Pay me $111 million to do what I do best--write--for the next six years. Add a clause that if I develop carpal tunnel syndrome while pounding the keyboard, I'll be allowed to take a couple of years off and not produce anything. I promise I will be colorful. I will take my shirt off and throw it to my adoring fans at book conventions. I will provide colorful and witty interviews. Children will like me. I will make funny jokes. I will revolutionize modern American literature and I will bring firearms to my place of work because that's a really funny joke.
When I do the latter, you may get upset, and you may suspend my right to write. I will apologize because there's still $80 of that $111 million out there, a sizable chunk of stupid money, and to the best of my knowledge no writer in the history of this world has ever been paid that much.
One hundred and eleven million dollars given to a young man with a cool name because he can throw a round object into a slightly wider round basket is stupid money. It's stupider money than even Donald Trump or Madoff money, it's stupider than putting explosives in your pants and setting yourself on fire. Call it moron money.
There's plenty of moron money about, it seems. One hundred million dollars of it was recently promised to another young man whose specialty is knocking other men down. More millions have been paid to the very people who brought the American economy to the brink of failure (I'm thinking here of American International Group Inc. which in December was preparing to pay its departing general counsel several million dollars in severance after she resigned over federal pay curbs, according to the Wall Street Journal. AIG determined that Anastasia Kelly was entitled to the money under the company's severance plan, whose terms say certain executives can resign and collect severance if their pay is reduced significantly. Way to go, Annie!) Numbers a hundred times that large have been given to rescue the investors behind the world's tallest building and in November, we learned Wall Street had ear-marked $117 billion--that's billion--for bonuses.
Lemme catch my breath. All these big round numbers could turn a man's (or woman's) head. perhaps even lead to immature behavior. Like wielding guns in the locker room of a team formerly called the Bullets.
Personally, with that kind of loot, I'd get my 1989 Avanti fixed--it needs a new transmission--and maybe find better quality goldfish for my pond. I might purchase a publishing house on the verge of bankruptcy, hire some real editors and get all my friends Kindles. I'd invest in motorized in-line skates. I'd learn to play the piano and repair the slow leak in the ceiling of my utility room. I'd plant an asparagus bed, put speed bumps in my street, and buy my mailman new, top-of-the-line waterproof boots. Not counting the publishing house, I think that's good for about $10K. The rest of it might go to establish an international competition to find a cure for... well, pretty much anything that afflicts us. Traffic, all sorts of illnesses, stupidity.
Oh, speaking of the latter and a propos nothing, this just in: A man was arrested yesterday night for stripping naked near the White House and going for a jog. That has to be worth something.
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