The Rules

1 - Players must complete a dare, secure an extension from the other player, or forfeit within one week from the time a dare is issued.

2 - A player can (but is not required to) decline a dare and request an equivalent alternative dare without forfeit if the original dare meets any of the following criteria:

a - it cannot be completed without the player spending more than the cost of a sandwich.

b - it cannot be completed without a significant chance of causing long term damage to the player's health or professional, social, or financial standing.

c - it cannot be completed without a significant chance of injuring or causing pain to a living being

d - it duplicates an existing sf0 task

3 - First player to refuse a dare not covered by point 2 forfeits and the war ends. The other player must then complete the final dare himself in order to be declared the winner. If both players refuse the final dare, the war is considered draw. In the event there is a winner and we ever meet in person, the loser buys the winner a beer or equivalent beverage.

List of dares


1. Trickster: Take a picture of your home toilet, in its current, unaltered state, and send said picture to me (to be used for documenting the task later.)

Loki says, why, oh why, didn't I clean my toilet before starting this dumb war? *sigh*


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2. Loki: Wear a maximally mismatched pair of socks for a day. Show us a photo.

3. Trickster: Call a talkative friend or family member and converse as long as you can without using a very common word (suggestion: "the"). Report length of conversation up until you slip or they choose to hang up. [Note: optional bonus Cool Points(tm) for finding a way to document, excerpt or reenact the conversation, censored/redacted as necessary]

Loki says, I made four attempts at this. The first two lasted less than 30 seconds each. The third lasted around a minute and a half. On the fourth attempt, I lasted a record 3 minutes 27 seconds. I shared a recording with my opponent; however, in order to preserve the privacy of the non-players involved, I'm not including it here.

4. Loki: Eat a slice of pizza topped with your choice of chocolate, black licorice, cinnamon candies, or mint candies.

Trickster Tao says, girlfriend wouldn't let me make an entire chocolate-based pizza, so we ended up making a normal pizza with marinara sauce and lactose free cheese and the like, then pulling off the cooked cheese and adding the requisite chocolate, and the only cinnamon candy on hand (sprinkles). In hindsight, I should've added some gum for mint candy, but alas, as with everything worthwhile in life, wisdom comes too late.

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5. Trickster: Ask someone (stranger or friend) for a dollar -- without telling them why or agreeing to pay them back -- and then as soon as they give it to you, destroy it in front of their eyes by some creative means.

Loki says, I tried this twice. Each time I stopped a colleague while walking back to work from a coffee break, asked for a dollar, then reached into my backpack and pulled out a propane torch and a big pair of tweezers in order to destroy the dollar.

The first time, I did it with no documentation. The second time I took some crappy video with a cell phone camera. My victim knew that I was recording video, but had no idea why. In neither case did the person seem particularly surprised to see me torch a dollar. They just stepped back from the flames and waited for an explanation. Perhaps I should have chosen people who know me less well.



6. Loki: Perform an act which *you* believe to be unethical. Insure there are witnesses. Offer no explanation, apology, or restitution for at least 72 hours. Document however you wish. (The dare is considered complete when the act is finished - no need to wait 72 hours before submitting proof.)

TricksterTao says: Ive never stood anyone up for a date, and as a fairly empathetic person I find the idea really repulsive. For some people it might not be a big deal, but for someone else it could really hurt or affect them for a while. Ah well, the idea was to be unethical. I decided to dupe a man (it's harder for me to hurt a girl), and try to target a dude of less than perfect judgement, so as to minimize the chance that I was hurting someone fragile.

Last Saturday I posted the following ad on local craigslist, in the women seeking men section:

Subject:
w4m 21 seeking perfect man

Text:
hi! im looking for a guy whos real and not fake, im tired of playas i just want a guy whos good looking and nice and smart.... and a good job is important $$, my last boyfriend was cheap. also im sexual and you should be too, he was a cuddle person and i like to video tape sex and stuff like that

ur pic gets my phone number, then we meet up downtown and see where it goes
[name redacted since its my girlfriends real name -- see explanation later]

The next morning, viola, a single email response (and picture attachment) through craigslist to my spam-catching hotmail account: [name and personal picture redacted - just some college-looking dude standing next to a car]

Hey, I saw your ad on cl and here is my pic, can I have yours?

So I sent him back the following picture (stolen off the interweb), along with the text below:

(see photo attachment)

u look cute, i hope your not a playa or anything

my ohone number is ###-###-#### call me and we can meet at --------- downtown tomorow night.

Nothing all day, so I thought maybe itd been too obvious. But then at almost midnight the *next* night (seriously, who calls at 11:40pm?), my girlfriend gets a call from an unrecognized local number and answers it in character (but as her own name so the caller ID doesnt disagree and give it away). Like a pro, she pretty quickly steers the conversation to the point and keeps it brief sets down a plan to meet two days later at a popular cafe/bar at 8pm. He said he would be wearing a black polo and red hat.

The last stage of this dare involved actually trekking downtown to the location in question at 8pm Wednesday, and subtly photographing the man I'd had stood up.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the dude never showed up. Couldnt find anyone who looked like the picture, nor even a single red hat. After 25 minutes and 2 coffees, I decided that rather than standing some poor innocent sap up, Id been stood up. Karma at work?

7. TricksterTao: Edit yourself or a friend into an adult, risque or embarassing picture and display the picture (printed or on a monitor or otherwise) in a public or semi-public place (work, library, where roommates can see it, or anywhere), long enough to be seen.

