How He Made His Billions

EVEN THE STOP SIGN IS PIXELATED
TO CONCEAL THE LOCATION OF THIS VEIN

It's been several days since the billionaire came to town. And I've made it my business to be "in" with him and find out everything I can about his dealings. Why am I doing that? Because it's been a long time since I've met someone who could very well be my soul mate. And money has nothing to do with it, although, if I were to be perfectly honest, it doesn't hurt.

But enough on that subject -- the vagaries of soul mating, true love, etc. -- because, frankly, it's a sore subject. I haven't written much about it, but, yes, long time readers of the blog know I had a true love ... once ... although I've never shared what precisely happened to drive us apart. I've already said too much. Let's get back to the billionaire, who, c'mon guys and gals, anyone, you have to concede he'd be a fantastic catch!

Anyway, the whole thing very well could be out of my hands entirely. The fact that we've run into each other a half dozen times in a town this size, that he bought my Easter bunnies and all the rest, was enough to tell me something's happening. With the next thing being he visited my house earlier today. I was so embarrassed; I still had bedhead. And I'm mostly bald, which with bedhead is a terrible look. But he didn't seem to be nonplussed.

He found out where I lived and wanted to come by and "make things right," since I'd erupted at Patsy's Steakhouse when he yet again called me "The Easter Bunny guy." It was a long day, that's all. I don't mind being the Easter Bunny guy, if it's right that a once-a-year activity should define you. In this case, since the billionaire didn't really know me and my many qualities, it's completely understandable that that's the label he should hang on me, as a kind of shorthand sobriquet.

I should just come out and say it, we are fast friends now, OK? I'm batting .1000, the first billionaire I've ever known and we're fast friends! I brushed it off, the whole "Easter Bunny guy" thing. He asked about me and my house, what I do, etc. I didn't hold back. I told him the truth of how I'm on disability because of my game toe. He thought that was cool, but then -- I couldn't believe it -- said he wouldn't mind helping me get it fixed. I had to beg off on that point. I'm not only adverse to pain, I also hate poverty.

Plus, I wanted to know more about him. How a guy can be a billionaire. What happens that makes you so filthy rich? Is it true what they say, that once you have your first billion the rest just happen? Good news, he said, that's exactly what happens! But he never stays still, resting on his mountains of cash. He's always looking for more. I think he saw a twinge of discomfort on my face. "That's not to say I obsess over it ... I want to live life to the fullest in small ways too."

Was I charmed? Yes, absolutely, what guy wouldn't be? But, as I said above, I still have this place, this hole in my heart, and I'm not sure at this point that anyone else can fill it. Damn it! And he has to be a billionaire, too! But we're leaving it at that, agreeing to be friends, do things together, yes, and take the rest of it slowly. Already he wants me to go with him on some buying trips around town, and he said he'll show me a good time. "But what about your game toe?" he asked. I told him, "Don't worry about that ... My tootsie-wootsies are feeling no pain!" We laughed, marking the first time in my life I ever saw a billionaire's eyelashes flutter.

"So where did you get your billions?" I asked. "Was it an inheritance, a well-paying part-time job, what?"

He looked around, suspiciously. We lowered our heads to the table and pulled in together. I believe I can publicly reveal his whispered confidential answer: "Rainbows. That business about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow ... That's only half of it ... I can get all the gold I want, which, as you may know, is one of the most precious elements on earth..."

"But how?" I asked. As of today, as you might expect, he wouldn't say.

The Disabled Patriotic Veterans

Now that the local newspaper has exposed The Disabled Patriotic Veterans of Distinguished Foreign Service to America (DFVDFSA) as a scam, and Walmart forbade them ever to set up their table of suckers sold for their benefit, we can only look back and celebrate their presence for those brief months.

They're gone now but not forgotten. I can still see them in my mind's eye: The various articles of slouchy clothes, the ratty camouflage, faded Doors T-shirts, patriotic caps burdened by trinkets and buttons everywhere, and of course the handlebar moustaches. They'd show up, and if you were lucky enough to get there early, you'd see the heartrending ceremony of unpacking the six inch flag and its wooden base, and proudly saluting as they erected it on the table. Then it was on to the cash drawer and the all-necessary priming of the tip jar with about 20 bucks.

