Being Filthy Rich Is A Pleasure

I'll admit it, I freaked out yesterday, foolishly taking on myself the whole burden of disposing of the books from the book sale. I'm just used to my old life, where either I do it or it doesn't get done. But the problems I normally handle are small and a lot easier.

The billionaire came over and saw me sitting there, gnawing my fingernails to the quick, with a miserable look on my face, and asked what was going on. I explained my many predicaments, expecting some sympathy. But all he did was laugh his head off, having forgotten, he said, that I was such a newbie. At first it hurt to hear that, then I realized, I desperately need a second opinion.

He cleared it up in a second, "You don't need to worry about any of that! That's why we hire people, to do the actual work. Being filthy rich is supposed to be a pleasure. You don't see me weighed down like you are. We'll get some people in there for you right now. They'll hire other people, then step back and it'll manage itself." Just like that? Could it really be so simple? "Of course," he said, "that's what money's for."

And true to his word, he made one phone call and within the hour I had an actual company, staff, employees, and probably a loading dock somewhere, and I don't have a worry in the world. Basically it's a plug-in system. If I wanted to go and see what's going on, I could, but there's no particular reason why I should. Just let it go till everyone develops a routine. They'll not only take care of my current problems, they'll invest, diversify, and in no time, probably by this time tomorrow, I will have bought out an industry and be making a profit. I can't wait to see semis go by with my name on the side!

I should back up a bit. Remember the worm bedding plant in Alabama, with their strict rules, hesitating to receive my 300,000 books? The billionaire made a couple phone calls and I already own the company! Then there was all the business about interstate commerce, regulations on loads over 50 tons, etc.; the guys working for me have already worked it out, including procuring the train cars for transport and all the logistics. It's really easy when someone else does it!

They've also put together a panel of university professors -- just moonlighting -- to go through the books before they're gone, to pick out what they know I'll like. Someone scanned my existing library, authors and titles, and the professors, with computers and their own expertise, will make fast work of holding back what I would have wanted. Amazing.

That I want to see. If it's anything like I imagine, it'll be a smooth operation. But it's true: Why should I waste my time on it? Although, maybe I could get a few pointers, like if I want to thin out my library at home. I'm not hiring guys for everything ... there's still some things I want to do for myself. In addition to eating, sleeping, and brushing my teeth.

OK, lesson learned: "Being filthy rich is supposed to be a pleasure." I will live large. I'm going out for ice cream right now, and that's final.

February -- We Barons Confer

The beginning of February brought with it a meeting of the various barons of society. I was eager to get together, being consumed with the issue of February and its continuance as a month on the calendar. To which I am opposed.

It's always quite an assemblage of power brokers, myself the Baron of Blogging in conference with the Baron of Politics, the Baron of Business (not pictured), the Baron of Industry, the Baron of Banking, and the Baron of the Church. Our overall mission is to keep society on track, nudging here and there where it seems appropriate. The Baron of the Church asked the Baron of Heaven's blessing, then we went into session.

Among the items on the agenda was the February Question, a hobby horse I often ride. Naturally, I came in for some good-natured ribbing, the Baron of Business saying, "What about Groundhog Day? The people need it to brighten their dreary lives, being, as they are, little more than boils on the backside of existence and, worse, knowing it." I pointed out, logically, that groundhogs would still exist without February, and sought the Baron of the Church's acquiescence to that point. He seemed to consider it an inscrutable question.

I was then surprised when each baron spoke against February.

The Baron of Banking said that a short month makes their bookwork more complicated, especially with the occasional Leap Year. "That one damned day every four years makes Y2K seem like a godsend." The Baron of the Church nodded in silent affirmation, and said, "The Lord likes balance and is put-off when it's missing. Plus the Church could use more Sundays in the year, not fewer. But with February, I don't know if there's two or three Sundays at the most. It's something to pray about."

