If you are bored and wanting to find a way to pass the time, there’s nothing that can compete with watching the people around you needlessly freak out. If that sounds like your idea of a fun time, the amusing book Uncle John’s New & Improved Funniest Ever offers some helpful tips on ways to drive people nuts.

Alternatively, you can while away the hours by reading Commonplace Fun Facts. Curiously, each of Uncle John’s suggestions involves something that has been discussed here on Commonplace. Click on the links for amusing and interesting stories. Reading them may not give you the satisfaction of driving people nuts, but you won’t run the risk of getting arrested for the activity.

• Call an addiction hotline and explain that you’re hooked on phonics.
• Go to the airport wearing a suit of armor and try walking through the metal detector.
• Wash out a gas can, punch a hole in it, then fill it with water and carry it down a busy lunch-hour sidewalk while smoking the biggest cigar you can find.
• Call the Q-Tips 800 number and say that one of the cotton swab parts just came off in your ear. When they reply, keep shouting, “What? What did you say?”
• Go to the polar bear enclosure at the zoo and shout, “C’mon Larry, enough’s enough! Take off that costume and come back to the office!”
• Fill an inflate-a-date with helium and release it at rush hour on a windy day. Chase it down the street, yelling, “Come back here, you tramp!”
• Call National Acme Co. Ask if they have any products you could use to kill a roadrunner.

• Rush yourself to the ER and explain to the night nurse that you were resting on your leg for a long time and now it feels like pins and needles. Ask if they’ll have to amputate.
• In the middle of the night, noisily bury a fully dressed mannequin in your backyard. Arrange lawn furniture on the fresh mound and sit down in it quickly when the police arrive.
• Get a video camera and microphone and chase a local TV news crew around. Interrupt on-the-scene shots by shouting questions like “Where have all the cowboys gone?”
• Ask strangers if they have change for a nickel.
• In the bathroom at work, utter loud, pain-wracked screams, then emerge holding a large hen’s egg.