If you pump your legs while skydiving, you can run a mile in under a minute.
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An Open Letter To Bill Gates
<Josh Hepler > to billg@microsoft.com
Wed, May 13, 2009 at 10:20 AM
Dear Bill1 Gates,
I am writing you for the same reason I assume that most people write you, and that is that I would like a large amount of money. A vast amount of money, really.
The basic reason I want this money is that I do not have any money, and I would like some. Specifically, a vast amount of money. One million dollars ($1,000,000) should be sufficient.2
I do not pretend that I will use this money for anyone but myself 3. However, please note the following plan.
- Invest the one million dollars ($1,000,000) in low-risk mutual funds
- Live off of the interest
- Donate all other money I earn to charity
- When I die, also donate the one million dollars ($1,000,000) to charity, or give it back to you, if you still live.4 5
Being a sort of investor-type person, I figured you would appreciate a financial plan.6 To sum up: I would like a million dollars so that I can live off the interest and donate everything else to charity.
But why, might one ask, do I think myself special or gifted or talented enough to deserve a hand-out of one million dollars ($1,000,000)?7 The truth is, I don’t. I really don’t. I just figured that it wouldn’t hurt to ask.
Sincerely,
Josh Hepler8
_____________
1 Or should I call you William?
2 Although, honestly, I would take, say, $100, if offered.
3 And people that I want to have like me.
4 This is, of course, assuming that some God-forsaken country doesn’t launch a nuke at our God-forsaken country, or visa versa within the next eighty years, triggering World War III, in which case I would be unable to return the money.
5 I’ve been told that the best financial plans have at least seven parts, so they can be made into self-help books and used to springboard cross-nation lecture tours, but that seemed a little forced.
6 I also make excellent pie charts.
7 This might also be tax-deductible.
8 This would be the name to make out the check to, if you actually decided to go along with this. Although, in all honesty, it might be way more entertaining to have it all in cash in a large briefcase. Or better yet, a burlap sack with a giant dollar sign on the front. Feel free to use this as a publicity stunt, or maybe just a grand display of philanthropic eccentricity. I would be more than willing to go on Oprah, and we could talk lightheartedly about the “crazy, oddball nature of the whole ordeal, and how you just thought ‘why not’, and here we are on Oprah’s show, and of course, she has a lot of money too, why doesn’t she find someone to give a million dollars to so they can live off the interest, and she says, ‘I’m glad you asked because I’m donating a million dollars, evenly divided , to today’s studio audience, and the studio audience would go insane and some of them would cry, and of course the whole thing was set up and rehearsed before the show’.
Tagged: Bill Gates, Microsoft, money
Paper bags usually signify lunch or an unattractive person. Or if you’re a cannibal, unattractive lunch.
Wal-Mart And The Mortality of Fish
Something about being in Wal-Mart for any extended period of time makes me feel like my soul is slowly being sucked out of my body. I think this is because it tends to be a sanctuary for angry mothers and unhappy middle-aged couples. You can only watch two people fighting over the best brand of mayonnaise so long before your very being begins to erode. I counter this feeling by drag racing my shopping cart and asking unfortunate staff members where to find very specific cereal brands that I make up. Not many people know this, but a partially loaded cart can drift around corners.
I think next time I go into Wal-Mart, I’m wearing a fat suit so I can use a motorized cart. The advantage of the motorized cart is that it allows for effortless movement. The disadvantage is that it makes it nigh impossible to reach anything above the third row. Luckily there is a solution: simply buy a paintball gun in the sporting goods section, and use said gun and paintballs to shoot down anything you can’t reach. If a staff member or manager approaches you, first demand that they call you ‘Captain’. This will imply that you underwent some type of military service, probably in Korea or Vietnam, and will validate your overwhelming crazy. Second, point out that “Of course, can’t you see that I’m in this cart because of my shocking obesity, and yes, of course, I probably should be walking around to whittle away at previously mentioned obesity, but ironically I’m not, and it’s possible that I may be handicapped in some unsee-able way, and you don’t want a lawsuit on your hands”. Point out that you’re only shooting down things that you intend to buy. If you really want to drive this home, refer to all the canned goods as “Japs”. Also detail that the gun is for self-protection. If the manager asks from what, give them a cold stare and say, “The Brotherhood”. At this point, if you’ve completely embraced the spiraling sanity which this encounter has generated, have a friend jump out from the next aisle dressed completely in black with an eye patch and a red sash tied around their head. Unload the paintball gun on this person. Wheel over to their crumpled figure, look down, cry a single tear, and wheel away. The manager will no longer question you.
The sad thing about Wal-Mart is that it seems to bring out the desperately materialistic side of humanity. I have witnessed people on the verge of buying movies in languages that they do not even speak, because those movies are five dollars, and they’ve convinced themselves that La Poder de Corazon must be one of those obscure Italian Clint Eastwood Westerns that only real Clint Eastwood fans have seen. It takes me a solid month to go through a normal jar of mayonnaise, and still I find myself tempted to buy the oversized jar because it will clearly allow me to save 1.2 cents per ounce. And this is why I stand in front of the fish tank in Wal-Mart with a styrofoam container of perch screaming “This is what happens! This! You naive fools!” Because if I don’t manufacture my own insanity, the consumer insanity will literally drive me out of my mind.
