’t wait to buy these, though, because there is no guarantee that I’ll be printing any more of these. (I might, if they sell quickly enough.) I definitely won’t be printing any more of them after 2012, so this will be a collectors item worth millions by the time you’re dead. This is a guarantee, so think of the $15.00 plus $5.00 for shipping you spend as an INVESTMENT. No matter how bad the economy, your PLA shirt will go UP in value and your children will reap the rewards! Quit being a bad parent (or future parent) and buy one NOW!

BONUS SHIRT! You may think you’re getting a good deal on the 2012 Tour Shirt, but here’s a way to make it an even better deal! After you’ve purchased a tour shirt, click the button below to add a Super Secret Special Radical Bonus Shirt to your order for an additional $10.00. There will be no extra shipping, just the $10.00, and you’ll receive another shirt that’s not available in the PLA store (no, it’s not the college-style shirt) with your tour shirt. How can you possible not do this??

These kind of messed-up emails are very common for me and I usually get at least one crazy email per month. Usually it’s from wives wanting to spy on their husbands or parents wanting to spy on their teenagers for having sex, but this is the first one that made me feel like the guy was interested in using my site to kidnap his kids. My first reaction, of course, was to be an complete asshole to the guy, so I responded with this…

I posted his email and my reply on Facebook for us all to laugh at, deleted the email and figured that would be the end of it. Unless, of course, I got a hilarious reply, which I never did. Sudo soon convinced me, though, that I should actually do something about this guy being so sketchy about needing his kid’s address. I mean, there’s gotta be a reason CPS took the parents away from the kids, right?

So Sudo emailed the guy back and said she’d be happy to help him identify the phone numbers as long as he promised that nothing illegal would happen with the information she gave him. The guy responded with two phone numbers, promising that “no1 will be harased” and that he just needed the information for his records. We were totally convinced!

Sudo immediately called up one of the numbers and had a chat with the guy who was in possession of the kids. He told her a few crazy stories about the guy who sent the emails that included hacked Facebook accounts and restraining orders and he was really happy to hear that we were looking out for him. He asked her to forward him copies of the guy’s emails for him to show to attorneys or cops or something.

After forwarding the emails to the guy and telling him how happy I was that that the kid would be raised in a home that respected the rules of basic grammar, I immediately resumed Asshole Mode again and drafted an email for Sudo to send back to the original guy with the results of our search on the phone numbers he gave us. Our lengthy reply included the address of his local police department as the physical address on both of the phone numbers. Hopefully that will result in some kind hilarity or at least a few angry emails from the guy. Keep watching this thread for updates!

To read some similar emails from crazy parents and spouses, visit this thread in the PLA Forums where you can read emails and replies. In some of them, the person’s address is included so you can even give your own helpful replies to them. Thanks for giving me a small taste of morality, Sudo! If only you’d been there for me in Christmas of ’96…

If you’ve visited the PLA Store in the past 4 decades, you’ve probably noticed the buttons for sale. Many of these buttons were designed by PLA forum members in a 2006 contest that lasted for 23 years. I’m starting up the contest again, only with bigger and better prizes!

This time, not only will I send your button to you, plus a few extra buttons of your choice, but I’ll also pick a winner at the end of each month to receive any item they want from the PLA Store. A shirt, a book, a CD, or whatever other crappy thing we’re currently hawking in an attempt to get rich. I even have some items that aren’t in the store anymore, such as coffee mugs, that you can choose from.

• You can send me as many entries as you want. You’ll either send them directly to rbcp@phonelosers.org, or just post them in this thread.
  
• Entries should have something to do with the PLA, no matter how obscure.
  
• I will send most people the buttons that they design. I will choose which ones not to send out, such as the ones that are just random images poorly slapped together or text that could never possibly be read on a 1″ button. I will publicly ridicule the really bad entries this time instead of being nice and mailing them out.
  
• If multiple entries in a certain month are especially awesome, I just might pick two people to receive PLA crap.
  
• Many entries will become a part of the PLA Store. Others won’t go in the store, but will be regularly given out along with other merchandise that’s ordered. You won’t be compensated, other than to receive a few free buttons and possibly the monthly prize. You can rest easy, knowing that my buttons profits are always negative because I give tons of them away with orders.
  
• Yes, I’m posting this contest on April 1st, no this contest isn’t an April Fools Day joke.
  
• No, a part of the April Fools joke is not to say that it isn’t a joke even though it really is.
  
• GOD, JUST LOOK AT THE OLD CONTEST PAGE IF YOU DON’T BELIVE ME!
  

I’ve made some templates to get you started on designing PLA buttons. If you’d like to make a small button, then use this template. If you’d like to make a large button, then use this template.

You should click on that last picture since I cropped a lot of it. If you think Matt is somewhat awesome, then subscribe to his Facebook and tell him so, and then go watch some of his YouTube videos.