The Disabled Patriotic Veterans of Distinguished Foreign Service to America.  Every word is important. They're disabled, or presumably serve others somewhere who are. They're patriotic, as we've seen them show their little flag all due deference. They're veterans who've performed service in the foreign fields, which has been distinguished. These weren't just desk jobs, supply guys, logistical staff, officers, or base personnel. This was distinguished service, meaning it was extraordinary. And America, that's a word that packs a punch!

All that time, there in the stifling heat of a Walmart entrance, they kept a brave vigil, testifying to their great sacrifice and sacrificing still, that with each sucker sold perhaps they could make a few cents over cost, to support themselves, not to mention those, their brethren, somewhere, the ones who are actually disabled and in dire need.

And you have to hand it to them, they had a great sales pitch to go along with their physical presentation. "No one gave us a parade, at least buy a sucker." And ,"We gave our lives for your freedom, buy a sucker already." But even with that there were plenty of people who acted like they didn't see them and would press into Walmart without stopping. Which is both bad and good. Bad, because those people are miserable, sons-of-bitchin' ingrates. But good, because it feeds into the DFVDFSA's complex that nobody appreciates them, giving them the resolve to double down on the guilt-inducing slogans.

I asked this one guy -- who asked me if I'd ever served, to which I had to go into my normal spiel about being eligible yet drawing high lottery numbers in the draft -- what the average gift for a sucker is. He said it was a measly buck. A dollar?! Crap, the suckers are about a dime to buy, so that's not much of a profit when you factor in the table, the flag, the stickers, and the sheer amount of time it takes to set up out there -- not to mention the heat! -- and time is money.

But what about the upper stratosphere of donations? We've all heard of the stranger who shows up at the Salvation Army bucket every year and puts in a 1609 gold doubloon worth a million dollars. No, he hasn't been here, but of course we'd love to have him stop by. The upper stratosphere, as it turns out, isn't very high. A few people have put in $20, and a few of those make the added gesture of not even taking the sucker!

Then, what is the most memorable thing that's happened to you out here? I asked. He thought it over and was visibly moved. His voice starting to break -- which he brought back quickly to normal -- he told me about an old guy who lives at a nursing home. OK? This stuff really happens. The nursing home (assisted living facility, I should say) brings them out in vans.

One time the old guy saw the sucker stand and decided next time he'd do something special. So he put on his World War II uniform and came out. He stood about 20 feet away. The DPVDFSA rep stood near the table. The older gentleman walked straight toward him. People parted. The old man, his hand feeble beyond belief, and shaking like a leaf as a consequence, lifted his hand and saluted. The other returned the gesture. That was a beautiful moment. It was a meeting of generations, from one who probably did get a parade to one who didn't. As if to say, "You're all right, and your suckers ain't half bad either, and thank you for your service." He put in $10, took the sucker, and signed the rep's hat. I saw the faded signature, clearly the scrawl of an old-timer, someone very old.

Other than that, I have a clear memory of the naked girl tattoo on the guy's arm.

Now, though, it's all gone. The DPVDFSA appears to be no more, exposed by an ungrateful newspaper as a scam. And our opportunity to give them what they deserve as disabled patriotic veterans has now sadly passed.

We're The Playthings Of Destiny

Being a crime boss is quite an adventure!

In my role as head of the Organization's prostitution operation, I have all kinds of duties, some routine and some just out of the blue. I have to be ready for anything. Because sometimes the human drama can be almost too much...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. There's a lot of fun in it. And I have all kinds of leeway in the Organization. Think about it: Who else gets to engineer a diamond heist, blackmail a guy twice, and smooth the ruffled feathers of a whole team of Associates (our word for hookers), all in the same week?

Really, you never know when your next challenge will be. But I'm ready! My secret is simple: Overall clean living and daily meditation. I do my best to maintain the utmost harmony, focusing my mind, body, and spirit. I'd be a wreck without it.