There’s something simultaneously overwhelming and underwhelming about having everything you could ever want, or need, in the material sense, sitting in one giant room with equally giant fluorescent lights shining it, one plastic card swipe away. It’s as if the American Dream is standing next to you saying, “Well, I’ve reached my peak. This is it. Until a virtual reality machine is invented that allows all your desires to be fulfilled simply by wishing it, it will never get any easier than this. I’m just going to sit around and get fat now.” And get fat we do. Fat enough that we need motorized carts.
I’m glad that people living two hundred years ago had no way of seeing this. Otherwise, I’d feel like I’d have to apologize. “Look, I’m sorry you spend your time hacking at the earth, trying to foster life out the cold, cold ground, and murder animals that we now make talk to us for roughly an hour and a half with our magical moving picture machines in order to eat. But it’s really not that easy for us. Sometimes I spend whole minutes trying to figure out what flavor of instantly available and incredibly inexpensive fruit juice to buy.” No early 1800’s farmer deserves that. Meanwhile, the Amish live like this anyway, just to show everyone how much of an unproductive pansy they are.
“What did you do today?”
Me: I made a mix CD.
Amish Man: I built a barn. With my bare hands.
(awkward silence)
Me: It’s a really good mix CD, though.
All I know is, the next time I go to Wal-Mart, I’m going to go stand in front of the clearance rack and start screaming “Oh my God! Oh, Jesus God! This toothpaste is only a dollar! $1.07 if you count applicable tax! Oh Jesus Jesus God. Sir! Sir? What is your name? Gregory? Oh, Gregory – join me in my dance of praise! Praise be unto the dollar and seven cents toothpaste!” And then one person, one lone person, will take the exact same toothpaste out of their cart, look at it, and decide they don’t need it. And then my mission will be complete.
Tagged: materialism, shopping, Wal-Mart
Weight Loss And Human Extinction
It is a distinctly human phenomenon that a member of the species will purposely go out of their way to make themselves easier to kill. Take, for instance, Himalayan mountain exploration.
“Here is a rock.”
“Indeed.”
“A rock in sub-zero climates such that even mountain goats avoid it.”
“Indeed.”
“We shall climb it until there is no air.”
Or, for instance, going on safari. Only humanity would go into a flat, open area with no food or water in an uncovered jeep in actual pursuit of giant meat-eating cats, and pay money to do so. Goldfish, for instance, do not lead expeditions into Sushi Bars. Added to this is the fact that the average American safari is comprised of people who could probably be rolled a mile faster than they could run one. The tour guide is, of course, safe, because as a local he has to run two miles in order to drink water. The rest of the caravan is the equivalent of a giant KFC bucket on wheels whining about how they want to get closer to the enormous carnivorous animals that just took down an elephant so we can take pictures, please. Better yet is the overweight woman who has decided to wear zebra print pants.
This is why I think humans will eventually go extinct. Because we have no long term sense of self-preservation. Wanting to get ahead of the game, and having realized how much money people will spend to do something that happens naturally if you stop eating donuts, I have decided to propose these:
Five Overlooked Weight-loss Methods
1. Unfathomable Emotional Stress
Go ahead, break off the engagement with the guy you’ve been dating for the last four years. The anxiety and latent guilt caused by the experience will make you lose massive amounts of weight. Of course, you might also turn to food for relief and balloon into a whale. Unless you’re already a whale, in which case you’d balloon into a small orbiting planet.
2. Heroin Addiction
Have you ever simply forgotten to eat for three weeks? If you answered yes, you’re probably either dealing with unfathomable emotional stress or addicted to heroin, crystal meth, and/or copious amounts of amphetamines. Drug addictions are an extremely effective way to reverse your normal bodily functions. Your liver used to synthesize protein. Now it talks to you in a British accent. Your stomach used to process food. Now it simply acts as temporary storage.
3. Amputation
A leg makes up roughly 15% of your total body weight. And think of all the money you’ll save on pirate or Jaws-themed Halloween costumes.
4. Moving to a Different Planet
Sure, you weigh 250 pounds here. But on Mars, that’s only 94.25 pounds.
5. Giving Blood
There are about 6 quarts of blood in the human body, which weigh about 12 pounds. This might not seem like a lot, but when you consider that you can also get paid for it, it becomes much more tempting. If you donate all of your blood at once, you can make up to $400.
As a disclaimer: For the love of God, don’t actually try these and then try to sue me. I don’t have any money for you to take.
In all honesty, lack of self-preservation is probably one of humanity’s most endearing traits and is probably one of the few things that separates us from the lower animals. A monkey wouldn’t go base jumping. Although it would be awesome if it did. Somebody needs to get a monkey and go base jumping.
Tagged: mankind, survival, weight loss