Investing in the Stock Market

By: J. Pinkerton

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With Enron, Worldcom, AOL, Qwest, Tyco, ImClone, Dynegy, Global Crossing — and, as of press time, every other corporation in America — embroiled in scandal, many potential investors are turning away from the stock market, choosing instead to invest their money in pants. This is undoubtedly sound; every occasion demands the wearing of pants, be it a ritzy affair or a night out with friends. For the few moments where pants are not required — lovemaking, eating dinner over the sink, and watching Fashion Television being first among them — the threat of pants-wearing to come is nonetheless a pressing concern.

Not that any of this has anything to do with the stock market, of course, which involves numbers and is ridiculously complicated. Still, though: do you have enough pairs? Is your money so precious?

Please think about it. On to stocks.

What Are Stocks?

Let’s say I buy a pear for a dollar. The pear is both sweet and delicious, but for the purposes of this metaphor let us assume I don’t eat it. As time passes, the pear rots and decays, becoming very unsweet and not delicious. At this point, I could throw away the pear, cursing myself for having not eaten the damn thing just to forward the cause of a silly metaphor. But instead of throwing it away, I incorporate the pear and gather a ludicrous amount of investment capital by pushing Pear Incorporated as small-cap IPO growth stock. My many investors sit and wait for the pear to mature. And of course it will, though this doesn’t change the fact that it’s now foul and completely worthless. I cash in my shares and wire the swindlings to an off-shore account, then move to a tropical island, where I live out the remainder of my days having drinks served to me by almond-skinned girls in coconut bras, later to be fellated by same. This, in essence, is how stock works.

What’s a Stock Market?

A stock is an opportunity for somebody to sell somebody else “pieces” of something which hold no value; pieces he or she would otherwise keep if it had value. A stock market is the place where this piece would be sold. And while this sounds surprisingly straightforward, it naturally is not. For one, some stocks are listed on the exchange, and some aren’t. This is decided through high-stakes dart games, the rules of which are too complicated to get into here.

Additionally, one is not only free to buy regular stock, but also futures. Investing in futures is a method of insuring that you can purchase make-believe stock at a certain price in the future. It is much like insuring oneself against a dealer’s potential 21 in blackjack, in that it is a fool’s game.

To add to the confusion, anyone attempting to buy stock at a stock market is required to sport rolled-up shirt sleeves, sweat profusely, and holler numbers at someone standing on a desk. The person standing on a desk then points a pen at the stock-buyer and screams at him, at which point he is free to go home to his loveless marriage.

If all of this sounds incredibly confusing, don’t despair. Stocks and the stock market are purposely confusing, so as to keep out undesirables. Yet none of it is terribly relevant when compared to the simplicity of the stock market itself: a bunch of white guys attempting to make scads of free money off other white guys. The primary rule of the stock market is to buy low and sell high, a simple enough rule. However, for the rule to work in any meaningful way, there must be just as many people willing to buy high and sell low, or else the entire system falls to its knees and spasms embarrassingly. For all the disorienting “NASDAQ”-this and “Dow Jones”-that talk, what the stock market essentially boils down to is a profoundly high-yield game of hot potato. In order for traders to make money off their low-bought stock, there must consequently be some podunk sap willing to buy it off them at a jaw-droppingly high price. This is where you come in.

What’s a Corporation?

If I buy a store, put up money for supplies and employees, and sell products or services to the public for a profit, I’m a business. If I raise money for a store through the stock market, sell off ownership of the store to twenty shareholders — none of whom can make a decision independent of the other nineteen — then deflect any liability for my products to a fictional entity composed of disinterested third parties, I would then have a corporation.

In simple terms, a corporation means that when you buy a toaster, and it doesn’t work, and the warranty is only good in five states, and your receipt was printed with cheap ink and isn’t actually legible, and when you dial customer service you get put on hold and, after listening to dead air for five minutes, get cut off — it isn’t actually anybody’s fault. It’s the corporation’s fault. And the corporation doesn’t exist, in a strictly physical, “I-am-going-to-beat-those-responsible-to-death-with-this- toaster-that-cannot-toast-bread” sense.

So What’s The Deal With Enron, Then?

There are of course many intricate and complicated reasons why corporations commit crimes, but as a simple answer, keep in mind that corporations are purest evil. The seeds of the Enron scandal were first sown in the late 80’s, when vacuous presidential gunslinger Ronald Reagan approved gas and oil deregulation, lifting controls on who could produce energy and how it was sold. Enron was first through the gate in a long line of corporations willing to exploit this like a blonde Iowan drama student. With energy privatized, Enron was free to monopolize it, often tripling costs in areas suffering energy crises.

Additionally, the fledgling corporation was free to manipulate the market as it saw fit. For example: Dumbshit Gas Company takes an ass-beating in profits if a winter is mild, as people won’t need gas to keep warm. So they trade futures (i.e., get future energy prices locked down) with Enron, the only game in town, to ensure that a warm winter won’t kill them off financially. BilkedHuge Electricity Company, conversely, fears a cool summer for the exact same reason, and trades futures with Enron, the only game in town, so they won’t get molested like choirboys if it gets a little chilly come July. Enron then makes money no matter what happens — because they’re the only game in town, and because they manipulated their prices enough to stir up problems in the first place.

Ah, good times. It’s not illegal, of course. Because capitalism works like my Uncle Doug does: In other words, seldom, and only for pot money. Is Enron evil? No. Enron got caught. There’s a moral here: if you’re rich and you don’t care a damn about anything but your own bank account, don’t get caught.

But Enron Did Get Caught, Didn’t It?

Oh yes, it did. As the whole world now knows, Enron cooked its books to a frothy boil, siphoning off substantial losses to make-believe “partnership” companies in order to hide the beating they took in the dotcom industry, among others. Enron was of primary importance because, once again, they were first out of the gate — this time as a wake-up call to investors that they could lose their shirts. Ironically, once Enron was outed, many other billion-dollar corporations, such as WorldCom, also stumbled — proving once again that there is no justice as swift as that which the American public is currently interested in for the next 15 minutes.

