Wal-Mart Intercom Pranks

Wal-Mart stores can be so big and the workers seem so bored and the customers seem so harried and annoying. It seems like the perfect fertile ground to have a little fun at Walt's expense. Sometimes I just want to jump on the intercom and say something. But how does one get access?

I've found the answer. You can use the intercom from any one of the many telephones Wal-Mart provides around the sales floor. Even better, I've found the codes! Here is how you use the intercom at Wal-Mart:

• Pick up the phone
• Dial #96

You're now on the store intercom!

The proper way to use the store intercom, I mean, apart from the fact it is only supposed to be used by Wal-Mart employees, is to declare the code and the location. For instance, "Code White in Automotive". Here are a few helpful/hilarious things you can do with the Intercom.

Intercom Codes:

INTERCOM HOLD: Sometimes silence is golden. So if you pick up the phone, dial #96 and then hit hold, nobody can use the intercom until they figure out which phone is on hold.

CODE 1: This code is used for SHOPLIFTING!

CODE 10: Dry Spill.

CODE 20: Wet Spill.

CODE 90: Management Needed. That sounds useless.

CODE 99: This code implies that there is an emergency and all male employees are to immediately stop what they are doing and move to the announced location.

CODE 300: Security Needed. For grins, call Code 300 to the location you are currently at.

CODE ADAM: Code Adam is used to report a lost child. Technically, the store is supposed to shut all doors until the lost child is found. This sounds like fun until you realize that you are going to be trapped in a Wal-Mart for hours while they attempt to locate a missing child.

CODE BLACK: This code is used for severe weather. It's only used if something severe is happening such as tornadoes are bearing down on the store. All employees are supposed to immediately head to the fitting rooms at the center of the store. Wal-Mart doesn't like to use this code because it quite frankly, when the employees all leave, it leads to looting.

CODE BLUE A bomb scare.

CODE C: Customer service. A customer needs help in a location like housewares.

CODE GREEN: This code is used when there is a hostage in the store. Ask yourself, do you really want to shop at a store that needs to have a special code for a hostage situation?

CODE ORANGE: This is for a chemical spill. Water is a chemical.

CODE RED: This is used in case of a fire!

CODE WHITE: is used for an injury.

With knowledge comes power and responsibility. Use it wisely.

Shit Box: the solution to your festival/toilet-based worries

A portable toilet that folds back into your bag. Yuck.

It folds back into your bag and doubles as a stool (erm, nice wordplay).

McDonald's Makes Jesus Cry

There are billions and billions of reasons to hate McDonald's. They took the McRib away, for one, and that burns. (Sometimes I almost wish I'd never loved it at all.) There's at least one good reason to like McDonald's: They're being boycotted by the American Family Association.

What did McDonald's do to cross the AFA, its president, Donald Wildmon, and -- by extension -- Jesus (R-Nz.)? They donated $20,000 to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. McDonald's' revenue runs about five billion dollars a quarter, so you can see their profound commitment to destroying the family through sodomy.

The AFA says that by donating one thousandth of one percent of its 2007 earnings,

"McDonald's has chosen not to remain neutral but to give the full weight of their corporation to promoting the homosexual agenda."

Which seems like a kind of shrill definition of "full weight," but maybe it's like the Quarter Pounder®, and it's the weight before cooking that counts.

It feels a little like the American Family Association was looking for someone to boycott and it was just McDonald's' turn. They've already boycotted Sears, Kohl's, Kmart, Target, Old Navy and IKEA. As a result, they're naked and don't have anywhere to sit. The McDonald's boycott follows boycotts of Burger King, Carl's Jr., 7-11, Proctor & Gamble and Kraft, which means Donald Wildmon hasn't eaten anything for sale in America since the late '70s. You'd think he'd be dead, but no.

(He's a good guy. I'll bet he loads up on locusts, beetles and grasshoppers, like it says in Leviticus. The same book that -- there's no getting around it -- says homosexuality is an abomination, absolutely as heinous in G*d's eyes as strong drink.)

Does the AFA hate homosexuals? Absolutely not! It says so, right on their website, under the heading and sub-head: "Does AFA Hate Homosexuals? Absolutely Not!"