Be sure to check out PLA artwork by other people by going to our art page, looking at previous artwork posts or digging through our photo albums for stuff.

The following article and pictures are taken from the July 1982 issue of Playboy magazine which featured nekkid pics of Bell workers. You can click on any of the pictures in this post to see the full sized NAKED pictures. If you are under the age of 18, be sure to show the pictures to your parents after you look at them and tell them that the PLA told you to view them all. I didn’t include all of the pictures from the article since there were no phones in them, and I’ve painstakingly typed out the entire article since that’s the important part of Playboy magazine. In conclusion, porn sucked in the 80′s.

She’s a friend in the phone, a modulated, mildly mysterious voice at the other end of a piece of plastic and miles of copper wire. Every guy who’s ever dropped a coin in the slot has pictured her. She’s bright, of course, and understanding and as finely formed as a Princess phone. She’s the one Jim Croce wrote a song to but never got to see. Well, we’ve traced her, just to prove she really exists. And the result of our finger-flattening telephone survey is this listing of spectacular numbers currently in service – ten women who offer the kind of tone you’d like to reach out and touch.

Each of Ma Bell’s daughters is cool, alert under pressure – what you’d call collected. But she’s not know for patience. Operators are encouraged to answer your ring in three seconds and say goodbye in 29. So you don’t want to put even a long-distance relationship with her on hold; you’re liable to get a busy signal or even be disconnected.

Not all the women of Ma Bell are operators. Many are supervisors or managers or communications technicians. Some are linepersons – a title they’re not entirely happy with, since “Wichita lineperson” has no ring to it at all. (The sight of a good-looking lineperson shinnying up a telephone pole, however, does give rise to new and unusual Freudian imagery. Think about it.

Before any of you gentleman callers gets to meet the girls, an introduction to the family is in order. Pa Bell, known to Ma as Alexander Graham (the 19th Century was a formal time), wrought the Bell Telephone Company in 1877, a year after he invented the apparatus itself. He was listed as the company’s “electrician.” A man who liked to sound jaunty and nautical, he would pick up the mouthpiece and say, “Ahoy,” which made a lot of callers think they were already talking on the transatlantic cable.

Bell’s baby boomed to become the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, the largest corporation in the world. Today, it employs more than 1,000,000 people and makes $11,000 a minute. It spins out enough copper wire every year to wrap around the world 2300 times. And it operates 138,000,000 phones. Twenty-five thousand of them are in the Pentagon (for a monthly bill of $725,000, even with discount). There are 12 cities in the country, including Washington, D.C., and Skokie, Illinois, with more phones than people.

Ma Bell kept wrapping the world with phone lines and feathering her bed with money until last January, when the Justice Department decided to reach out a crush someone. That someone was Ma. The Attorney General’s troops pulled the plug on two thirds of the company’s assets; soon AT&T will have to spin off all of its local operations into locally run companies. We have some suggestions: Southwestern Bell, for example, might become the independent Taco Bell. The Philadelphia phone company might become Liberty Bell, and all the phones at Disneyland might be run by Tinker Bell. But Ma is sure to get over what may be a wild Bell hiccup. In fact, if the divestiture turns out the way analysts think it will, most of her shareholders will be better off, probably considering themselves saved by the Bell.

Now that you’ve faced the family, greet the girls.

Meet Vicki Vittorio from Columbus, Ohio, for instance; she answers to the numbers 36-25-35. Vicki’s a communications technician who was amazed at all the equipment she had to work with when she went to work for Ohio Bell three years ago.

“The compexity of what’s involved in one circuit is amazing,” says Vicki. “I use meters to check on telephone circuits. I listen over my headset for the various kinds of signals that come over the circuits, and I’ve also done some wiring.”

Apparently, doing that for Bell really can be electrifying – now and then, an office joker will shout at Vicky, using one of those orange road-safety cones as a megaphone, or even touch a low-voltage wire to her. “That live wire won’t really hurt you,” she says, “but it can make you angry for a while.”

Ma doesn’t have to put on the red light for Roxanne Laube, a service representative who deals with customer complaints in Chicago. Roxanne’s the one who, among other things, gives the green light to trace long-winded obscene callers in the Windy City.

“I talk to crazies every day,” sighs Roxanne. “The only way to complain to the phone company is to talk to somebody like me. But one of the most fulfilling things I do is help trap the lines and resolve obscene-caller cases.”

As for filial affection on the part of Ma’s employees, Roxanne believes that “most employees are loyal, but I don’t know if I’d say they feel affection for the company.”

“Employees feel flattered and lucky to work for the phone company,” is the way Bridgeport, Connecticut, customer clerk Judy Perkins sees the situation. “But to tell the truth, I haven’t met anyone who feels true affection. I, for one, find it difficult to feel emotional toward any large corporation.”