What made the story truly newsworthy, of course, wasn’t the fact that a billion dollar corporation had committed North American ass-sized fraud. No, what plucked our heartstrings (again, for fifteen minutes) was the human element. Joe and Jane EnronJob had devoted monthly stipends to their 401(k)s, investing their savings in the future of a company that, ultimately, didn’t have one. While Enron’s CEOs sold off their company stock in fat fistfuls, the employees were denied that same right, and lost a bundle. Much like a cute baby bear cub who watches as a small fire spreads to a pile of leaves, then hours later engulfs a tree, then over a period of days consumes the entire forest, the average Enron employee — sitting in the epicenter of the corporation’s day-to-day business and privy to all of its dealings — did not realize there was a problem until it was too late. People throughout America shed a tear for these poor brave souls, who, discerning Enron’s imminent collapse months ahead of anyone else, were unable to pawn off their worthless stock on unsuspecting people for profit. Luckily, the victims who had huge racks were able to sell naked photographs of their huge racks for money — yet America weeps for the flat-chested among them (for many reasons, many of them self-evident).

So how, you may ask, do you avoid a similar fate? By asking yourself some important questions. Firstly: does your company suck? Secondly: are you giving it money? Thirdly: if your company sucks, stop giving it money.

So What Should I Invest In?

Clearly, in pants — the clothing accessory for all seasons. Other than that, the only option available to you is getting yourself an organic hemp poncho and divesting yourself of capitalism entirely. But since this necessitates you becoming a filthy hippie, it is not recommended. Instead, consider investing your money in extremely high-risk stock in the hopes of winning big: namely, lottery tickets. Brokers advise investing heavily in Fantasy 5, which is presently enjoying a bull market share, and is paying off huge dividends to one in every sixty million investors.

Inspector General

By: Ernst Luchs

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CONFIDENTIAL:

General Sternwood

Department of Diminishing Returns

Camp Squanto, Massachusetts

SUBJECT:

Five-year deregulation program

Operation Overbite

Dear Jake,

My recent unofficial visit to Camp Suzie convinced me that the present five-year program, now in its sixth and final year, is in trouble. Jake, they were shocked as hell to see me there last Sunday morning. If I had arrived any later, I’m sure the whole place would have been whitewashed and spitshined.

For starters, no guard was posted outside the compound. I had to honk the horn for 15 minutes before anyone let me in. It was Commander Moss himself who opened the gate and he was still in civilian underwear. Now this was well past eight-thirty; Sunday school had been over for an hour. I was wearing regulation skivvies, of course, but the man still failed to salute. He then stated that if I paid a two dollar toll he’d let me through, no questions asked. Jake, I had to look up at the flagpole to make sure I was in the right country. Moss maintained that the regulations manual never specified as to the public display of undergarments. I checked his facts. I can hardly believe it but he’s right. I’ll be damned if there’s a single sentence in the book which details a mandatory code of dress. We should rewrite the whole shebang, starting with the introduction, “Why We Serve” (the obvious answer — “Because it’s there” — doesn’t fool them anymore).

According to the list Commander Moss gave me, 47 percent of the camp personnel were absent without leave, 35 percent were missing in action, and another 5 percent never existed. A brief investigation, which involved poking around inside the perimeter bushes with a cattle prod, brought that last figure down to an acceptable 3 percent. It can only be hoped that the other figures are the result of gross clerical incompetence.

Among other problems at Camp Suzie, the living conditions are substandard. Everyone’s fed well enough — the Red Cross sees to that — but where are they supposed to sleep? We promised them a row of barracks four years ago. Well, Jake, they’re still living in abandoned boxcars and running around with shoeshine kits. Out of pity, I paid for a shine seven times that day. If only you’d seen the look on those men’s faces when I tossed a quarter up for grabs.

As I continued the inspection I began to realize that, although Moss is the highest ranking officer on base, he’s not the man who’s running the show. The Chaplain, Sergeant Lemmus, is a very charismatic character to whom all personnel exhibit an unusual degree of loyalty. Mass is held every night in a secluded area that he designates as his “invisible church.” All who attend are required to wear “invisible robes,” and from what I hear it’s quite a ceremony. You’ll laugh if I admit this, but the man disturbs me. When I said, “See you later,” he just smiled and shook his head no.

Now Jake, I’m aware that Operation Overbite is a pet project of yours, but I can’t beat around the bush. In this case I can only advise to terminate with extreme prejudice. There’ll be other five-year programs, you wait and see. Meanwhile, deregulation is not the answer. What we need are fewer chaplains and more shoeshine kits.

Legends Of The Ooh La Las

By: Kurt Luchs

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Of all the folk legends handed down by Native Americans, surely there are none so rich or so varied — or so utterly pointless — as those of the Ooh La Las.

The Ooh La La Indians were quite similar to their distant cousins the Oglala Sioux, in that both were nomadic societies of hunter-warriors with strong shamanistic beliefs. The Ooh La Las, however, were known to cheat at cards, to file fraudulent tax returns, and to wear socks that clashed terribly with their slacks. Often they fished in sacred lakes without buying permits, and in one surprise war raid several hundred were caught driving with expired licenses.

All this led to the Oglala-Ooh La La War of 1481, in which the Ooh La La’s territory was reduced from an area the size of Wyoming to several square inches on the side of a crumbling mesa in Death Valley. For years afterward the surviving Ooh La Las — all 28 of them — lived there in a state of peace and plenty broken only by starvation and murderous assaults upon their neighbors and one another. Then the white man discovered valuable deposits of sandstone on their land, and their complex culture came to an all-too-timely end.

Fortunately for anthropology teachers, many of their countless “gokiblu” (dirty stories) have survived, transmitted orally or sometimes by a virus. These rambunctious tales were not meant to instruct or even to entertain, but rather to “jibbegawah” (torment) the listener, much like the television programming of today. Judging from the examples below, they must have been eminently successful.

 

The Great Spirit 

Most Ooh La Las professed to believe in a Great Spirit, the First Cause and Prime Mover of all things, an entity they referred to out of respect as “Mel.” Mel was omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient — which made it awfully difficult to plan a surprise party for him. It was common practice to leave food offerings for Mel; say, a dish of salted nuts, or some crackers and onion dip. In times of trouble a 15 percent gratuity would be added. Mel was said to be the son of Ruth and Irving, but Ruth could never prove it in court.