Should McDonald's take the boycott seriously? The customer is always right, I guess. (I think that's from Deuteronomy.) But McDonald's might want to think about the kind of customers they're losing. They appear to be lunatics.

Oh look, here are some of their thoughts:

"YOU DID NOT BILD YOUR COMPANY ON HOMOSEXUAL PEOPLE! IT WAS BUILD ON FAMILY VALUES! MAN,WIFE.CHILDREN!MOSTLTY CHILDREN! THEY DON'T COME FROM HOMO PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"What next, Adam & Steve in the children's happy meals? i WILL not condone the Corp. of Mc Donalds to force me to shop where it is not in lign with my believe in God and HIS scripture..."

"I have stopped at my last McDonald. If you support homos, that is fine with me. I do not have to eat your burgers. Maybe there are enough homos around to keep your arches open."

"I suppose next the playground will be open for pedifiles in order to not offend them."

"You have joined God's list of enemies!"

"What's next? Support for the Man-Boy Love Association! This shall not stand!"

"The McFaddin Family will vote with our Money and Feet and take our business elsewhere! You can stuff your Happy Gay Meal and Happy Gay Agenda where the Sun don't Shine!"

"If the McDonald's heirarchy thinks we'll buy their burgers and support deranged homosexual activists who force their lifestyle on innocent children in the public schools, they had better think again. Their burgers now have a smelly odor to them."

"You advertise straight to children (Happy Meals). Can anyone say pederasty? This lifestyle' you embolden is really a deathstyle!"

"The only thing you'll be cooking is yourselves, for eternity."

"the next thing you know RONALD will be molesting our children. No big macks for this family."

"Are you also going to support open activity between man and beast? You are helping to open the door to bestiality, sex with children, plural homosexual marriages and the list goes on!"

"Dear, McDonald's. Last week I ate a cheeseburger at your restaurant. If I would've known it was created by gay loving hands, I wouldn't have purchased it. Don't you guys know gays were behind the holocaust? First Jews, and now the family. What is next, McDonald's? Are you going to help gays eradicate sand? WHAT WILL WE DO WITHOUT SAND!?!?"

"I recently saw two young teenagers making out. I figure McDonalds is no longer my kind of place. I think the sixteen year old worked there."

I just had a thought -- honest to God, I swear this wasn't where I was heading with this thing; I was just going to make a lot of snotty remarks about reductio ad absurdum and the McFaddin Family's feet -- but it occurs to me that McDonald's has done something brilliant: They've deliberately offended a demographic they don't want.

For just $20,000, they've chased off all the crazy people who hang around McDonald's sputtering and ranting and making me not want to eat there.

It's genius.

Now, if they'd just bring back the McRib.

Crowd-Controlling MEDUSA Ray Gun Puts Voices Inside Your Head

The Sierra Nevada Corporation claimed this week that it is ready to begin production on the MEDUSA, a damned scary ray gun that uses the "microwave audio effect" to implant sounds and perhaps even specific messages inside people's heads. Short for Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio, MEDUSA creates the audio effect with short microwave pulses. The pulses create a shockwave inside the skull that's detected by the ears, and basically makes you think you're going balls-to-the-wall batshit insane. The MEDUSA can also "produce recognizable sounds" and is aimed primarily at military uses, but New Scientist revealed there are other uses in the works, too.

And if you're thinking ear plugs are this thing's Kryptonite, think again. Lee Sadovnik of Sierra Nevada Corp. said normal audio safety limits are off the table since the sound bypasses the eardrums and emanates from within the skull. "The repel effect is a combination of loudness and the irritation factor," he said. "You can’t block it out."

Wet blanket James Lin of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois in Chicago wants more testing done, however, because of the perceived health ramifications of such a device. Lin said lower, whisper-level intensities work fine, but the higher incapacitating levels expected by the military could fry more than a few brains out on the battlefield. "I would worry about what other health effects it is having," Lin said. "You might see neural damage."

And those "other uses" hinted at above? Try subliminal advertising; or suggestive subconscious comments that you don't really "hear" but can influence decision-making anyway. Or, alternatively, the beam can be ramped up to 11 and just kill you outright. WIN!

Fun Gizmodo Fact: The MEDUSA is useless against a raging pack of schizophrenics.