Judy sells such services and products as extra lines and push-button phones for the Southern New England Telephone Company. “It’s tough to break in here; the company has a reputation for being good to workers and offering diversified opportunities. But there’s been a change since deregulation – employees feel real concern for the corporation and their place in it.”

Judy works in a small ofice staffed only by women. It’s not easy to get in touch with her at work, but here’s a hint: “I’d be especially charmed,” she says, “by a handwritten invitation to a romantic picnic lunch.” The box-lunch retailers of New England should be thrilled to hear that.

While AT&T is a publisher in it own right (it publishes 120,000,000 phone books a year, on almost a billion pounds of paper), it has yet to put out a directory with a centerfodl. So you might assume its employees would be a little daunted by stripping more than wires for Playboy. The ladies we talked with say anyone who thinks that is barking up the wrong pole.

“It’s been no problem,” Vicki Vittorrio tells us. “I think deep down, most women wonder what posing for Playboy would be like – they’d like to see themselves as sexy. As far as I’m concerened, it’s an honor to be selected.”

Vicki has a Seoul sister in Lana Crandal, a Pacific Northwest Bell reports clerk in Portland, Oregon, who is a native of South Korea’s capital. “It was just fun,” opines Lana, a free-lance graphics designer who admits she prefers her sideline to AT&T’s power lines. “It was a good experience. Now everyone’s looking at me in the office and I’m starting to hear stories all the time, but it doesn’t bother me – at least, not until the other girls start summing me up.”

But leave it to Judy Perkins to express a Bell belle’s essential attitude toward this conference call between Ma Bell and Playboy: Being part of the business world, I sometimes feel stereotyped as a conservative office worker. Posing for Playboy gives me an opportunity to reveal other aspects of my well-rounded personality.”

We’ve called them as we’ve seen them. All in all, we think the women of Ma Bell would make Ma proud. They’re free of hangups. They have the best long lines in the field. And each of them has a voice sultry enough to keep a caller’s pockets packed with dimes. Whether or not they work at switchboards, these have to be the smoothest operators in the business.

There are more, but it’s way too early in the morning for me to be searching for them. Just visit rhinoCRUNCH’s YouTube page and find them yourself. You’ll find a lot of similar craziness in his channel. Thanks, rhinoCRUNCH!

I don’t know what her problem is, but I’m thinking she’s friends with Richard Cardo. If you like her, though, you should check out her YouTube account.

Have you visited Jeremy’s House of Funny yet? Jeremy (Heywood) is the guy who bought us amazingness like Jason and Curtis, so you owe him a visit or two.

Tabachi is doing a show on Cacti Radio tonight (Friday) at 7pm Pacific / 10pm Eastern. Tune in and listen to him irritate a bunch of people over the phone.

And one last thing – listen to this new remix of a Redbox and the Chilipeppers song, which is all about red, blue and beige boxing.

“I needed something lightweight and wouldnt rattle around inside if inspected. I couldnt find anything that would work. Either things were too heavy, not large enough, or too tall. I then noticed my turkey sammich sitting next to me. I picked it up and weighed it in my hand. It was just right. I placed the case over my sammich and cut out the outline in it. Then took a couple bites to make room for the jacks.”

Altalp had no problems returning the device and even made $20 extra by filling out the rebate card. I’m not trying to encourage people to do this sort of thing, of course, because it’s a pretty horrible thing to do. But the idea of replacing a Vonage router with a turkey sandwich sounded exactly like the sort of random comment Zak would make, like the time he claimed to an operator that a vandal had replaced his telephone handset with a bologna sandwich, only Altalp actually did it!

Thanks for the story and the pictures, Altalp! Click here if you’d like to see Altalp’s full post from 2008, complete with details and pictures.

There’s a new technology that some of you may have heard of by now, called “compact discs,” which you can now purchase to listen to a tiny portion of our prank phone calls. We’re pretty sure these are the next big thing, so get ready to start re-purchasing all that music you’ve been buying as mp3 files these past few years. Anyway, a brand new PLA CD, titled “Can I Help You?” is now available for you to buy. This CD features calls by murd0c, Carlito from Madhouse, RBCP and The Spessas. You’ll get to hear about 73 minutes of our customer service calls from the past 10 years.

Yes, these calls are all available already on our website and from the PLA Media Pack torrent. You won’t be getting anything new or unavailable by buying this CD, aside from a cool CD with original artwork on it. If you want to download the full album for free, click here. If people like the CD and buy enough of them, that will motivate me to put together a few more of them soon. I’m mainly making these for the same reason I made the newer PLA ‘zine archive book – because some people will think this sort of thing is neat to have.