 

How the Snake Lost His Legs 

This was a favorite tale among the Ooh La Las, along with the one about the three Irishmen. Often when sitting around a crackling fire one of them would begin this story, and then the others would wordlessly toss him into the flames.

It seems there was a hapless hunter called Limping Worm who would neither hunt nor fish and spent most of his time trying to catch horseflies in his hands. One day he was visited by Weasel With the Face of a Former President, who was a very wicked but cunning forest creature.

“Listen, oh foolish one,” said Weasel. “If you stand near the edge of the woods at midnight, you will receive an omen that will assure you of good hunting forever.”

“How do I know you’re not lying?” asked Limping Worm as he absent-mindedly popped a horsefly into his mouth.

“I am lying, you twit.”

“Oh. Well, as long as you’re honest about it…”

That night Limping Worm crept to the outskirts of the forest and waited. Slowly the moon set and night deeped around him. He was about to leave when three men in dark medicine masks blocked his way.

“Are you the witless one called Limping Worm?” the biggest of them inquired.

“Why, yes, I am,” he began. “But what –”

Before he could finish they beat and kicked him, stole his popcorn necklace and left him to die. A few minutes later he was eaten by a nearsighted bear with a very poor sense of smell.

And ever since that day, the snake has had no legs.

 

A Vision 

One of the oldest Ooh La La legends (stop me if you’ve heard it) concerns a warrior’s quest for his Power Vision, a way of peering into the spirit world without drugs or corrective lenses. The young tribesman sat alone on a hilltop in the wilderness, naked, with no food but a bag of hard candy. He fasted and prayed and chanted Mel’s name to no avail. At last he reached into a buffalo-skin pouch and produced a spider as large as his own hand. Placing the dark wriggling form on his face, he let out a scream that shook the saguaro cactuses and echoed in the hidden ravines of the desert. Suddenly he heard a high-pitched whine just overhead, and then a deep, booming voice:

“Look, it’s after hours; I’m on straight salary, no overtime. Can it wait until Monday?”

“Oh mighty Mel, give me a vision, that I may know on what path to place my moccasins.”

There was a whirring sound in the young man’s ears, and then a resounding crack as of an oak tree split in two by lightning. Something struck him on the back of the head, and he fell unconscious to the ground. In his fitful sleep he found himself lost in a nightmare world.

He saw great leafless treetrunks coughing a black mist into the air; he saw pale-fleshed strangers in their clinging garments with little alligators embroidered on their chests; he saw some of them hitting their women and torturing their animals; he saw them emerge as one from the hideous square burial mounds where their children sat bewitched by the shifting gray lights from the Box of the Dead Spirits; he saw them willingly swallowed by the Shiny Buffalo That Run Without Hooves, and watched in horror as the growling beasts collided aimlessly and stampeded toward the Village That Eats Its Young, a place of filth and smoke filled with the howls of the dead and the dying.

There the Shiny Buffalo spit up their sickly cargo, and the pale strangers entered the burial towers of their ancestors, which reached into the heavens and must have been crowded with corpses, or so the young warrior thought.

He awoke in a cold sweat and gingerly felt the lump at the base of his skull.

“Oh Mel,” he cried, “what means this evil dream?”

But for once the Great Spirit was silent, and the only sound was of a mournful wind sweeping across the prairie.

Value Added, Then Subtracted

By: Cory Laslocky

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I’m Cory Laslocky. You’ve probably seen me in “Tall, Pale & Flabby” magazine. I live alone. I own two cats. Occasionally, I like to listen to the Pet Shop Boys. I wash my hair with Pantene with pro vitamin E. Just thought I’d tell you…Christmas is only six months away.

I hate buying things. I hate it.

Who am I kidding? I love it.

Everyday, around the world, over one billion Coca-Cola products are consumed. A billion a day. That’s one in six people living on the planet. I once thought that the meaning of life was to make the lives of those around you better. Apparently, I was misinformed. Consumption is the meaning of life. Consume, consume, consume. This is how we’ve come to judge ourselves as people. This is how we take stock in our own personal inventory.

I am a good person because:

* I bought a $56,000 Cadillac SUV, which gets four feet to the tank, so that I can handle the rugged terrain of Jersey Turnpike, Exit 4 in style.

* I bought 18 pairs of Gap khakis in Tan, Olive, Sunrise and Cranberry. I wear them when I talk to other men about my lawn. Somewhere, children are dying of AIDS. Somewhere else, people are hunted down in the street because of their religion. And each day, the planet dies a little more. But my lawn is green, damn it. And you can have my mulch when you pry it from my cold, dead hand.

* I bought a subscription to the Olsen Twins magazine (Mary-Kate and Ashley) because years from now when they’re all coked up and strung out of Zoloft, doing double-penetration, girl-on-girl flicks, I can look back on a time when they were just young, sweet, innocent commodities.

* I bought crack-cocaine because for life’s aches and pains there’s no better non-prescription pain reliever (available in ghettos everywhere and Target).

* I bought tampons. From the commercials, it seems like it’s so much fun to have your period. “Weee, look at me. I’m hemorrhaging and climbing a mountain.” Or “My pads got wings. I can fly. I can fly.” Somewhere in the bowels of Playtex’s corporate headquarters, a person is using the precious hours of their life (hours that could be spent with their kids, a favorite aunt, or painting sea shells for the blind), hours you never get back so that “at the end of the day,” the Playtex “brand” of sanitary napkins is better “positioned.”

* I bought $56 sterling-silver measuring cups off my cousin’s wedding registry from Williams Sonoma or The Pottery Barn or maybe Restoration Hardware because I’m white and that’s what white people do.

* I even bought my friend’s kid a Baby Van Gogh Color Go-Round from Playskool for his first birthday, even though I could have easily given the kid a stick and he would have never known the difference.

