Derek's column Caperin' usually runs on Mondays, but since he was too busy drawing pictures of Lauren Holly, he missed his deadline. Thusly, we give you Caperin': Giving Thanks for the Pranks, on Tuesday. —Eds.

These days, having a land-line telephone is great if you use it the right way. It's part of the cable + internet package in the household that I moved into, and nobody ever uses it because we all have cellphones. There wasn't even a phone connected to it when I moved in, so I started a free psychic hot line and a free advice hot line so I could talk to strangers with problems or teens needing guidance. Actually, I advertised to do this but I hardly ever answer the calls anymore. I quickly found out that they're mostly just people demanding to know the outcome of an obviously doomed relationship. I don't feel bad about not answering because I'm then teaching people a more important lesson: you get what you pay for. I answered a call on accident last night. The ringer was turned off and I had planned to call Smartypants for the 5th time in a week to order another Firecracker sandwich with potato salad, and a somebody was calling at the same exact moment. As usual I wasn't sure how to answer: "Free psychic hot line, how may I help you?" or "Free advice, what's your conundrum?" I just held the phone to my ear for 10 seconds until a man's voice asked, "Is your refrigerator running?" Having been around the prank call block, I came up with the wittiest thing I could in the shortest amount of time, which was simply, "No." To this he responded, "WELL THEN, WHY DON'T YOU JUST GO FUCK YOURSELF?"

The telephone was invented in the late 1800s by Innocenzo Manzetti, Antonio Meucci, Johann Philipp Reis, Elisha Gray, Ally Shrimpter, Darrell Porter, Alexander Graham Bell, Issei Sagawa, and Thomas Edison. I'm not exactly sure when prank calling was invented, but if I had a time machine and my choice of 10 places to go in it, being present for that call would be eighth on my list, no doubt about it. Over the years I've always enjoyed listening to prank phone calls, either homemade or widely released. I've spent time researching my favorites, seeking out obscure calls and even made a CD of my own. Here's a list of some and how I feel about them:

The Jerky Boys / The Musacha Tapes: Oh, boy. Here's the bad stuff. I believe these two "artists" are somehow related, because the vocal tones are the similar and the jokes are equally mean-spirited. Unfortunately these are probably the most popular prank call recordings, it's reported that the Jerky Boys have actually sold over 8,000,000 CDs. The gags are generally tedious and unfunny, a few dudes put on mock voices and call businesses and classifieds and swear a bunch, acting tyrannical or idiotic. I guess that's what you'd expect with that name though, some guy from Brooklyn calling you an asshole because you're trying to sell a stationary bike. I'm sorry to even mention these recordings, but at least I got them out of the way first. Kind of like the Creed of prank calling, I guess. GRADE: D

Raymond & Peter - Shut Up, Little Man!: Whoa, here's where things really start to cook. Oh, I should mention, these aren't even telephone calls. It's a recording made by a person who lived next door to two men, Raymond & Peter, who did little else but drank and violently argued. Apparently at times the nosy neighbor would call and give Raymond & Peter a hard time, making them argue even more. While the sound quality is lacking at times, the unadulterated glimpse into a life of absolute horror is completely worth it. The title comes from the nickname given by Peter to Ray, who died of a heart attack brought on by colon cancer, pancreatitis, and alcoholism in 1992. Peter died 4 years later due to liver problems from alcoholism. GRADE: B+

"Malcolm X Stamp": Not too much seems to be known about this call, other than it teeters on offensive and really seems to get the goat of the postal worker on the receiving end. A man (referred to on the Internet by the name Ned) repeatedly calls a post office to express his dismay about Malcolm X being placed on a postal stamp. To tell you the truth, the call isn't really all that funny and the mild racism is kind of gross. The only reason I'm listing it here is because it contains the brilliant retort from the postal worker when "Ned" explains that Malcolm X advocated violence. Her reply, "Well, Elvis Presley was a drug addict. It wasn't our choice." Grade: D+