Click on the PayPal button above to buy this CD directly from me for $5.00, or click here to buy it from our supplier with PayPal or click here to buy it from our supplier with a credit card. The supplier charges too much for shipping, but at least I don’t get your address and your CD isn’t all sticky with my DNA.

Thanks, whoever made that Futurama photo. I think it was Trevor, but I’m probably wrong. Speaking of Trevor, though, he uploaded Tabachi’s billions of edited prank calls from our 24-hour prank call marathon to YouTube a few days ago, denying my request to leave out the one where I made a girl cry. Click here to join the 2012 Marathon Facebook page, which I assume will eventually contain information about next year’s 24-hour prank call marathon. (Click here to watch my video of Trevor’s videos.)

Are you a Pinterest user? Wow, so am I! Here’s my board for the Phone Losers of America. I doubt you’ll see any updates on there that you haven’t seen on PLA’s Facebook first, but you never know.

One last thing – because I’m incapable of making a post without mentioning Rappy McRapperson these days, I should mention that he visited my house last week and he accidentally left a bunch of his stuff behind so I created a blog called Comics From Space where I will display scans of the pile of drawings I have here, before throwing them in the trash. Starting next week, I will begin selling articles of his clothing on eBay. Also, me and him put together a pretty good music video for a song from his new album, called Punch The Wall. I’ve embedded it below.

ONE MORE LAST THING: The Phone Show is tonight! 9pm Pacific.

Earlier this week, I was having a nice romantic dinner with Rappy McRapperson at Red Robin, and we noticed an advertisement on the table encouraging everyone to tweet with the hashtag of #banzailoveyou to win free meals and other prizes. Rappy, who was clearly a victim of my bad influence over the past few days, immediately suggested that we tweet something horrible about Red Robin, using their hashtag. A few moments later, using all 3 of my Twitter accounts on my smartphone and then Rappy’s, the following twats were posted.

Now, I have nothing against Red Robin and I think their food is awesome. I eat there with my kids and my friends several times a year and have had nothing but great experiences there. So please, don’t think that my tweets are out of retaliation for poor service or rude staff. Red Robin is a great place and I highly recommend them to everyone that reads this. I’m just an asshole, though, and I think the idea of writing horrible things about them is hilarious. So I started a thread on the PLA Forums, encouraging others to join in the fun and tweet crazy things.

You’ll notice that these first few tweets have two i’s in the hashtag. This apparently is incorrect, as you’ll see on the official contest page, but I swear there were two i’s on the card we saw on the table. I had to look at it each time I made a new tweet from the restaurant and there’s just no way I made the exact same mistake all three times. Legitimate customers were tweeting with 2 i’s too, so it’s not just me. No really!

Right around here is when things got completely out of control. Our wacky tweets are now outnumbering the legitimate contest tweets. Prepare yourself for a gigantic list of hilarious tweets, all by people who noticed our tweets and began writing things 500 times more awesome than we could come up with.

As all of these hilarious tweets were coming in yesterday, keeping me and Rappy LOLing most of the day, Carlito began messaging me from a Red Robin in Pennsylvania. He just happened to be eating there and managed to get an awesome picture of him and the Red Robin mascot. Then he sent me the picture of his Banzai burger, which you saw at the beginning of this post.

Having pictures coming in from Carlito as all of these tweets were happening just added to the hilarity for me and Rappy. The tweets are still continuing today and show no sign of slowing down yet. So a ton of thanks goes out to all the people who’ve given us nonstop lulz these past 48 hours.

I’m not going to say you all should continue doing this, but the contest does last for another month, until February 19th, and it sure is making a lot of people laugh. We’re fairly certain that even the Red Robin corporate people are snickering about it in their corporate meetings (you guys are welcome for that!). If you’d like to enter Red Robin’s contest, all you have to do is follow @redrobinburgers and then tweet something (the contest rules don’t specify what should be tweeted) with the hashtag of #banzailoveyou. You can read all about the contest at redrobin.com/banzailoveyou.

Once again, RED ROBIN IS AWESOME! Don’t believe any of the craziness that you’ve read above. Well, except for the part about the staff stealing my wallet and shooting my wife in the foot – that shit is totally true. If our silliness is making you laugh, though, then you should definitely go eat some overpriced food at the Red Robin nearest you.

Thanks to Rappy McRapperson for making this happen and to Carlito from Madhouse Live for the pictures. Most of all, thanks to all the Twitter users that have given me and us other PLA’ers lots of hysterical laughter these past 48 hours!

Below is a live Twitter feed of all current #banzailoveyou posts.

Pretty please subscribe to these PLA things: Cacti Radio Facebook, PLA Facebook, Prank Calls Facebook, Redbox and the Chilipeppers Facebook, PLA Twitter, RBCP’s Twitter, phonelosers.org (PLA Radio) RSS feed, Phone Show RSS feed, Big Beef Bueno RSS feed.