* I bought a delicious, home-cooked meal from a family fun restaurant where washboards, yield signs and wooden airplane propellers hang on the wall. Wow, did an airplane crash here years ago? It’s like eating dinner in somebody’s attic. “I’ll have the chicken fingers and cricket bat in the corner. What do you mean it’s not for sale? Let me see your manager, Brad.” But Brad rolls with the punches. Brad’s a waiter emeritus. In his years at TGI McApplebyChillisBennigans, he’s seen it all (too much if you ask Brad). He’s got a belly-full of killing or mozzarella sticks. He thought he’d be waiting tables just until he finished college, but then he woke up one day, 37 years old, wearing a red & white striped shirt with a button that says “Mean People Suck.”

And right next to TGIMcApplebyChillisBennigans is the Macy’s Furniture Outlet Gallery, which is just two miles down the road from the Macy’s at the mall. I’d like to be a fly on the wall at that meeting when that was decided.

High Powered Executive #1: Hey, Phil!

Equally High-Powered Executive #2 (but with a different skill set): Hey, Bill!

Exec. #1: How’s the golf, Phil?

Exec. #2: Great, Bill. Shot an 82. How’s your boy?

Exec. #1: Great, Phil. Just turned 4 or 19. Not really sure.

Exec. #2: What’s your idea, Bill?

Exec. #1: Well, Phil, let’s cut down some trees and displace some wildlife so we can open up a furniture outlet gallery right down the street from our other store.

Exec. #2: Great, Bill. Now we’ve got a place to put all the slop that nobody buys along with those scary bitches in cosmetics. Just one thing, though.

Exec. #1: What’s that, Phil?

Exec. #2: Well, Bill, we’re still gonna sell wooden apples and matching end tables?

Exec. #1: You betcha, Phil. That’s what impresses people.

More importantly, that’s what makes people feel whole.

Letters To Superman

By: Neil Pasricha

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Dear Superman,

At last week’s Municipal Leaders Convention I was seated at a table with Commissioner Gordon of Gotham City. By ten o’clock he was fairly drunk and was rubbing that Bat Signal creation of his in everyone’s face, going on and on about the citizens of Gotham this, how safe they feel that. He seemed to think it was a pretty big deal, being able to get Batman’s attention any time he wants, just by shining his giant symbol into the sky.

Superman, I know you’re usually on top of everything in the city, but would you mind if we created our own “Superb-Signal” for Metropolis? It could make our residents feel safer. More importantly, I think it could help me edge out McLaren in next month’s big race. I just know he’s going to play the affordable housing card to the low-income voters. I need something like a giant glowing sky-signal to win them back.

I was even thinking about a few designs for it. It could be these big green letters that spell out “Come Over Here Superman,” or maybe just a giant red eyeball that could sort of watch over the city until you arrived? Of course, the eyeball would have to be friendly looking to citizens, yet cast fear into the hearts of villains, which admittedly is a little difficult. We could always go with a big blimp that kind of flies through the sky with crazy lightning bolts flashing out of it. Maybe we could even play the opening riff of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” over and over while the signal is displayed? I’d love to see the look on Gordon’s face when we unveil a symbol that has its own soundtrack.

My point is that the possibilities are endless. Let’s meet in my office later this week to discuss.

Regards,

Don Pollack

Mayor, Metropolis

***

My Dearest Superman,

How fitting it is that this letter is the last thing you’ll ever read as hero of this city. It was 20 years ago today that I sent you a simple request for your assistance on a new turbo-charged gamma-ray accelerator I was building at the time. You told me you were busy, that you were saving lives, and that you didn’t have time to help me with my invention so long as the aforementioned lives were in need of saving. You turned me down, Superman, oh yes, and I never forgave you. But now, after many years, sweet vengeance has finally come. I would laugh at this point, as the thought so amuses me. Alas, the written word conveys this poorly, so I’ll soldier on.

As you read this letter with your super-vision through the envelope, fourteen Kryptonite-tipped rocket missiles are headed towards your precious Fortress of Solitude. Also, an army of bloodhounds (trained in my secret underground kennel) are trolling Metropolis’ libraries and archives, eating all evidence of your existence in the papers. Soon Superman, oh so very soon, all that’s left of your recorded identity will be turned to ash — or a foaming, bite-sized ball of dog saliva and paper pulp. I assure you, were we meeting in person, I would be laughing immensely hard and hearty as I say this, so amused am I at your predicament. Again, though, the written word. Moving on.

With my stranglehold on the media, and your peaceful refuge in ruins, your reputation and notoriety is doomed to fade away. I do hope, however, that these latest actions don’t hurt the on-the-side social relationship we’ve developed over the last few years. What of your dog, Mr. Paws, by the way? What an adorable rascal. Were you able to sort out that confusion with the vet about his shots? I hope he has stopped gnawing on his crotch and can have that visor of his removed soon.

As you might have guessed, everything else in the Luther household is busy busy busy as always! Young Casey Luther is leading the Metropolis “A” hockey team in assists this year, no doubt due to the boy’s growing skill at methodically eliminating his competition with elaborate schemes. A great many small jerseyed bodies will not be found for years to come, I assure you. Nevertheless, my boy shall receive that assists award, even if I have to step in and scramble a few brains myself with my new Type C Neuron Defibrillator. At any rate, it looks like Casey is starting to take after his old man after all. I have resolved to kill him last, as you no doubt surmised.

Not much else is new here. I’m still trying to shape the backyard hedge into a duck. Sheila’s recruitment drive for the Metropolis Volunteer Network is going well. She already has more than 40 people interested in helping out with her summer theater production of “Oh! Calcutta!” Remember to let Sheila or I know if you’re interested in helping out. We won’t have need of your heat-vision, however. Suffice it to say, the production is sizzling enough without it! Oh, but I joke.

Hope everything else is well with you. Please don’t be a stranger; and if you have the time, please don’t hesitate to die horribly also.

Warmly,

Lex Luthor

***

Dear Superman,

Thank you!!! Thank you so much for saving my son last Sunday!!! Were it not for you, our little Ethan would have fallen hundreds of feet to his death off the edge of Skyline Bridge. As you remember, our little boy climbed out of his stroller, climbed over the guard rail, and then fell off the side of the bridge. I don’t know how you did it, Superman, but you flew right under him, caught him gently, and then brought him back to us with a smile. We will never forget what you did for us and will count each day with Ethan as a special blessing for the rest of our lives!!!