Laugh Syndicate - Phone Jackin': Here's another collection of calls without a lot of information. There are 16 calls on this LP and they're all pretty unfunny, except for the first call, which is an absolute masterpiece. It's called "Thai Restaurant" and it's basically a guy calling a Thai food restaurant asking for items on the menu, but they're all the names of famous rappers. He places an order of Big Daddy Kane, Ice Cubes in his Ice T and 2Pac Of Shakur. The list goes on and on and on and on until it really isn't even funny anymore, but that's they nature of prank calls. Actually, prank calls are mostly pretty awful across the board. I called it a masterpiece above, but I guess I wasn't serious.GRADE: D+

Touch-Tone Terrorists: WHOA, these calls totally rule. The Touch-Tone Terrorists is actually one man, Pete Zoghi. Apparently he purchased a bunch of 1-800 numbers that were one digit away from customer service numbers of other businesses, and he fields the calls made by people dialing incorrectly for customer service. A lot of the calls seem to be directed toward UPS, but also include Jiffy Lube, an insurance claims company and other businesses. Zoghi portrays a number of convincing characters that frustrate the shit out of the people calling and while most of the time it isn't mean, it's definitely a waste of the caller's time. If you've ever spent time in the trenches of retail while loathing customers, you'll find hours of entertainment here. GRADE: B+

Neil Hamburger - Great Phone Calls: Before his career in stand-up, Neil Hamburger was a guy named Gregg Turkington in a band called Zip Code Rapists. It seems that he also did a number of other artistic things, but the thing I like best is his CD called Great Phone Calls. This collection of pranks is filled with genuinely hilarious jokes mixed in with confusing absurd humor that's ultra-clever. From the robot voice changer taking a survey for a new movie starring Bette Midler to endlessly long jokes with no punchlines, once you understand where these calls are coming from, your sides will split laughter. Neil Hamburger only makes an appearance on a few calls here and in my opinion that joke's gone on too long. The other calls are where you'll find the comedic gold, without a doubt. GRADE: B+

Rachel Ratner - Joke Bot: Here's an unexpected treat that's new to me— Rachel Ratner's podcast is a mixture of great music and recorded jokes that people leave on an answering service. I've listened to three of these programs and have yet to encounter a dud in the music or joke department. When the quality is controlled by an opinion that you can trust, it's a win-win-win-win-win situation. That's five wins! That's 250%! GRADE: B

• Q: What do you call a man with no arms and no legs at your doorstep? A: UNFORTUNATE.

Kathy McGinty - Kathy McGinty: I made this CD with my best friend in 2001. While at times it aims at the easiest of targets, it's a rare mix of laughing at and with the victims. Here's the best review written by the staff of San Francisco's Aquarius Records: "Have you ever have that problem where you're in an internet sex chat room, and you make a date with some pervy girl for a phone sex session, and then when you call her up it's actually some jerk with a sampler loaded with a sexy female voice telling you things like "Taco Bell is sooo good?" Well if you did, chances are you're one of the crank call victims on this extremely funny and fucked up CD. We guarantee, if you hear this stuff you'll die laughing (unless you're a total prude, of course). It's really unbelievable how pathetic the guys are who attempt to carry on a phone sex chat with "Kathy McGinty", who is pretty obviously a recorded voice triggered by someone's sampler. They don't seem to mind that she sounds like she's talking to them over a CB radio, or that most of what she says is absurd and nonsensical, like a random sound collage from a porno movie. Her Taco bell comment just gets a moan of agreement from the hapless caller. A few of the callers figure it out, and then it gets even more pathetic as they continue to masturbate, being such geeks that they're turned on by the technical details of the joke (one guy asks, excitedly, about if the sampler is triggered by keyboard or mouse). But most of the guys are so clueless and horny that they're completely unfazed by Kathy's bizarre comments ("I think you might be racist", "I want to have your retarded babies", "I've got a pickle in my ass", "You know I'm only 12?", "I sell used cars", "Check out my hairy balls", "I'm all fucked up from huffing Scotch Guard", "I think I might be having a miscarriage") and limited vocabulary (she says "Yesssss!" the same way every time), or her deafeningly noisy, Merzbow-level obviously-looped screams of orgasmic ecstasy. We could go on, but we don't want to reveal too much. Just get this, it's the best crank call disc we've heard in a long time. You'll be playing it for everyone you know, except maybe your mom. Absurdly funny." Sometime in the mid 2000s it was discovered that a band called Bell on the Soul Jazz label used one of the tracks from this CD on one of their records and simply added a drum track. After proving that we owned the copyright to the material, Soul Jazz gave us enough money to take a vacation to Saint Petersberg, Russia. Unfortunately, I took the trip in December when the sun rose at 2pm and set at 2:15pm every day, so I spent most of my Russian vacation asleep. I did visit the glorious Hermitage Art Museum and after admiring priceless works of art for 20 minutes, I ended up finding a bench and falling asleep there as well. GRADE: B+