January 17th Update! Just a day after posting this entry on phonelosers.org, Red Robin suddenly began heavily promoting their Banzai Burger contest by emailing people on their mailing list and encouraging them to tweet with #banzailoveyou. They also began constantly tweeting, “Put your tweets where your mouth is. Head to Red Robin, enjoy a Banzai Burger & Tweet the love! #BanzaiLoveYou” to get people to respond with the hashtag. As a result, our crazy tweets have been quickly scrolling away for days now, making it pointless to even do it anymore. Well played, Red Robin. Well played.

Another odd thing – when we started doing this, the description on the Red Robin Twitter account had the name of the guy who ran it. As in, the personal name of the guy in their public relations department, or whoever runs it in corporate Red Robin Land. But as soon as they started fighting back at us, his name disappeared from the description. Now it just says “Official Home of Insanely Delicious Gourmet Burgers.” We’re not sure if taking the name off had anything to do with us, but we’re going to pretend it did because we’re such scary people and he just didn’t want any trouble.

Happy 2012, everyone! It’s time to start your year with a brand new episode of the PLA Radio podcast! This episode tells you all about our adventures of irritating Target shoppers during the 2011 holiday season. Prepare to be surprised at how easy it is to create your own cordless phone extension at your local Target store so that you can answer calls for customers. After that you’ll hear some of our old car ding calls that we were doing way back this past November. Here are the show notes.

• 00:00 Boy George Karma Chameleon Telephone – here are a bunch of video links.
  
• 01:00 Background music is Thanksgiving Sucks by Rappy McRapperson
  
• 01:05 Original Black Friday PLA Radio episode and YouTube video.
  
• 03:00 Uniden D1660 cordless phones
  
• 13:10 Walkie talkies were Motorola CLS1810T (UHF). Frequencies were 467.750, 467.775, 467.875 and 467.900. Click here to listen to extended Target security shit-talking.
  
• 13:45 Voicemail background song is Technical Writer by The Doubleclicks
  
• 17:00 Leave a voicemail by dialing 814-422-5309
  
• 17:20 Car dings video link.
  
• 21:50 This car ding call is by Samantha. Say hi to her on Facebook and Twitter.
  
• 26:25 This car ding call is by Carltio, from Madhouse Live.
  
• 28:33 Here is our official page for car ding calls.
  
• 29:09 Cacti Radio.com
  
• 29:17 www.cactiradio.com/phoneshow and madhouse and prank show
  
• 29:40 myspace.com/plaradio still exists, but I was lying about the rest of the links. Email PLA radio at rbcp@phonelosers.org and don’t forget AOL keyword PLA!
  
• 30:20 Closing music is from Rappy McRapperson’s brand new album. Download it for free from rappymcrapperson.com.

As always, please subscribe to these things: Cacti Radio Facebook, PLA Facebook, Prank Calls Facebook, Redbox and the Chilipeppers Facebook, PLA Twitter, RBCP’s Twitter, phonelosers.org (PLA Radio) RSS feed, Phone Show RSS feed, Big Beef Bueno RSS feed.

Hi Chris! I’m far from being a lawyer or a cop, so keep that in mind when listening to my legal advice. A few months ago, I wrote an article on how to keep prank calls legal, which should answer most of your legal questions about prank calling. Basically, it says that you should never prank locally, you shouldn’t make threats, you shouldn’t impersonate government employees and you shouldn’t prank someone more than a couple of times. I really need to add that article to the sidebar of this site so that people can easily find it.

I’ve also written an article on how to record phone calls, which mostly deals with cellular phones and land lines. I need to update that page to include Skype recording, because Skype is about the only thing I ever use anymore for prank calling. I don’t even know how to begin to explain how I have things set up in the Cacti Radio studio, but it involves broadcasting software, a mixer and 2 sound cards hooked together in a loop that should explode the universe, but doesn’t. When I’m not on the air, though, I use mp3 Skype Recorder, which is a free program that automatically records all of your Skype calls. It sucks and it has issues and I will replace it one of these days when I feel like testing out other options, but for now it does the job. Sort of.

Finally, about your friend who makes embroidered stuff – tell her I would love for her to make a ton of PLA shit! Here’s the thing about PLA merchandise – I make barely any money at all from it. In fact, between all the time I spend packaging things up and driving to the post office and all the free stuff I include with orders and all the PLA stuff that I give away because I’m such a nice guy, I’m sure I lose money in the end. Luckily, phonelosers.org supports itself with the advertisements on this page, so I don’t really lose money at PLA.