Bringing me to the point. Since you were so brave and kind to my family last Sunday, I was hoping I could ask for your help with a few other things. I figured that even Superman wouldn’t be SO BUSY that he couldn’t lend another hand, right? Heck, you were probably just watching soap operas when this letter arrived, right? (Don’t worry, you can tell me. I watch the occasional “Bold and the Beautiful” myself! Antonio is such a rogue!)

But I’m getting sidetracked. Long before last weekend’s near tragedy, it seemed to me that Reggie was trying to hide something. Before we were married he suffered from a long bout of alcoholism. Now, he’s been dry for the last seven years. I’m not sure if alcoholism qualifies in your little book of “things to save,” but do you think Reggie is starting to drink again? Could you see if he really is working late on a big project? I suspect he might just be going out drinking with the boys. The lying, lying bastard. Just fire me an email when you know for sure!!!

One more quickie for you: My mother has lung cancer. It’s been hard on me and I was wondering if you could at least look into some sort of “super-treatment” type thingamajig for her. Someone told me that on your planet you could heal things just by touching them, yes? If that’s true we would REALLY appreciate that. Consider the healing fair square for your years of sitting by while Nana smoked herself silly on three packs a day!!! We forgive you!!! (Even though, technically, it could be considered murder. Think about that.)

Anyway, thanks again!!!

Theresa Chapman

P.S. Oh, can you baby-sit for us next Thursday? You and Ethan already know each other, after all, and Reggie got me tickets to the Elton John concert for my birthday!!! Plus, I’m sure you can’t be THAT busy. Do you even have a job? No offense!!!

I, Writer

By: David Jaggard

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The Big Jewel has received an advance copy of an essay on creative writing to be published as the introduction to the next book by a major bestselling author. For legal reasons we can’t identify him by name, but suffice it to say that he writes the kind of glitzy doorstop-sized novels that you see in every airport and second-hand shop in the country. Also, when NASA announced that the Hubble Space Telescope had located the exact center of the known universe, he was very surprised and disappointed to find out that it wasn’t his house.

******************************************************

You can bring the prisoner down now.


Tom Swift

Now that I’m an internationally renowned writer, it’s surprising that no one ever comes up to me and says, “How I envy you. How I wish I could be a writer too.” But I know so many of you would say that, if only you had the chance, so I am writing this article to set the record straight once and for all: you can’t be a writer. You can’t be a writer because you can’t write. You don’t believe me? Well, try it:

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

You see? Pretty pathetic. Now watch this:

Lucinda’s nostrils flared ever so slightly as Derek handed her an icy glass filled to the brim with vintage champagne. Small beads of perspiration formed on her tanned forehead, kind of reflecting the beads of condensation forming on the glass, in a way. If you see what I mean. So then Derek leans forward meaningfully and says, even more meaningfully, “I want to run my fingers through your hair. I long to kiss your luscious lips. I yearn to embrace your delicate neck. I’ve got a hankering to drop to my knees and rip open your dress and. . .”

I could go on, but let’s stop there. Now I’m not trying to be arrogant (in fact, I’m exerting no effort at all) but if I wanted to, in about three or four days of intense, frenzied, all-consumingly obsessive work I could expand that little gem of an idea into a 900-page blockbuster epic saga packed with life, love, romance and power, full of undeniable lust, unimaginable wealth, seismic sex and Pi to 7,000 decimal places. Hardback sales would top eight figures. The movie rights alone would put me and all the future generations of my extended family on Easy Street for good. But hey, I don’t feel like it right now. I’ve got ideas like that to burn. Also, I’m supposed to be telling you what it takes to be a writer. So here goes:

First, you have to be born. A writer, I mean. Even in your earliest childhood you have to be aware of that uncertain, obscure, indescribable, ineffable, intangible, impalpable, ungraspable, unknowable nameless something that will enable you later in life to write a succinct, accurate description of any thing or concept whatsoever. For instance, sitting here right now, I could give you a complete summing up of all of human spiritual and philosophical thought for the last 17 centuries in just three words. But I won’t. For writing is more than that. Writing is also ideas.

People never send me letters, but I’m sure they would if it occurred to them, to ask: Where do you get your ideas? And the answer is: I have no idea. Let me illustrate. Right now I am sitting here in front of my old, broken-down, beat-up, dented-in, rusted-out, rotted-through manual typewriter, made in 1897, with the keys in alphabetical order. The “B” and the “U” only work in upper case and the comma key doesn’t work at all. It weighs 92 pounds, the ribbon is always jammed and it smells like a wet sheepdog, but I just love it. I wouldn’t give it up for any fancy high-tech word processor in the whole world. Mainly because all I ever do with the old heap is sit in front of it. For writing, I have a Powerpunch 2000 MegaMag LXPC-3 with 17,000 gigabytes of RAM and a hard disk that can store two copies of all the written works published since the Rosetta Stone. I have a modem that can contact the Space Shuttle and a laser printer that also does my taxes. The mouse alone costs more than a new Audi.

Now, where was I? Oh yes: to be a successful writer you need to cultivate the ability to pick a topic and stick to it. Was that it? No — I’ve got it now: ideas. Let me explain the genesis of ideas in such a way that maybe even you will be able to understand it (don’t thank me — this is my profession):

To have an idea you have to know how to have an idea. And to know how to have an idea you have to have some idea of how the idea-having mechanism works. Nobody has any idea how this happens, not even the world’s top brain surgeons, so I suggest you just bag it and forget about ever being able to write your way out of a broken condom. But hey, you can keep on reading this particular article anyway.

