If you have to ask, you can’t afford it

(Originally written Sunday, March 19, 2006)


Winning the lottery, (and I don't mean the Shirley Jackson version) is everybody's secret dream. We know the odds are against us, which is why most rational people don't bother playing, but we still wish everything would turn out like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Remember how Charlie only bought maybe two candy bars to get the golden ticket? Much better than Verucca Salt, whose dad bought the majority of a warehouse's worth of chocolate.

What's funny is that every time there's a Powerball worth over $80 million or so, everybody buys a lottery ticket. This makes no sense because the odds are much worse then. Ever notice how those Powerballs are won by an office that pooled their money together? I hate people who cooperate and work as a team.*
Recently there was a Powerball for $365 million, which as we all know, (this is math I can do) comes out to a million dollars a day! I'm not so sure I could spend a million a day, but I'd give it the old college try.

What would you do if you had that kind of money? I know what I'd do, and it wouldn't be pretty.

Firstly, I'd go out and get a bunch of unnecessary surgery. I'd get calf implants, my head baldified and perma-waxed and all of my teeth removed and replaced with either diamonds or perhaps tungsten. I might just have my teeth put into dentures and have those dentures attached to a ring in the back of my throat by a long chain. Then I could scare everybody by pulling my teeth out and throwing them at people 20 or 30 feet holding bags of popcorn or chips.

I'd have all my toes removed and reattached to each other. I'd let the nails grow out and use them as throwing stars. I'd also have a prehensile tail attached to my coccyx.

I'd have penile enhancement surgery, (not that I need it, but what could it hurt?). And I'd have Brad Pitt's abs ripped off his stomach and put on mine, I'm rich, I think I could afford it. I'm thinking I'd have D'Angelo's abs put onto my back, just because I can.

Lastly, in terms of surgery I'm thinking about adding an extra leg, because rich powerful men always walk really fast, and I want to give people the right impression.

Once that was all done I'd go and buy a house. Naturally no house created would be good enough for me, so I would purchase a large tract of land in each state and then I'd have a different national leader residence made on each one. I'd have my own White House in Maryland, a Number 10 Downing Street in Delaware or something, a replica of Kim Jong-Il's palace in Wisconsin and so forth. Then I would live at each one for just one week a year. The last two weeks I would spend at my island in the south pacific.

Of course I would have a fleet of planes, that's just a given. But each plane would be outfitted with a jetpack, so I could fly along side my plane if I so desire. Also in the planes I would have transporters, (I think they exist and the government is keeping the technology secret. If they don't really exist I'll fund the development of the technology) that would beam me anywhere in the world, mostly girls' locker rooms and the dirty back rooms of porn stores.

I would have my own aircraft carrier, but I wouldn't keep any planes on it. No. Instead I would keep a bunch of yachts on it. I would shoot the yachts into the air and blow them up with the huge deck guns. When I ran out of yachts I would launch teen pop stars into the air and shoot them instead. Because, as it has been proven dozens of times before, rich people can shoot and kill anybody they want and not go to jail.

I would buy all the professional basketball teams, football teams and baseball teams. Then I'd shuffle them around. I'd make all the basketball players play football, the baseball players would play football instead and the football players would play soccer so they could see what a real sport is like. Football is for guys who like holding hands and wearing tight pants. It's pretty Brokeback.

I would also fund movies. And I'd have movies I want to see made. There would be a live action version of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. A version of War of the Worlds with a more realistic ending, The Kool-aid Man and the Temple of Doom, Titanic II: Revenge of the Ninjas, Jackie Chan vs. Everybody, Chuck Norris Facts: the Movie, the Jet Li who Stole Christmas, Amish Midget Sheep Porn for Kids, Spaceballs 2: the Search for More Money and Story of Ricky 2.

Before I died I would have a bunch of clones of myself made, then I'd have my memory imprinted into them so I could have an army of myself. If this technology is unavailable I'd imprint my memories into a robot. If this too wasn't possible then I'd leave all my money NAMBLA**, just to leave everybody wondering.

*By the way, I wrote this before it was discovered that the most recent winner was just one person, and although I could just as easily change the column to reflect that information, I'm not going to! That's editorial license people!

**The North American Man Boy Love Association, a real organization. Isn't this a funny old world?