Here’s what I’m getting at, though – I would like your friend to make any cool things she can think of that would be related to the PLA. She can use the PLA logo or PLA quotes or cacti or anything she wants. She can send me links to things she makes and I will help her sell them, using phonelosers.org and the PLA Facebook page. And here’s the best part – she can charge whatever she wants and keep all the profits for herself!

Samantha had this great idea a month or two ago – she wanted to knit things with PLA symbols on them, such as gloves or hats or whatever. I loved the idea and told her to go for it, but knowing how lazy Samantha is, I immediately set about creating a competitive market for her knitting by contacting random ETSY shop owners and suggesting to them that they make PLA things and sell them.

The image you see here is the first result of that. This is a cell phone cozy, made by MarikaHandKnits in Toronto. She makes custom party wristbands, fingerless gloves, iphone cases and more. Ideally, the etsy owner would put the item up for sale so that I could link people to it and they could easily buy it, but for whatever reason, this shop owner didn’t do that and didn’t tell me how much this cell phone cozy costs, so all I can do is tell readers to visit her shop and ask to buy the PLA cell phone cozy.

I would like for everyone to do this! If you know someone who makes things and sells it on sites like etsy.com, tell them to make PLA things! I want to see PLA hats, gloves, sweaters and underwear! I can’t guarantee that anyone will buy these things, but I will do my best to link to their PLA merchandise from this site. I’d like to even set up a section on the PLA Store page for things that other people make. Do this, people!

Thanks for the email, Chris!

RBCP

But my secret ulterior motive for posting this today is to tell everyone that Rappy McRapperson is having his album release party on Cacti Radio this Saturday! At 7:00pm Pacific / 10:00pm Eastern, Rappy will join RBCP for a 2 hour live interview as we play his new album, Live at the Amway Arena. We’ll be talking about Rappy’s new album, taking your phone calls, and maybe even making some prank calls. You can preorder an autographed physical CD at rappymcrapperson.com or you can just steal the album from the internet when it comes out on Saturday.

Below are the show notes from this week’s Phone Show. Listen and read along!

• B. Reith – Old School
• Rappy McRapperson is having an album release party this Saturday, December 17th at 7:00pm on Cacti Radio. The new album is called Live at the Amway Arena and you can preorder CDs or digital albums at rappymcrapperson.com.
• This is a recording DOT COM!
• RTH pitches a Cacti Radio idea for a new show about underground infoz. Now he’s obligated to do it.
• Everyone buy PLA Harley shirts!
• 425-906-5744 is a weird number that TheN “found.”
• Cacti Radio will be hosting a 24 hour prank call marathon soon. Here’s the planning thread.
• Here is Samantha’s Pylons Call which is awesome. Also, Samantha has agreed to marry RBCP if they reach 100 mutual friends on Facebook. Her Facebook URL is www.facebook.com/thesamantha.
• LTmatt is a firebug.
• Here is a link to the “new” PLA book, which is a collection of all the old ‘zine issues from the 1990′s.
• Random thought while I’m editing: If you have that many enemies, YOU are the problem.
• The URL for book donations for Christian schools is actually phonelosers.org/book/donations/ – I gave the wrong one on the show.
• We call fake Kevin Mitnick – aka “The Audi Guy” from Madhouse Live
• We call real Kevin Mitnick and he’s incredibly nice to us.
• www.mitnicksecurity.com/nudephotos/
• Buy Kevin Mitnick’s book!
• The aftershow was really boring, so it was not saved.
  

Subscribe to these things: Cacti Radio Facebook, PLA Facebook, Prank Calls Facebook, Redbox and the Chilipeppers Facebook, PLA Twitter, RBCP’s Twitter, phonelosers.org (PLA Radio) RSS feed, Phone Show RSS feed, Big Beef Bueno RSS feed.

Holy crap, it’s Christmas! Do you want a Christmas gift? I want to give you a Christmas gift, so here’s the deal…email me your address and I’ll give you a special PLA button that you’ve never seen before. I’ve never seen it either, because I just thought of this dumb idea, but chances are it will be holiday-themed and it might have a cactus on it or a PLA bell or some boobs or something. You know you want one.

This offer is good until the end of December 2011 and just so it doesn’t get out of hand, I’m going to limit this to just the first 50 people who email me. One per person, please. If I reach the limit of 50, I will post here that I’m out of them.

If you want to get yourself a nice Christmas present, I suggest buying a PLA Harley shirt or anything else from the PLA store as soon as possible so you get it by Christmas.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Hugs and kisses,
RBCP

Chris S. from California, webmaster of The Octoshow, suckered some girl named Alyson Bender to draw this awesome rendition of Grouchy Old Man. Thanks, Chris and Alyson! You can view more of Alyson’s artwork on her DevArt page.

You can view more PLA-inspired art on the PLA art page or by looking at past PLA art posts. If you’d like to send in your own PLA artwork, email it to rbcp.