So to continue, to be a good writer you have to develop an ear for detail, an eye for dialogue, and a very good memory so you don’t get things mixed up. Take me, for instance: I remember the day I sold my first story. I recall it as if it were yesterday, even though it happened earlier this month. I was sitting on the porch of the disused fishmeal plant on the coast of Alaska where I had been living for nine years in total isolation, with no heat, surviving on leaves, berries and roadkills, drinking melted snow, sleeping on a pile of rags that I glued onto my skin in the daytime for clothes and sending out short stories at the rate of about one every three hours. All of them came back with rejection notices, until one day when I was sitting on the porch, like I said earlier, I think, and up to the house came a man from the sheriff’s office with an eviction notice, followed by two men from the telephone and power companies to cut off my phone and electricity, a team from the water company to shut off the water and the gas, and a small army of finance company representatives with orders to repossess my car, my television, VCR, stereo, bicycle, rowing machine, all my furniture, my glasses, the dog and the toilet, when just then the mailman came up and handed me a letter.

I was so used to receiving big brown packages containing my returned manuscripts, I was shocked when he reached in his bag and pulled out a slim envelope addressed to me. Imagine my surprise when I opened that letter and read that the state welfare agency was cutting off my benefits and sending someone out to take my children and give them to wolves so they could be raised in a more salubrious environment. Now that I think about it, I remember that I actually sold my first story a little while later, to a cropdusters’ inflight magazine, and even then it only paid $15, so I lost all my stuff anyway.

But that’s the life of a writer. As you’ve no doubt guessed, a successful writer leads a life that is remarkably different from yours. You probably get up in the morning and go to work, come home at night and go to sleep, you poor scum. Well, it’s not that kind of humdrum daily routine for us professional writers, I can tell you. I, like so many innately creative people, prefer to work at night, so I tend to stay up later and later, go to bed later and later, and get up later and later. And that means that the next day I stay up even later, and then go to bed later, get up later, and so on. You follow me? I could go over that part again if you want. So anyway, I started staying up later and later until I was staying up all night. Then I started staying up all night and part of the morning. Then I was staying up all night and most of the morning, then all night and most of the day. In fact, these days I stay up so late that I don’t even go to bed until about 10:00 p.m. the next day. Then I sleep until 6:00 a.m. and get up and work during the day, only for me it’s the previous night.

But that’s just one of the many things that makes life so very, very different for the writer. Another thing is that, now that my name is a household word, I get a constant stream of invitations to a never-ending round of receptions, parties and dinners. Naturally, I am disdainful of any such tiresome, superficial social functions, and I never ever accept these invitations because I know that a person of my stature would be certain to have a simply dreadful time. Why, just two days ago I was at a cocktail party for the second anniversary of the opening of a local all-weather radio station, when a woman came up to me and said, “I’m so glad you could come. Let me take your coat.” Can you believe it? No fatuous questions about my work. No confusing me with some other famous (but, let’s face it, lesser) author. No self-effacing but downright cretinous admission that she always wanted to be a writer too. Probably what she wanted to say was, “I love your books. I’ve read all of them three times. In hardback. You’re the greatest voice of your generation. Possibly of the century. What the hell, the millennium. Oh, and I always wanted to be writer too, but of course I can’t.”

Well, in reply, I said — I mean I would have said if she had in fact said what she didn’t in fact say, but would have if she had in fact said it — “Allow me, dear woman, to quote the famous literary critic and Shakespeare scholar Oliver Wendell Holmes, who once said: ‘Tough bounce, bubeleh — where’s the booze?'”

The IMF Good-As-Gold Card

By: Kurt Luchs

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Dear Third World Dictator or Corrupt, Impotent Figurehead of a Failed Pseudo-Democracy:

Not everyone deserves the IMF Good-As-Gold Card. It’s designed especially for nations that know how to make other people responsible for their debts. Nations that know spending other people’s money is always spending wisely. Nations with a timely, regular record of complete nonpayment. It’s these special nations, like your own, that deserve to be pre-approved and pay less for the card that never stops giving.

Our rate is the lowest in the known universe: a negative 6.9% APR. That’s right — simply by acquiring our card you will start earning money, because any outstanding loans will decrease at the rate of 6.9% a year until Bono manages to convince everyone they should be wiped off the books. And you can be certain that this rate will never change, regardless of changes in the Prime Rate, the global market, or the structure of reality itself.

Your credit line is limited only by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and by your ability to add a string of zeros to the right of a “1” (if you haven’t yet mastered this essential skill of international finance, our trained advisors will be only too glad to show you how).

A credit line of this magnitude allows you to buy what you want when you want it. What is your country’s main need? Transportation (new Mercedes for mistress)? Education (singing coach for mistress)? Infrastructure (facelift for mistress)? Health (penicillin shots for mistress)? Whatever it may be, you’ll find that the IMF Good-As-Gold Card opens a whole world of spending possibilities for you.

With an APR this low, you can save by transferring your countless smaller bad loans into one gigantic consolidated bad loan. Why go through the monthly hassle of defaulting on all those nickel-and-dime debts when you can default on one easy, unimaginably large debt?

Unlike many other gold cards, which charge an annual fee of up to $75, the IMF Good-As-Gold Card has no annual fee. In fact, we’ll pay you $75 million right now just to take it.

Even better are the IMF Good-As-Gold Card’s many other benefits. For instance, our Emergency Next-Day Credit Line Two-For-One Policy, which automatically doubles your credit limit if your card is lost or stolen. And you can call our 24-hour Customer Service Center for help at any time to hear a prerecorded message from Bono about the importance of spending money like a drunken sailor. If it’s an emergency, you can also speak directly to an actual IMF Good-As-Gold Card representative about the vital need to spend money like there’s no tomorrow.

So be sure to take advantage of this extraordinary pre-approved and eternally non-rescindable offer today. An insanely low negative 6.9% APR. A credit line higher than Madonna’s hem. Guaranteed savings that will continue until the heat death of the universe. And the kind of service only a highly motivated, lifelong bureaucratic corps can offer. What does it all add up to? A card only certain nations deserve: The IMF Good-As-Gold Card.

Sincerely,

Daniel P. Frothenmouth

Marketing Manager

International Monetary Fund

P.S. You deserve more, so call now for your pre-approved IMF Good-As-Gold Card with no annual fee (except to the American taxpayer) and a negative 6.9% APR. Please take a moment right now to fill out and return the attached Bank-So-Big-It-Must-Not-Fail Acceptance Agreement, along with the Debt-So-Large-It-Can-Never-Be-Repaid Waiver of Responsibility. Or you could just wait a while. After all, if Bono has his way, this special offer will never expire.

