In the Army long ago we received a memo from the Pentagon telling us to report the amount of filed material we had -- they even gave a formula for converting maps and so on into 8.5 x 11 inch paper equivalents. Naturally, I had to improve on this....

I typed a memo stating that by 0730 the next morning all filed material would have to be reported in cubic meters. To do this, you were to take all of it out of the files and pile it in the middle of the room in a neat pile and measure it. I had authentic routing lists at the top, forged the signature and name of a lieutenant in another company, and, to make it REALLY authentic, destroyed the original and used the carbon copy (which shows how long ago I did this). Then I took it to a friend in another office, after dinner and when I knew he'd be napping.

It took me and evenyone in his section to calm him down.

The Elkhart (Indiana) "Truth" newspaper reported some years ago that the US Army was buying 200,000 specially modified recreational vehicles for use on the battlefield in case of war. Since Elkhart makes a LOT of RVs, this was big news, and led to some rather impolite responses when the date of the paper was pointed out.

I also once sent a memo to my boss suggesting that we link all of the automatic flush mechanisms on the urinals in the men's rooms to the Internet so that we could measure cleanliness, water usage, and pipe thickness from anywhere in the world. The frightening thing was that I knew how to do this!