And don’t forget to visit Chris’ website!

Earlier this week, Trevor became the first person on Earth to declare “PLA 4 LYFE!” by having a PLA bell logo tattooed on his butt his arm. Those of you who hang out on PLA’s Tinychat often enough have probably run across Trevor, also known as rasterdragon, from time to time. Trevor often runs PLA Movie Night whenever RBCP is too strung-out to do it himself.

Trevor will undoubtedly be cursing PLA’s name 10 years from now as he’s paying exorbitant amounts of money to have PLA’s logo lasered off his arm. If he’s smart about it, he will sue RBCP for corrupting his mind enough to let this instant of bad decision making happen. If you’d like to learn more about someone who would desecrate their body with our ridiculousness, visit Trevor on Facebook, then look at more tattoo pictures on his tumblr and be confused about his .info page. Trevor also runs his own Rappy McRapperson page to confuse people trying to find the real one.

If my answering machine offends you, call my answering service and leave a message on my voicemail. It also hates my machine and will understand.

• The Cactus commands you to LOL at the confused people here.

• The Cactus commands you to go listen to the latest Phone Show and LOL whether it’s funny or not.

• The Cactus commands you to join PLA’s Facebooks and their Twitter. Oh, and the Prank Call Facebook account that promises daily prank calls but actually delivers more like one every week.

• The Cactus commands you to go read the Dino story, because, come on, you haven’t read that in ages now.

Not since Dear Arby Volume 1 have I made a post with so many letters to…me. In this edition you’re going to see an exciting array of the things that have arrived in my P.O. box, which is my sad an obvious attempt to cause more things to show up in my P.O. box.

The above postcard is a good example of how I would prefer people not send me mail – by tracking down my home address and sending a “I FOUND YOU” card to my home without a signature. Quit it! Use the P.O. Box, please.

A guy named z09 was a regular on the PLA Forums and the inspiration for the Blockbuster episode of PLA Radio. He was also really into stalking me using the methods he learned from phonelosers.org. He loved sending me pizzas and taxis and even talked my local Blockbuster Video out of my account information. He once sent lunchmeat to me and Countykid in the mail, and soon after that he sent me this letter with a $20 bill enclosed.

z09 didn’t include his home address so that I could send him a PLA shirt, so I was able to blow his $20 on cheap hookers without having to give anything back. Soon after this I stalked him back, which seemed to freak him out and caused him to disappear from our community forever. I thought about sending a shirt to his address, but he seemed so unhappy at being exposed that I decided against it since I didn’t want to get him in trouble at home. If you ever see this, z09, tell me where to send a book or a shirt!

Earlier this year I received this strange letter. It was from overseas with no return address. Inside was a single dollar bill so crisp that I suspected it was counterfeit. In place of George Washington’s face was a sticker of a man identified as Bonn Scott. With the dollar was an extra Bonn Scott sticker, which I stuck on another dollar bill of mine before spending them both.

I had to Google who Bonn Scott was online and I ended up finding several other pictures of dollar bills with this same defacement. I also found this website that sells the Bonn Scott stickers. Maybe it was all just a ploy to get me to advertise that site. But from overseas? God, you PLA people are weird.

Finally there’s the extremely nice gift that Darkstranger sent me this week – a book of Sir John Hargrave’s Prank The Monkey, the book from the awesome website zug.com. I’ve been reading it all week and it’s awesome. Thanks, Darkstranger!

I swear I’m not fishing for gifts, but it’d be awesome if you decided to send weird postcards or drawings or other non-valuable things to my P.O. box so that I can post them in a future update. To write to me, just track down my home address write to PLA (or Brad Carter) at P.O. Box 465, Albany, OR, 97321.

The picture above is by Sebastian, who posted it on the PLA Forums with this message: “I colored this picture of a pepper at the local Chili’s restaurant. I believe that, through this artwork and those of others, Phone Losers has a chance to live forever, maybe above the fountain drink machine or in a corner somewhere, and perhaps slightly overlapped by a better picture. We must all do our part.”

Click on the image to see it full sized so you can read it.

The comic above was done by Patrick Q. and posted on his Facebook photo album. I could be wrong, but I think it might be in response to a story we did on this week’s Phone Show about possibly the world’s first prank callers.

The story, from io9.com, says that a newspaper in 1884 printed the following paragraph: “A GRAVE JOKE ON UNDERTAKERS — Some malicious wag at Providence R.I. has been playing a grave practical joke on the undertakers there, by summoning them over the telephone to bring freezers, candlesticks and coffin for persons alleged to be dead. In each case the denoument was highly farcical, and the reputed corpses are now hunting in a lively manner for that telephonist.” This was 8 years after the invention of the telephone.

This Far Side comic was re-worded by cyko. I’m not sure what it originally said, but I bet cyko’s version is much funnier.