The Baron of Business, always more brusque, took the side of the businessman. "Let the Church fend for itself. It has a Higher Power. We've got the bottom line. For us February cuts both ways. Yes, if we had more days to work with, we'd make more money, a huge plus. But factor in this, that if we don't meet our goals, February is our biggest excuse: 'We ran out of time.' See? We put the goods out and we open the doors, but we're not in charge of time itself!" I pointed out, rightly, that he should work more closely with the Baron of Politics.

The Baron of Politics, seizing my opening, cleared his throat and took the floor. "Baron," he said, addressing Business, "I do have the power over time, as in the principle of Daylight Savings Time. If you're willing to get up a few days earlier, I could make it January again right now, February be damned! We just need to work more closely together. You put your hand in mine." At this point Church shifted uneasily before admonishing, "No sir! Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the waters!" Politics, knowing he'd overstepped, smoothed troubled waters, saying through clenched teeth, "Point well taken."

The Baron of Industry, a man of action and few words, gave his opinion another way. He took his jacket off and flexed the bicep on his right arm. We watched amazed as a brief tattoo video showed raw materials being delivered to a factory. He shook his arm and the second video showed the factory manufacturing goods, all so harmonious. The final time he shook his arm it showed a fleet of trucks taking goods away for delivery. I interpreted his point for the group: "Destroying February, if that is our goal, is a step by step process." 

Concluding then, as host, I gave the summation: "Gentle Barons -- Banking, Politics, Business, Industry, and Church, as the Baron of Blogging I am a man of letters. In my work, I must know the great rhetoric and logic, the prose and poetry, that have graced mankind's history. For example, of the five of us, none quotes Shakespeare more than I. Who said, "A rose by a totally different moniker would waft out a scent as pure and sweet." Proving one truth, "Yes, February is a month, the other months are months, but it is entirely inferior, yielding a noxious stench. Simply put, it must be destroyed here and now or this conference will have been a failure!"

The meeting went quiet and I was embarrassed. But the merciful Baron of the Church took the gavel from my limp hand and dismissed us to a time of coffee and sharing how our wives are doing. Since I'm unmarried I could only listen with interest and envy.

As the Blast Furnace Goes, So Goes Prohibition

I'm sitting here sketching out ideas, trying to flesh out our "Push for Prohibition." I've personally been very disturbed by the number of people I've seen going into liquor stores, then back out. They usually have a paper sack, and I'd guess something overly-potent inside, likely of the bottled variety.

I know what you're saying: Prohibition was done to death! True, we gave it a whole 15 years try, big whoop... But the War on Drugs has raged on for over 50. And don't give me that lame Dillinger argument; he's been dead for close to a hundred years. This time I think people would actually welcome Prohibition. Get the booze out of their way, remove temptation, they wouldn't miss it. We're so health conscious today, we wouldn't miss it past the first weekend. Forget Dillinger, probably the biggest opponent today would be the powerful paper bag industry!

I can see the paper bag industry in my mind's eye. They struck out on the grocery store front, with the dominance of plastic. Plastic's got it over paper big time. It has the handles to hold, you can carry more at a time, and it doesn't make that terrible clunky paper noise. Then there's the lunch boxes that took over the lunch sack. They're more durable and interesting. So all they've got left is liquor. Sacks, an entire industry held in place by winos who can't change their own underpants. Disgusting. If we get the push going for Prohibition, I think we can easily demonize the sack industry. Call them "Strange Bedfellows Together in the Sack" on a few shady TV ads and that'll be it.

OK, getting Prohibition in place still won't be that easy. You have to go the whole route of amending the Constitution. One idea might be called the "Fight Fire with Fire" strategy. We get Congress drunk, they pass the bill, then when they sober up, we go, "See, you shouldn't have been drinking. Exhibit A!" Then we schedule the votes in the states during Oktoberfest; with the beer steins a'sloshin' and the thick-pigtailed, knob-nippled German girls very exciting when tipsy, we'll have the votes.

