The Riddler decided to take an impromptu ski vacation this week, so we’ve been 100% Rid-free. This has left me without my daily pain dosage, so I’ll have to cast backwards to get my fix….and hell, the Rid’s on vacation. Time to pick on someone else.

A few years ago, Unit23 ran across someone called “The Laugh Guru” while listening to the radio. The Laugh Guru purported to provide psychological therapy by prescribing laughter. The Laugh Guru demonstrated his technique on air….and Unit23 subsequently found great amusement in replicating his laugh during moments of silence in the office. This inevitably spawned imitations by myself, the HPDEB and The Designer. We’d sit and do incredibly fake laughs until everyone broke out into the real thing. The Laugh Guru may have been on to something - but that isn’t the point of the story.

At the time, an interactive project we had been working on was in its completion stages. As part of finishing everything off, we had to hire beta testers to check for bugs and report performance issues.

In the midst of dialling up the first beta tester I had picked out, Unit23 fake-laughed. I fake-laughed back. Then started really laughing. By the time the beta tester answered the call I had just dialled, control was gone. Our conversation went like this:

Beta Tester:
Hello?
GHC:
HA HA HA HA HA HA
Beta Tester:
Hello?
GHC:
HA HA HA HA HA HA
Beta Tester:
Who is this?
GHC:
HA HA HA HA HA HA I’ll have to call you back.

And that’s how I crank-called a beta tester.