h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When I was in college, I had a friend who was the object of unrequited affection by a young woman in our class. After a time, he grew tired and told her bluntly and publicly that he was appalled by her attraction to him. Humiliated, she waited until he was busy playing billiards one evening, snuck up behind him with a pair of scissors, and cut off the forelock of his precious hair.

But this Pope-ian vengeance was only the beginning. Seeking satisfaction of his own, my friend wrote a letter to the college paper (of which I was the editor at the time) and slipped his revenge under the nose of us all, including me. The letter ostensibly was about how "The Empire Strikes Back" was a much better film than "The Return of the Jedi." But if you read the initial letters of every sentence, it spelled out "(Name of his unwanted admirer) is a psycho freak."

Perhaps no more than a half-dozen people ever knew. But he knew it was there, and that was enough.