So there you have it, I'm bearing my soul, laying it all on the line. Hope you're impressed.

And I'm definitely going to keep at it, because keeping a full team of Associates happy and content is not always the easiest thing in the world. Maybe you'll hear them griping, "When you said 'modeling' I had other ideas about what you meant." Or, "If this is 'massage therapy,' it's a lot different from what they taught us in class." Sometimes you can mollify them with some fresh flowers for their table, but it might just take a heart to heart talk. Which I'm always happy to do, especially if I think they'll go for it.

One of our Associates, Lorelei, came to me, all hangdog about her life, and very moody. I had her sit on the couch. Of course I did what you're supposed to do, presented her a few flowers, but she just waved them off. No, she was going to need something more, this sensitive girl from North Dakota, or Arizona, or somewhere. She'd obviously had too much time on her hands, time wasted thinking, and stewing about it. To hear her tell it, this wasn't the life she'd hoped for.

Well, what could I do ... but commiserate.  It is, after all, one of the very best techniques in human relationships, to affirm the other person through identification. And naturally it is more compelling if you have, or can quickly construct on the fly a plausible back-story. As for myself, I'm from a genuine blue collar family. Those who came before me had a tough time in the Depression. There's a history of military service with my grandpa and uncles, all before I was born. And I personally have a disability, a game toe, causing a pronounced limp most noticeable during my annual visit with federal authorities, who have to validate such things.

Lorelei told me some of her disappointments, which caused me to glance down at my foot. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said tenderly, "Does it really hurt so very much?" I held back a tear and said with all the braveness I could muster, "No, I've got a few months till the next evaluation." But still, had it not been for this migrating bone in my big toe, who knows what I might have achieved? With a good toe, and a little bit of height, I could've played for the NBA!

Our talk hit an awkward silent patch, so I pulled out my ace: "Lorelei, you and I both feel like we're the playthings of destiny. Perhaps we haven't achieved everything we hoped for, but we're happy, because we've accepted the challenges of our lives, and are even now in the process of overcoming them. I wasn't always a crime boss. I had to work at it over the last month. And you weren't always a--- an Associate here. But somehow you saw exactly what your options were, so here you are, and I'd say better for it! I'm proud of you." Such poetry, I felt tears in my eyes, natural ones, not spritzed from a bottle.

I patted Lorelei on the back and told her anytime she needed to talk, of course I would check my schedule and we might be able to squeeze in an appointment. Until then, keep a stiff upper lip, don't take any wooden nickles, and remember, them's the breaks.

My Game Toe

I was out last night enjoying a couple drinks with the Pink Professor, who had one of his professor friends with him. We had a great time, like you always do when there's someone new along. Because every old threadbare thing about your life is suddenly brand new, new to him. Meaning, I don't run out of things to say. For at least an hour, I'm totally on.

I asked him about himself, learning all kinds of things that to him are probably old hat, where he's from, his age, his mother's name, what he likes to read, what his thesis was about, etc. I learned this style of questioning from C-SPAN. I asked if he always wanted to be a professor, since I'm a little bit jealous. It's a job I think would be cool to have, although when I was thinking of it today, I was thinking that every two-bit crappy college in the world has professors, who probably aren't that excited about it.

Anyway, it came up, as I feared it would, what I do for a living. I started clearing my throat, the Pink Professor quickly raised his hand to order more drinks, trying to give me cover. I held up my hand, motioning for water, because I was choking. After it was all over, I was beet red, a glass of water had tipped over and was dripping everywhere, and we had two fresh beers even though the others weren't yet touched.

He'd hit a nerve, obviously. I've said it a few times on the blog that I'm on full disability because of a game toe, but this was a real life visit, with someone right there, and, frankly, I wasn't limping when we all went in. Because, if the truth be known, the toe does have a problem, but normally I've got it popped in its socket and it's fine. I'll admit it, I'm a little leery when people start poking their nose in my business, what I do for a living and all that, because there are extenuating circumstances. I'm a little reluctant even to discuss it here, but I've been told that government workers aren't allowed to read blogs, so it's probably OK.

