Merry Pranksters (I): Tomcat Trades Dildo for AK-47

A key rule of good journalism is never to give publicity to someone who does something that is only aimed at getting publicity. So we hadn't planned on covering the latest headline-grabbing shenanigans of T-shirt-selling anarcho-prankster Tomcat, until we remembered that, crikey, we're not good journalists! Anyway, if you haven't heard, the man formerly best known for menacing notorious neo-nazi skank Diána Bácsfi with a giant purple dildo made the news again on Friday after he spent the better part of a day waltzing around outside police headquarters, and other sensitive public locations, casually toting a faithful replica of an AK-47 assault rifle. And thanks to the miracle of the internet, you can download the resulting video for free!

According to a print story in Friday's Magyar Nemzet, Tomcat walked up and down Teve utca in front of police HQ in District XIII toting a picture-perfect replica of the famous Soviet-made man-blaster, while wearing a yellow vest and hat advertising the fact that a crime was being committed. (It said Bűnelkövetés, apparently a spoof on the word bűnelhárítás, which means "crime prevention.") He did this for more than an hour, shooting some hilarious video along the way (you can download an 84 megabyte clip here) without anyone even politely asking what he was up to.

Only later, after he had taken a crowded metro to downtown's Ferenciek tere, did a policeman ask what he was doing. According to Tomcat's blog, the cop only said "You don't say - is this real?" to which Tomcat replied, "No." After the patrolman decided that he couldn't decide for sure whether the gun was real or not, he brought the rifle and rifleman down to the local copshop, where it was established that the blaster was in fact fake, and seized under a statute which makes it illegal to wave around fake weapons that look real enough to convince people that they aren't fake. That is, assuming anyone notices.