But just to be on the safe side, I'm looking at doing this thing stealthily. I don't want it to be the usual agitation, where one side -- the Democrats or the Republicans -- dig in because the other's for it. I want to pass Prohibition like a thief in the night, where the only ones actually paying attention are those in the paper sack industry. And like I said, they'll be hogtied with negative ads.

I'm hoping to do it like SETI looks for extraterrestrial life, with lots of computer nerds in their local communities looking for patterns, intelligence, and evidence, then adding it to an overall conglomerate, micro to macro. It'll be like a tsunami, one no one sees coming. And who knows, once we all sober up, maybe we'll be alert enough to find extraterrestrial life. And let's say they're drinkers, we'll ambush them, steal their technology, dissect them, and once again establish ourselves as the undisputed lords of creation.

I'm going to need someone to identify all the groups that do business at liquor stores and what their transactions are. I'm thinking it'd come out like archetypes: 1) Male, 2) Female, 3) Other designations descriptive of gender choice, 4) Young adults, 5) Medium adults, etc., then the different ways they crave, how they decide to go to the liquor store, what to buy, where to drink it, etc. This intelligence will be key in knowing precisely how to target our ads. In a particular demographic, my age, for example, we'll play the old records of Foster Brooks, now quite politically incorrect. He used to be funny, now he's not. That'll bring many to our side. And so forth.

I really like the more psychological archetypes above, i.e., on craving and various decisions. Because this is what you key in on when you're doing things both stealthily and intelligently. You're screwing up the mainspring. Once you've screwed with the mainspring, nothing works as it did. You start tweaking people's behaviors -- what they crave for, for goodness sakes, there's no telling what else we might be able to ban: Television? Sports? Politics? I'm a do-gooder, so I'm not going to do bad, but if these ideas should fall into the wrong hands, they could literally have us sitting in high chairs drooling all day, with our biggest desired consumer item being the bib! Some nefarious slaveholder with five city sectors of drooling adults, thinking he's their daddy, and all they want is a new binky. Food for thought.

Another asynchronous, angular tactic we could use in the Push for Prohibition would be to make the experience of going to the liquor store simply annoying. If we have some killer traffic studies, all we have to do is gum up the works slightly here and slightly there. Suddenly it's like a wheel with a flat spot, bumping, each time it goes around it gets more annoying. But this involves the road: Smoooooth, Smoooooth, Bump! Those spots become more familiar and more annoying. The many derivations, although they're slight, are multiplied everywhere, with the cumulative effect being, more often than not, either the liquor store's deserted or totally crowded. Havoc either way.

And how about blast furnaces? You've thought of some of the other tactics before, no doubt, but I bet you left out the blast furnaces. The blast furnaces do something similar to what we see in the world's present ecology (global warming), but with the advantage that we can regulate things more drastically, whereas nature's way is to make slight but severe adjustments over the course of centuries. But what if every eighth day it was mysteriously 30 degrees warmer in every building? Or if it happened more irregularly, with less detection, such as fluctuating temps unpredictably between 4 and 18 days?

It wouldn't be a month before world leaders would meet -- 23 days, to be precise -- with interpreters at the ready to gauge the nuances of their speech in terms of how dire things were. Prohibition would be pushed to the back pages. Those of us who are for it would be passing it unseen. As for the furnaces, everyone would be turning them on, turning them off, looking at black smoke one day, and clear the next. Even the pope would worry about that, turning to prayer.

You might think we should tread softly, lest people drink more. No! This is where we want them to drink! For various reasons. 1) To get Prohibition in more easily; 2) Because excess drinking makes them sick and they swear off. How wonderful if we're able to say, "Your ordeal is now easier. They don't even make the stuff anymore. Have a binky."

Everything's going to take constant monitoring, of course, because even with great planning there's always an element of hit and miss. We're looking to steer the underlying culprit, the liquor industry itself, into the ditch. Then with the advent of greater righteousness, the other industries dependent on liquor will quickly rebound with new shipments of things: We'll ban lunch boxes and require sacks for lunches. And trucks will now deliver sarsaparilla and gum.