It's true, I am on full disability and I do pretty well. But there's a special classification the government has for guys like me, whose disability is obvious but yet somewhat suspicious. Only suspicious because it's such a small part of the body, a banged up big toe. Assuming it actually hurt, and it's only mildly uncomfortable, especially when I think about it, as I seldom do, there wouldn't really be anything to stop me from having a normal sit-down job, if the government really pressed it. I mean, I'm sitting anyway, I may as well be working...

The thing is, when the original agent came around, it had to look like I was about to die. Every little thing appeared to send waves of piercing pain through my leg and up my spine. Before he got there, I had arranged a couple of smoke pellets in the ear, which go off if you strain really hard. It had to look terrible. That, and I had a charm offensive going, asking about the agent's family, hopes and dreams growing up, and his mother's name, which coincidentally turned out to be the same as my dear mom's. At least that's the impression he took away.

He signed the papers, and you know how disability works, after a couple years the checks started coming in. But it turned out there was this damned proviso, that they needed to come around and check on my condition annually, yes, the dreaded annual review.

It just so happened that the annual review is always the first part of July, so I've just now got it over with again. I made the footprints above to illustrate the nature of the injury. My foot everyday looks like anyone else's, only with the low-level discomfort I mentioned above. But it's real easy to pop it out of place, and that's the other print. It looks like the rest of my foot told the big toe to "Go west!" Or something out of a continental drift article. It's not a foot, it's a Swiss army knife!

A different guy came for the review this year, whose mother also shares the same name with mine, I was thrashing about, clawing the walls, and by the time he left, the curtains looked like cats had been climbing them. Even though cats don't foam at the mouth. It's a good thing I passed the review, so I can buy new ones, and get the carpet cleaned.

Don't worry about me, OK? I'm sitting here, comfortable now. As long as I just relax, and occasionally limp, I'll be just fine.

A Funky Left-Slanting Grocery Store Font

In my exploring, I found a funky left-slanting font in old grocery store ads (1959). What a weird presentation it makes, as the following example shows:

Looking through various ads, I was able to get an example of most of the letters, but a few I had to jimmy rig.

I didn't see a J, so I had to make one. There wasn't a Q, so I made one out an O and the bottom of an R. There wasn't a V, and the one I made is extremely conspicuous, too big, very funky, but it's what I could do in the 5-7 minutes I allotted for it. And there wasn't an X, and the one I made looks pretty good.

You might notice the Y looks crazy being reversed like that, but that's how it was. Concerning the M, I like the extraneous little serif, LOL. And how do you like the K? I looks like it has a lap to sit on!

Here's a couple of my favorite words, handset on the computer with this font:

"Game Toe" is one of my favorite words (two words, I guess), since it describes my livelihood. I have a game toe, and were it not for that I would not be on full disability. Because I'm healthy in every other respect. But I have a limp, and yes, it's much more pronounced whenever federal agents are around. It's thanks to my game toe that I have the time everyday to waste on stuff like this...

That's of course beside the point, the point being this great font. And I do love that serif. But I would've never put it there myself!

I also handset my own phrase, "Vigor Vivus," which gives a great display of the funky V I made. In case you don't know what Vigor Vivus is, I have a bunch of posts on it found at this link. In short, Vigor Vivus is the opposite of Rigor Mortis, a state of mind and a way of life that is life lived in rich abundance.

And finally, here's ZEN in this font:

I didn't handset this word. It's edited from the word "FROZEN," from one of the grocery ads.

It looks like there's some variations of the letters if you get a bunch of the ads together. I know there's a more left-leaning C than I used. They look hand drawn, and yet there's a real consistency to the letters when you look at them. So I don't know what's going on.

In Solidarity With The Colorblind And Dogs

Note: I don't know how to make the headline black print, so other than that and whatever else I can't change, my signature line, etc., today's post will be completely black and white.

Today I'm standing in solidarity with anyone who might be colorblind, and also thinking of dogs, who are well known to be colorblind. As for me, I can't imagine how weird it must be to be colorblind, and I'm speaking as a dog owner who's very close to his dog.