Clarifying My Relationship

By: Neil Pasricha

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Last year I married a very nice lady, developed a relationship with her 22-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, divorced the very nice lady because of philosophical differences, had a child with her 22-year-old daughter, and then was at a loss for words, for I was caught in a mysterious web of undefined relationship titles.

My new child, a daughter, was certainly my daughter, I don’t deny that, but wasn’t she also my grand-step-daughter, since she was the daughter of my step-daughter? Or did the step-daughter rule not apply since I had already divorced the very nice lady who was the mother of the step-daughter, thereby nullifying all relationship titles associated with that key central relationship? And what was I supposed to call the mother of my new daughter, the 22-year-old, whom I had not married nor even dated? She wasn’t my wife or girlfriend, but calling her my step-daughter from a previous marriage seemed a bit, I don’t know, square.

To get myself out of this embarrassing headache I married the 22-year-old daughter, who was the mother of my new zero-year-old daughter, formerly called my grand-step-daughter. I say formerly because when a man and a woman get married and produce a baby girl, the baby girl is called the daughter, case closed, right? All previous relationships involved in producing the baby girl go out the door, right? For clarity, that’s what I’m assuming. Also, the 22-year-old daughter of my ex-wife, my step-daughter, was now also my wife, which I decided must supercede all other relationship titles.

I rested easy for a few minutes after the wedding, kicking off my dress shoes in the back of a Lincoln as we rode to the airport, thinking I had finally sorted out these relationship titles. My “wife” and I had a new baby “daughter,” I thought, smiling slowly at the image of this perfectly nuclear family I had helped create. We would grow up together in a quiet cul-de-sac, with other families such as ours living next door, shooting free throws on our driveway in the afternoon, watching office-based sitcoms in the evening, and erasing our Internet cache at night. It would be so perfect.

Then it struck me: Since the title of wife supercedes all other titles, what about my ex-wife, the very nice lady? Sure, we divorced because of philosophical differences, but the fact remains that she was my wife, and it was through her that I met my new wife, her 22-year-old daughter. If the divorce nullifies all relationship titles associated with the key central relationship, in this case my marriage to the very nice lady, then my relationship with the very nice lady’s 22-year-old daughter, my step-daughter, would have also been nullified. She was just a 22-year-old woman then, and not anything else. I began thinking that I had got married for nothing.

Then I remembered having this same thought well before getting married to the 22-year-old daughter. Look back a few paragraphs if you don’t believe me, for this thought is well documented. It seems I may have acted too hastily, though, because here I am now, with a gold band around my finger, telling the whole world I got married because I had to when I didn’t necessarily have to. I mean, why didn’t I just slow down a bit, think it through, and realize that the key central relationship here, the marriage, affects everything only when the marriage is intact. This makes sense, right? What I’m saying is clear and logical, right, and I’m just a few paces ahead of the crowd on this whole matter, aren’t I? This doesn’t all loop around backwards and end up in nonsensical circle of rhetoric, does it?

Because if so, if I married my 22-year-old non-wife and non-girlfriend just so she would become my wife so that I could mentally supercede the only other title she had in my mind, as a step-daughter from a previous marriage, then that would seem a bit, I don’t know, square.

Then again, wouldn’t you be caught in a nonsensical circle of rhetoric too if your ex-wife was now your mother-in-law?

Los Perros Bravos! or, Death At Teatime (With No Apologies Whatsoever To Ernest Hemingway)

By: Kurt Luchs

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At the first dogfight I ever attended I expected to be horrified and sickened by what I had heard would happen to the horses. I had been told that what happened to the horses would make me cry and spit up like a nino (little child), even though I am not a nino. What happened to the horses, I had been warned, would make my nalgas (buttocks) quiver like those of a maricon (fairy), even though I am not a maricon. I am an hombre (man). Un hombre mucho macho (very masculine) con muchos cojones (many testicles). I lost one or two cojones in the War, but that is another story which is neither here nor there and I will not tell it to you. I will only mention the War in such a way that you will know I was in it, and then I will tell you what I know of the dogfights in Madrid in the spring when the air is clean and cool and an hombre may drink four bottles of wine and only pay for three, for there is no place on earth like Madrid in the spring and the only dogfights worth seeing happen in Madrid and the only time they are worth seeing is in the spring. Comprende?

I had heard about the horses (los caballos we call them in Spain), about the tragedy of their suffering in the plaza de perros (the dog ring to you turistas). I was delighted to discover that nothing more happens to the horses than happened to me during the War. They are merely disemboweled, and the disemboweling is done so cleanly and so coolly and with such an air of good humor that one cannot help but smile as one smiled at the Kaiser. It is the exact opposite of tragedy to see the horses trot into the ring with the picadors on their backs dressed in bright red polka-dot costumes and wearing red rubber noses and carrying pickaxes, and then to see the picadors swing their picks into one another’s horses and the suddenly red horses falling on their riders and the picadors all killed or maimed in a way that makes everyone smile, some of them crushed instantly, others left to die in the sand from their concussions, for that is the sort of thing that happens to one if one happens to be a picador or a horse in Madrid in the spring. Madrid, by the way, is the best place to see the dogfights, unless you wish to go the extra distance to Valencia, where the air is cleaner and so cool that you will have to wear your mittens and the water is so clear that you can see through it and even the natives will bathe in it if you hold a gun to their heads and smile. The dogfights in Valencia make the dogfights in Madrid look like a slumber party for interior decorators.

After the picadors and the horses have been carried off by an honor guard of bastardos (favorite sons), the dogfight begins in earnest. The Spanish, by the way, have no word equivalent to our dogfight, and refer to the event as la corrida de perros (literally, a running of dogs, or in Cuba, running dog lackeys of the imperialist stooges).