EDIT: Loki says, only now, a half year later, do I notice the clause "or a friend" in this dare. Damn.

Loki says, this proved to be a surprisingly difficult task. First of all, I spent quite a while trying to find an embarrassing photo. The problem is, anything embarrassing taken to an extreme becomes cool. I started working on several extraordinarily embarrassing photos and then discarded them when I realized that I would actually be proud if I *had* been in them. (My favorite is this guy.)

Then, there's the matter of venue. For someone who lives alone, the obvious choice for public embarrassment is the workplace; however, my office is pretty relaxed as such things go. It would take a lot to get noticed. Far more than I'm willing to post online in a less than anonymous forum.

After an exhaustive search, I finally managed to find an image which is both obscene (by many definitions) and genuinely embarrassing, and replaced the actor's head with my own. I lack the gimp-foo to make a really convincing match, but it would take a few seconds to notice the discontinuity.

I'm convinced that I found a universally embarrassing image; you don't need to know anything about me to get it. Whether one is embarrassed by the particular fantasy being enacted, the fact that an inflatable doll is involved, the particular inflatable doll involved, or the camera, I doubt anyone could say they were proud to be featured in this image. The black bar across my eyes in the image here was *not* present on the actual printed pages, although the lower bar was. (I added the upper one later, 'cause the internet never forgets. . . which I guess proves that I succeeded in composing and image that I really do find embarrassing.) I printed a copy and tacked it to a campus bulletin board.

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It lasted less than a day, but was surely seen by at least a few people. As a bonus, I also added myself to a snapshot of some dorky looking Mormon missionaries and made it the root window image on my work computer. After several weeks, the Mormons were finally noticed by colleagues.

8. Loki: Eat a meal. . . in a tree.

Trickster Tao says, breakfast and lunch have been consumed in two separate trees (after completing the first meal, I decided I had to try for an even higher perch, despite running into a big spider web and being attacked by ants who declared war on the invader of their tree). Came home a little dirty, but feeling good that I'd done it, and not crapped out and just eating while sitting in a shrubbery or something. I really liked this one, because I wouldn't have ever done it otherwise. Forgot how fun it is to climb things, even sticky, bug-infested things




9. Trickster: Chase a dream. You have one week.

Loki says, I made a couple half-heated attempts to wimp out on this with a cheap word-play completion. For example, writing a dream on a note card, sticking it to the back of a bus, and running after the bus. But, in the end, it seemed unfair to not at least try to legitimately fulfill a dare this cool.

I haven't remembered a literal dream in years, and my dreams-as-in-hopes tend to be pretty ambitious. After days of procrastination, I finally came up with something fulfilling yet which could be chased within a couple of hours. A childhood dream in both senses: flight.

I called up all the nearby hang-gliding and skydiving organizations. Turns out both sports are *really* expensive, and subject to cancellation in bad weather, and rather snippy when you ask them if they've got any openings for the cheapest possible flight *today.* They also require trekking out into the wilderness and thus renting a car.

Then I remembered a woman I met while traveling last winter crooning about some new facility in France where people levitate inside a giant vertical wind-tunnel. A few minutes of searching turned up the magic words, "indoor skydiving," and a brand still-putting-in-the-floors new site in Union City. I called them up, booked the only available flight of the day with two hours notice, left my coffee, oatmeal, and camera on the table, and ran off to catch the train.
I arrived with minutes to spare, watched their training video, suited up, and thoroughly enjoyed my two minute-long flights in the chamber. It was magnificent.

Now, you may be saying to yourself, "he was told to chase a dream, and all he did was take a credit card to some yuppie tourist joint?" You are correct, of course. But, floating ten feet in the air above a giant turbo fan is so much fun, I claim it counts. And, it's the sort of thing poor, cheap me would probably never do without some justification like this dare. Thanks, Trickster Tao!

p.s. Anyone got a use for two rubber bouncy balls with "the withering away of states" and "eternal life" written on them?


10. Loki: Super glue your hand to your face, *then* go to a store and try to buy a solvent with which to remove the glue.

Q: My whole hand? My whole face?

A: Of course not. I'm cruel, but not insane. Just enough that a jury of your peers would be likely to say, "yeah, he glued his hand to his face." A little dab will do ya.

TricksterTao says: I decided the guys at Home Depot probably run into similar situations now and then, so it wouldn't be a sufficiently odd event for the employees there. Instead, I went to a gas station that is well known for carrying tiny-sized versions of just about anything you could need on a day-to-day basis. I glued myself out in the car, giving it 5 minutes to set, and then went in and inquired about my problem. Turns out they don't carry superglue removers, or even acetone nail polish remover...but they do carry candy bars, which make it so much more bearable to have a hand stuck to your face.

I must admit, though, it was kind of fun. So when I got home, I superglued my other hand to my face, for the full "Home Alone" look. Included is the video of me pulling it off -- the left side was stuck much harder than the right, and pulled the skin nicely, but it peeled off without too much problem. Note to Loki: for the next dare, require industrial-strength epoxy.

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12. Trickster: Apply for a job at McDonalds (or equivalent). If offered the job, accept or reject it in a dramatic manner.

Here, our war of dares faltered and died. Loki was busy and asked for an extension. Weeks turned into months, busyness turned into travel, and by the time he returned home, he'd pretty much lost the drive to finish this dare. So, after an outrageous delay, Loki formally refused the dare and forfeited.

In the meantime, Trickster Tao's out-of-game life had become unusually demanding, and
he chose to refuse the dare as well.

We therefore end this war of escalating dares in a draw.