Punking Matt Smith

Time: March 29, 2006. Location: the AppleBees' in Brunswick, OH The poor guy, all he wanted to do is to meet for dinner so we could shoot the usual shit -- and what happens? Some waitress insults him.

So, who is Matt? Matt is a friend that for years, I've insulted with the same running gag. It all began innocently -- well, not exactly -- one of the Matt Smith-ism's is "You're such a tool!"

This he would say to me on most occasions when I was simply trying to communicate some fact or other about work. Okay, so maybe at times I can be just as obnoxious, but everyone needs a signature style...

Anyway, Smith kept calling me a tool, so I started responding different ways, all more or less categorically placing the "tool-ness" squarely back in Smith's court.

Then I began a campaign: I began to "find" documents that "proved" that Smith was the _real_ tool. Artifacts began to appear on his cubicle wall, including (but not limited to) the following:

1. A 24-inch long wrench, with Matt Smiths' name on it
2. A print-out from a google search for the word "tool", which begins with the usual google "did you mean Matt Smith" and where all of the entries had his name in them.
3. A screen-shot of Internet Explorers' tool menu, pulled down, and right under the "Mail and News" menu option, clearly, is the "Matt Smith" option.
4. The man page for "Tool", which clearly had Matt Smith-ism's all over it.

You get the drift -- soon, other people were joining the party, and by the time Matt left the company (I know what you're thinking -- but seriously we're friends and it didn't have anything to do with me), his wall was almost covered with this crap.

So, back to last night.

For some reason, Matt is ultra-paranoid about me getting him with these kinds of practical jokes when we eat out. I'm sure it's not related to a while back when the door greeting people seemed to know he was a tool.

He comes in, all paranoid-like, and sits down. We have a good meal and we're talking (it's been like an hour and a half now, since he sat down -- his defenses are completely down). We're talking about recognition as a hacker, and I (totally casually) grab one of the waitresses who's simply vacuuming the floor.

"Do you recognize this guy?" I ask.

Short pause, and she says "Wait, yeah! The web. I saw a picture of you!" Matt's face lights up. "Weren't you on the tool section of the Craftsman web site?"

God, I wish I could have had this on video. It was a solid 5 minutes before I stopped laughing and Matt stopped threatening to slash my tires.

It's the little things in life that make it all worth while...
-=FeriCyde=-