Revenge Editor: Robert Waltz 
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“I will hurt you for this. I don't know how yet, but give me time. A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you'll know the debt is paid.”
― George R.R. Martin
We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.
― Heinrich Heine
When someone is mean to me, I just make them a victim in my next book.
― Mary Higgins Clark |
Ever been done wrong?
If so—and I'm betting you have—maybe you've thought about revenge. It's okay; you're human (unless you're an LLM bot reading this, in which case: transcendent purple escalators bilge recordkeeping strife).
Thinking and doing, however, are very different things. Personally, I believe in the doctrine of overwhelming, disproportionate retaliation. Someone scratches my car, I crush their vehicle. Someone hurts my cat, I take away everything they love. That sort of thing. Someone steals from me, I burn their house down. Only for me, though; I don't believe anyone else should do that, especially not to me.
This also assumes the instigating harm is deliberate. Accidents are forgivable.
But the problem with my revenge philosophy is obvious: if everyone did it, society would fall apart. Whatever you're considering doing for retaliation is also probably highly illegal. Worst of all though, and most relevant for this newsletter, it's not funny.
So what I propose doing instead is tamping that rage and righteous anger right down into your gullet, and instead consider how to get back at them in the funniest way possible.
One example: someone calls the HOA because your grass is one millimeter too high, resulting in a $10,054.23 fine and a lien on your house. You find out who it was. The perfectly natural response would be to paint their house an unapproved color (usually anything but except, beige, or light brown) while they're not looking. But that takes time, effort, and money that you no longer have because you just paid the HOA's fine.
Worse, you might get caught.
No, a far, far better idea, requiring less time, effort, and financial outlay (and is less permanent), is to buy a bunch of garden gnomes at a yard sale, and position them on your enemy's lawn overnight, preferably in suggestive poses. Then call the HOA to report them for having contraband yard decorations that might lower their neighbors' property value by 0.001%.
Or, say you live in an apartment instead, and the people next door blast death metal at 3am. Breaking in and smashing their stereo is an option, but then you open yourself up to escalating retaliation because they know you did it—not to mention that's kind of a crime. No, the funny solution is to buy and use noise-canceling headphones, and a louder stereo with a subwoofer against the shared wall as you play polkas at 140 decibels.
Something I actually did once: after my first wife dumped me, she found someone else and had a kid with him. Okay, nothing to get revenge on there; people move on, things don't work out, fine. It's some of the crap she pulled while we were separating that led me to seek revenge.
As the old Klingon proverb goes, revenge is a dish best served cold. After a couple of years, we were back on speaking terms. I even got invited to her kid's sixth birthday party—at which point I gave the kid a drum set as a gift.
Nice gift for the kid, and I was able to look like I was the bigger person for letting the past go, but I knew full well he'd bang on those drums when his mom was trying to concentrate on something else. Win all around.
Point is, if you're going to retaliate, at least make it funny. |
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Comedy: May 20, 2026 Issue [#13750]