Finally, below is a picture that I created earlier today and posted on Facebook. Some people seem to think the quote is inaccurate, but they clearly know nothing about hacker culture or history.

If you’re the kind of person who likes humorous pictures that are nothing like the pictures above, then you’ll probably like Jeremy’s House of Funny. This is a new project started up by Heywood, the guy who used to run major-losers.com and has brought all kinds of wonderful things to the PLA this past decade. There’s nothing on the main page yet, but you should join us on the forums! You should also join his Facebook page which brings you humorous pictures throughout the day.

During last week’s Phone Show, I asked listeners to leave notes on cars in their neighborhoods, claiming that they’d accidentally dented the car and to call me. Over the past week I’ve received about 10 calls from angry and/or confused car owners, asking what happened. You can listen to a few of their reactions to our crazy stories in the video below.

If you’d like to help us out with this prank, write a note and leave it on a random car with the 425-TWO FOUR THREE-7565 phone number. Don’t actually damage a car, though, as tempting as it may be.

What would you say to a person who called you, thinking you’d damaged their car? Leave your ideas in the comments below!

Happy Halloween, everyone! And thanks for the cool PLA pumpkin, Patrick.

If you’ve been thinking, “Man, I just don’t have enough PLA books on my shelf!” this past year, then are you in for surprise! A brand new PLA book has been released this week! And by brand new, I mean it’s a collection of all our old e-zine issues from the 1990′s.

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been formatting all the old ‘zine issues of PLA into Kindle format, for no reason at all really. I finished that up and you can download all 47 issues of PLA for free right now. Formats available are Kindle, PDF, DOC and HTML. I plan to add versions for the Sony reader and the Nook very soon to that list.

As I finished up the ebook, though, I decided to go ahead and release an actual book of the ‘zine too, mostly just because I thought it’d be cool to have one for myself. Here’s a video of the finished book.

I’m not making this book available on Amazon, just so it will be a few dollars cheaper for you to buy it. Instead you have to go to CreateSpace and buy it directly from them for $13.93. I know that sounds like a lot for a book of old, outdated information, but it’s 800 pages of old, outdated information so it’s totally worth it. You may want to buy this as soon as you can because I can’t make any guarantees on how long this book will remain available. It’s filled with things that could probably get it removed from the market.

This book is completely non-profit for me. The high price is just 40 cents higher than the minimum CreateSpace will allow me to sell it for. I spent $40.00 to make the book $10 cheaper to sell, so I’m kind of hoping that 100 people will buy it over the next year so that I’ll get my $40 back. After that, the price will be lowered to about $13.50. I’m only mentioning this so that you don’t think I’m desperately trying to make a quick buck off of the writings of a bunch of wannabe hackers from the 90′s.

For the most part, this book is completely unedited. All of the original phone numbers and other personal information of people we harassed back then is still included. A few small items were rearranged or taken out to fit in the book better, but it’s pretty much all there. The biggest items I removed were 3 giant articles from Dr. Hate’s Issue #099, which included a beastiality FAQ and a video game instruction manual. Hopefully you can live without those things. I didn’t correct any spelling or grammatical errors, except in a few titles, so it’s super authentic.

So go buy this! Or go download it for free!

And while you’re downloading the ebook, you’ll probably notice that I’ve made the first PLA book available for free too. Enjoy it! Give it to as many people as you can! Distribute it on torrents! Print it out and sell it to people! And then, to thank me for your free ebook, go to the PLA book page on Amazon and leave a review.

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Go post on our forums!

This is a comic submitted by Bookapoo, based on PLA’s recent new hobby of calling convenience stores and convincing them to do ridiculous things. Thanks, Bookapoo! If you can’t read the tiny writing in the comic, click on it to make it regular size, where you will still have a hard time reading the tiny writing.

If you’re into comics about hacking, phreaking and the PLA, you should look at our page of comic strips.

A recent forum post motivated me to create a new torrent of everything PLA has ever done. Thanks to the nonstop Phone Show episodes, the torrent is now up to 15 gigs. You’ll also get every episode of the PLA Radio podcast, the Big Beef Bueno podcast, and thousands of prank calls, pictures and text. Download it right away and seed it for as long as you possibly can! And later this year when I try to sell a prank call album, be sure to laugh at me and remind me that I already gave it all away for free.

You might also be interested in the torrent I put up last year that contains every prank call album I have. There’s a lot of good stuff in there. Download my prank call torrent.

And speaking of prank calls, I’ve created a new page on phonelosers.org of the PLA’s prank calls. On this page you’ll find all the categories of prank calls available on phonelosers.org, with samples and links to each section. I tried to make the samples the best of each section, but you should let me know if you think something else belongs there instead of what I’ve put up. I’m too old to be making important decisions like this!