Saving Social Security, Writing a Book

Welcome back to the home where Everybody Was Born During the Ice Age. (Not the last one, the one before that.) Lots of expiration going on. Bodies are stacking up like cordwood, thrown into hearses with pitchforks.* Out with the old, in with the old.

Invest in the urn business for future economic security.

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Zephaniah Doodoodrawer stops me in the hall: "I'm concerned about my Social Security. President Bushwah says it's going broke in about 2042, and if it does I won't have enough money to stay here."

Hoss: "I don't think you need to worry. You're 87. That's 37 years away, and by then you would be (...um, 7 + 7, carry one; or do you carry 7?...)...you would be 190. You're not going to live that long, so don't worry about it."

Zeph: "I plan to live as long as necessary, even if it kills me."

Hoss: "Look, I'm telling you not to worry. Remember this: The government owns the U.S. Mint. It can print all the money it wants. Need a government loan? Want a tax refund? Need to buy baby a new pair of shoes? Whoosh, Franklins and Jacksons and Hamiltons just roll off the presses. It's like unplugging the Genie. So breathe easy."

Zeph: "You sure about this?"

Hoss: "Hell yes. Geezus! Am I the only guy in this building that Greenspan consults?"

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When I mouse around the internet I see lots of people say they are writing books. Some of them are really struggling, which doesn't make much sense to me. You wanna write a book, just sit down a write the sucker. Like I'm about to. I'm kind of a slow typer, so it might take me all day, but I'll get 'er done somehow. Never mind I might have to miss lunch. So:


"GONE WITH THE WEST WIND" (I had a focus group in to discuss the title. They said it was okay, but some didn't see the need for the word "Gone.")

CHAPTER ONE

Vivian Sleigh was a classic Southern beauty, with lips as red as an orangutan's ass, and eyes that looked like moose milk in a coal mine. Her speech dripped of honey, molasses even. Her favorite phrase, "You suck", tripped so melodiously off her giraffian tongue that everybody would suck. About her was an odor of Whitetail-in-heat that attracted the local hunters (but not the gatherers). Her teeth were pearly white, but slightly uneven, like the rows of corn on a cob that don't quite match up.

Vivian had a boyfriend, Kent Clark Goble, who is a minor player in this comi-tragedian tale of U.S. Economic Activity, Fall Quarter, 1998. Later, Goble burned down Atlanta when his favorite restaurant ran out of grits.

Vivian had just one flaw: she had no legs. This was because as a young girl she was caught in a leg-hold trap. Twice.

Ever resourceful, Vivian ordered a matched set of prosthetic legs from the We R Body Parts store in Mobile, which duly arrived, addressed to her post office box. This presented a problem, as Vivian had no car. She would have to walk to town but of course that would mean she wouldn't need the fake legs in the first place.

CHAPTER TWO

(I'm taking a hiatus here. This is going so good I don't think I'll have to miss lunch after all.)

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* They didn't really use a pitchfork. That was just for special effect. What they used was a backhoe.