The band plays a march, and very badly, too, and the three doggieadors (dog killers) enter the ring wearing red rubber pants and the little tri-cornered hats folded from yesterday’s newspapers. If the music is happy they skip gaily around the arena while the crowd shouts its approval and throws botellas (bottles); otherwise, if the music is sad, they hold hands solemnly and approach the presidential box, where el presidente jabs each one in the eye with his forefinger and calls them hijos de putas, a term of such respect that I will not translate it for you. Temporarily blinded, the doggieadors stagger to the center of the ring, each crying “Mi ojo! Mi ojo!” (my eye, my eye!). The blinding is mainly symbolic of the Inquisition and, to a lesser extent, of God’s pact with Abraham, but it is also meant to even the chances between man and dog at the Moment of Truth.

The dog, meanwhile, has been kept in complete isolation prior to the fight. His teeth have been cleaned, his coat trimmed, and his cojones tied off with twine to give him more of an edge. Only a cowardly doggieador, a real schoolgirl, will fight an immature or sickly or ill-bred dog. The ideal fighting animal is a pure-blooded adult Chihuahua standing a full seven or eight inches at the shoulders and showing nails at least half an inch long. It is true that in certain towns, like Valencia, the authorities have given in to the public outcry from fairies and ballerinas and dogfighting is no longer the manly art it once was. In such places they fight Chihuahuas whose nails have been clipped to almost nothing and the doggieadors wear hard hats instead of the traditional paper hats, thus entirely avoiding the Moment of Truth. But that is only in Valencia, where the toughest hombre in town could not beat up your grandmother and you would have to beat her up yourself. For a real dogfight, the kind your grandmother knew, you must go all the way to Seville, where the air is so clean you can bathe in it and so cool that you can walk around all day with a block of ice on your head and the ice will not melt and the putas will charge you less because they can count only as many pesos as they have fingers. The dogfights in Seville make the dogfights in Valencia look like a petting zoo full of tranquilized hamsters.

When the doggieadors have partially recovered their eyesight and are moaning quietly to themselves, a muchacho (little bastard) lights the firecracker that has been tied to the dog’s tail. The explosion scares everyone, especially the dog, who will run in circles trying to bite what’s left of his tail. Before he knows what has happened the dog’s antics have brought him to the doggieadors, who by this time have got to their feet and are trying to skip gaily around the arena once more, but the heartiness has gone out of it and they know it.

The dog advances with a death growl rumbling deep in its throat. The doggieadors freeze in their tracks and suddenly the crowd is very, very still. No one breathes. The Moment of Truth is at hand. With a fierce, primitive cunning, the Chihuahua licks the feet of one of the dog killers, and says, “Yip!” In two shakes of a tall tale, the three doggieadors have skewered the dog on their fencing foils and are roasting him over the fire that has just broken out in the stands. “Chinga tu madre!” yells the crowd (roughly, honor thy mother). The doggieadors respond good-naturedly with “Besa mi huevos!” (kiss my eggs, or in this context, our eggs, the eggs of all good citizens).

And so it is over at last and you feel very fine and the bottles are empty and your pockets have been picked and the dog is dead. Is it right? Is it wrong? Who knows? I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after and judged by these moral standards the dogfight is very moral to me because I feel very fine while it is going on and have a feeling of life and death and mortality and immortality and solvency and insolvency, and after it is over I feel very sad but also very fine and dandy. That’s when I can put the gun to my head and smile and say to the world, “Besa mi huevos!”

Garage Sales

By: Ernst Luchs

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Who can pass up a garage sale? I know I can’t. Mostly they’re just tangled heaps of useless junk which no one without serious mental problems would want. Yet, everything I have was purchased or stolen at garage sales. It used to be that only gypsies or Scotsmen would dare to be seen picking through piles of rags and button boxes. Nowadays, even the very rich will pick diligently through piles of rags and button boxes, pausing only to raise a monocle and inquire, “Is this Scotsman really for sale?”

The garage sale is a tradition which goes back to long before the invention of the garage. In the Elizabethan Age, noblemen and peasants alike would gather under brightly colored tents to barter:

“I will give you this fine goose for that old Gutenberg Bible.”

“Nay, this is a signed original, the only one of its kind. I will not part with it for less than two fine geese.”

“‘Tis a pity I have but one goose. But take a gander at yon maiden. I offer you the hand of my daughter, if such be fair trade.”

“What? My Gutenberg Bible for that? Surely you jest!”

“Nay, do her looks startle you? ‘Tis but the pox, which soon will pass. Let us bandy no more. Take my offer, oh merchant of Venice.”

“Oh, fudge! Behold, while we have haggled your goose has laid waste to my wares. Begone with your goose and your geek daughter! I don’t know what came over me, wanting to sell this rare first edition for a couple of smelly birds.”

Truly, Gutenberg would have rolled over in his grave. Except for a few plague years, the Renaissance fairs were so successful that they soon surpassed in popularity other social gatherings such as witch burnings and hangings.

After the invention of the garage, some aspects of the sales changed. It became harder to find a rare first edition and it became harder to get the owner to part with it at an absurdly low price. But bargains can still be found today. A friend of mine recently bought an antique milk pail for five dollars. Unknown to the previous owner, inside the pail were five long-lost copies of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The scrolls made a unique decoupage covering for the outside of the pail, with enough left over to do a suitcase and a lunch box.

A number of art objects are rediscovered at garage sales. If it hasn’t been used as a dart board or a place mat for too many years, an old master can go for millions at auction. I once finagled a painting away from widow woman in Missouri. I thought it was a Rembrandt. She thought it was a Van Dyke. In fact, she did have a genuine Van Dyke, but that was on her chin (and not for sale). I told her, “You know, I like this old Schickelgruber. I’ll give you a few bucks for it. What do you say?”

The old lady parted with it very reluctantly and only on the condition that I call her once a week to tell her how it was doing. I called her a week later and said, “Hey, I just sold your painting for ten million bucks. How about that?”

She’s probably still standing there in Missouri with the telephone glued to her ear. I was only joking at the time, but the real joke was on me because the painting was a Rockwell, not a Rembrandt. I couldn’t get more than four million for it.

Garage sales mean very many things to very many people and very few things to a few other people. Even a couple of other people that I forgot to mention before have some kind of opinion about sales in general. But don’t let them boggle you. Follow my example. Wherever there’s a stack of old newspapers, a bushelful of chipped procelain or a lampstand made out of petrified French bread, that’s where I’ll be. Unless I’m somewhere else.