ham fisted theatrics

- If a realtor is showing you and several other people apartments in what she says is a "charming old building," but the sign on the front of the building reads GULAG. If you point out the GULAG sign and the realtor says the building "used to be a gulag but is under renovation," here is a way to tell if she's lying: old buildings under renovation do not have active torture rooms or traitors to the state impaled on the ramparts. If the realtor says the traitors to the state are going to be removed in the building's on-going makeover, come back next week. You will know the building is still a gulag if the traitors impaled on the ramparts are the other people who were on the apartment tour with you.

- If the pizza man demands undying loyalty instead of money for the pizza, he may in fact be a dictator in disguise. An easy way to tell if this is so: he may be wearing a tiny moustache which conceals his enormous dictator moustache. If you try to rip off his small moustache and it turns out to be real, apologize, as he is just a pizza guy. If you try to rip off his small moustache and it turns out to be real and in retaliation he vows to have his storm-troopers take your family away to be “re-educated,” he is just a dictator with a small moustache.

- If the police knock on the door, and you answer it, and they say they want to ask you some questions, and you answer their questions and then you close the door, and your wife says “Honey, who was at the door?” and you say, “Oh, it was just the--” and the police stick their heads in the door and go “SHHHHH!” before you can say the word “POLICE,” that means these police are SECRET POLICE, a common tool of fascism. The SECRET POLICE want you to keep THE SECRET of their existence, so do not tell anyone, especially gossipy teenage girls or parrots who repeat the last thing you said at inopportune times.

- If a salesman says he will let you trade in your Freedom Of The Press for new “FUN-dom Of The Press!”, do not make the exchange, no matter how many times the staff of your underground anti-authoritarian newspaper is offered party hats and streamers.

- If the hippie girl who works at the head shop says she has some amazing incense she wants to sell you, but instead of sticks, the incense comes in the form of books full of dangerous ideas, she is in all likelihood not a hippie girl but, in fact, a propaganda officer who is too lazy to organize a proper book-burning.