Earles & Jensen - Just Farr a Laugh: As a duo, Andrew Earles and Jeffrey Jensen are essentially unrivaled as the kings of phone comedy that isn't a one-trick pony. The targets range from businesses to classified ads attacked by a number of original characters and impersonated b-list celebs featuring ultra obscure pop-culture references and sharp-as-a-tack wit. My all time favorite is Bleachy, a clueless soul who fails at a variety of things from getting an appointment to join the Army to controlling himself from eating too many Big Bufords at Rally's. The laughs are endless though, as you hear about Isaac Hayes who calls a grocery store in tears because some kids in the parking lot said he looked like he "just stepped off of Paul Simon's Graceland tour bus." I can't recommend this CD enough, and the 2008 Matador 2 CD reissue contains all killer & thriller with absolutely no filler. Andrew Earles just wrote a book about Husker Du! GRADE: A

Longmont Potion Castle: The reason that I wrote this entire prank call recap was to highlight the absolute genius of Longmont Potion Castle. Earlier in the year I interviewed the person responsible, which you can read here for more of an explanation, though it may not help to understand where this brand of absurd "phone work" is coming from. LPC isn't a conventional collection of prank calls. They're seldom mean spirited, often bizarre but absolutely infectious. There's something particularly psychological about these interactions, which have the unique power to incense the victims through confusion rather than antagonization. These are the prank calls by which all other must be judged. GRADE: A+++++

Last but not least, via Jessica Oliver: DREAMCUSHION: When you wake up in the morning, you groggily reach for your phone and you call this number 877 877 5602 and you follow the instructions—“do not be afraid, just speak”—you record your dream. Then you go about your day and at some point, usually right away, you get a call back and you get to listen to someone else’s dream. (!!!) A random dream calls you and you just listen to the voice say whatever it says… it’s great. The problem is not enough people use it right now and sometimes you get your same dream, or an old dream… but that didn’t happen to me this morning—I got a 45-year-old smoker lady talking about how she went to the office with earplugs in and nobody would talk to her because they could see them and she thought it might be because she had a cold, but nope, and anyways they were stuck in there and eventually she had to go to a doctor who “EXTRACTED them, if you will” with a pair of GIANT tweezers… “and then… I woke up…”GRADE: C

LATE UPDATEZ: After a mention from Tim Cook, how could I have forgotten Tube Bar? Also, Jenny suggested the recordings of Dave Holmes crank calling Susan Powter on her radio show, which will destroy your brains with laughs.

NOTICE: Bonus material:

• My neighbors are watching porno again, sans drapes.

• Maybe you should stop complaining and just go to the airport naked from now on.

• Turkey, I'm really happy for you, I'ma let you finish, but glazed spiral cut ham has one of the best flavors of all time.

• I'm really sorry that this installment of Caperin' was late. I've been spending most of my day drawing Lauren Holly.

• The only Royal Wedding in my book.

I'd very much like to thank Eric Grandy for the caper jar logo idea, Lacey Swain & Alithea O'Dell for their #1 proofreading skillz & Grant Brissey for being like a full hospital: A LOT OF PATIENCE.