Like everyone else, all I have as far as sight goes is my own experience. I can't see the world the same way other people do, although we all assume that people who see red, green, and blue, are seeing them the same way. Certainly if you ask someone if a particular color is red (and it is), they're going to agree to that fact. But someone who's colorblind probably wouldn't be able to agree to it. Unless they're able to make distinctions between the shades of gray through long experience, I don't know. Of course if they see a stop sign, by now they would know they are red by law; it's right on the driving test. The contrast is that dogs can't talk, so there's no agreement there, nor do they take driving tests, although conceivably they could ride along if the examiner happened to be blind.

The big difference between colorblind people and dogs, other than being people and not dogs, is that colorblindness isn't our typical experience as a species, but for dogs, they don't know anything else. Apparently something happened genetically, or if colorblindness came later in life, it might've been from looking at the sun or resulted from an illness or disease. Dogs also have illnesses and disease -- they share that with chickens, at least, and probably other birds and animals -- but colorblindness for them is innate, a given at birth. Just to take it a step further, birds see color, which is why they're so colorful, for mating, protection against predators, etc. The biggest difference between birds and colorblind people is that they (birds) can fly unaided by mechanical means.

Speaking of birds and dogs, I watch my dog a lot when I take her out. And she doesn't take birds seriously. Really! Occasionally she'll make a feint in their direction, but she's learned that birds fly, whereas squirrels, which she loves to chase, do not (leaving out flying squirrels, which we don't have where we live.) And it could be that some of her colorblindness affects her ability to distinguish squirrels from surrounding trees and leaves. The other day she was less than three feet from a squirrel, and as long as it sat still in the leaves it was going to be safe. But as soon as it moved, she noticed it and chased it up a tree. But I, who can see colors very well, noticed it right away. A colorblind person wouldn't be able to say that. Although to be entirely truthful, sometimes I have a hard time finding dog poop in among the leaves, because it's either the same color or a shade off. I can only imagine how hard it is for colorblind people to clean up after their dogs.

Anyway, colorblind people, for all their difficulties, are all right in my book. And the same goes for dogs.

My Secret Late Night Job

I'm able to write about my secret late night job and still keep it a secret, I think, because I've sufficiently kept my true identity under wraps. Even the government, with their agents and feelers, haven't been able to crack the code.

There are certain things I can say with impunity, such as how I'm able to circumvent the explicit laws of the United States and supplement my income. I'm like the guy I saw on TV the other day in a poor neighborhood of Chicago advocating for more guns there. They blurred out the house numbers, therefore no one would be able to figure out who he was.

Now, we all know that when you're on full disability, you're not allowed to make money. Their reasoning is simple, of course. If you're disabled, that literally means you have no abilities. That's simple enough. If you had abilities and could make money on your own you wouldn't need the government to supply it. But I have tested the limits and have found that I actually do have abilities even though I'm disabled.

How I got on full disability is another story -- I have a game toe -- that I won't take the time or risk of telling here. The fact is, I get a big fat check every month and the government's largesse definitely soothes away some of the pain.

But I find that I have greater expenses to cover, such as DVDs, CDs, and now my latest guilty pleasures, MP3 downloads, expensive Belgian chocolate, and lattes at the college coffee shop. Meaning I needed some way to supplement what I get on the public dole.

Enter my secret late night job! I've been vacuuming and cleaning up at a local church. They said I could set my own hours, so I picked late at night. One, this frees up the rest of my day for other activities. And, more important, my government minder -- the parole-type officer that every disabled American has trailing him around -- is asleep then and thinks I'm sleeping too. The electronic monitor they put on my toe all those years ago, I wriggled out of it shortly after, and they only think they know my comings and goings!

(I can say all this with impunity, because there's a lot more disabled people with game toes than you might guess.)

So the short story of it is, now I'm up practically all night a couple nights a week, doing janitor work, sweeping around the pews, etc., with an Oreck vacuum (seriously, Nothing Gets By An Oreck, as long as you're willing to go over the same spot an infinite number of times.)

The money's good, the government doesn't know what's going on, and my life couldn't be happier!