3rd Party Fantasy

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#14 Prudence and Peril

Evil Emperor Nick

on Jan. 29, 2006

Peril is the name of the Succubus. At the time I wrote this issue she didn't have a name but when the character returned later I decided it made sense.

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Rant:

There are three states of finances just as there three states of matter and they are poor, broke, and in debt. Keen observes of nature will note there is both a forth type of matter, plasma, and a fourth financial state, ‘well off’, but since neither of these can occur within an earth normal environment they are to be discounted form our discussion.

Poor for our discussion is having both no money and much debt. The second state ‘Broke’ is the one most people aspire to in the form of having both no money and no dept. While in dept is having both money and dept. Much like a werewolf changing form with the cycle of the moon so do I shift between these three states with the cycle of my pay check.

Friday - Pay check arrives I move into the in dept category. Times are good. My bank statement tells me I have lots of theoretical dollars that can be exchanged for goods and services, but I also have car bills. Me and my friend go out to feast on complimentary bread, saltine crackers, and slices of lemons attached to large glasses of water, if we really splurge we order an appetizer as well. We avert our eyes from our waitress and flirting is a privilege for those tipping over a dollar.

Monday - As my automatic deductions kick in my pank account removes the one before all the zeros and I am transferred from being in dept to broke. It is a great sense of relief as I no longer have the pressure of trying to figure out how to spend this money and can focus on trying to stay our of deft.

Thursday - Like a cliche evil second lieutenant my car betrays me on schedule and decides to drop a critical component from the engine into the highway as I drive to work. I move from the broke to the poor state of being as I try to will the car to keep for catching on fire until I get into work.

And so the cycle starts over again on Friday returning me to simply in dept. Lucky modern man has been given a few tools he can use to escape this endless cycle. The first development since the original coins were minted is the personal check which despite its decline in recent years remains one of the strongest tool in available to manipulating debt. The check not only consolidated large sums of unwieldy currency into a single slip of paper but also gave some security to the transference of said wealth from debtor to collector. The check was revolutionary further however in the form of its ability to bounce, which naturally compiled ones debt. Now for the first time ever you could actually become deeper in debt while paying your bills. However there was a down side to checks which was that they could be put into a state of permanent stasis in the mail causing them to remain forever locked forever in the limbo of the mail system. Subsequently the next great advancement was pioneered in the form of credit cards. Credit cards are based on the premise that you can buy something now and pay for it for the rest of your life. This was the single greatest advancement in human history since the day when a crafty young cave man named Larry convinced a much larger cave man named Grabthrog to give him food in exchange for a shiny round object, later on Grabthrog would threaten to beat a third cave man if he didn’t take the shiny round object in exchange for animal skins and thusly did Grabthrog invent economics.

This is not to say all economic are about debt, there is also stocks. Stocks and similar concepts like mutual funds (which sound better then stocks for stupid people), have become the heart of the modern economy. The concept is an amazingly simple one, you buy the stock and sell it again at a higher cost then when you bought it. This is based totally on economic principle of finding people who are stupid, which drives the heart of the modern economy. The concept is of the stock market is to buy low when a stock is worthless, and sell high when according to the standard market thought process is the worst time for anyone to buy it. The price of stocks is derived from the market which is slightly more scientific then pulling lotto ticked out of hat and assigning economic winners. Indeed there are thousands of books on the subject and even more economists who are similar to weather men in the fact that the forecast changes in the market but less accurate.

The economy is regulated by, naturally, governmental action. Which is ironic since the governments historically have mismanaged finances to the point of multi-trillion debt. They do this in four ways. First and for most my taking money from the citizen and redistributing I similar to when a parent takes away a toy from a child to give it to a sibling. The theory being that people will there by be motivated enough to go out and try and take back their money just as they did with their siblings. The second form is in the form of business wellfair. The government has long known that there are many perfectly good companies with products that can help society that just need a helping hand to establish a foot hold in the market against larger pre-established competitors and so they seek out potential boons to our way of life like cigaret companies and give them money. Thirdly is the reduction and subsidization of corporations in which they pay companies ironically not to make money. Finally some less scrupulous government will send out Tom Clancy style agents to prevent any one economic force, such as fast food, from becoming to powerful.

In anycase being more of a Larry then a Grabthrog economist I lack many big stick economic options. Most of my economic preparations involve jars full of loose change and buying in bulk. (Annually I buy a case of all amenities I’ll need for the year such as deodorant and tooth paste, however three weeks later my brother has taken it to college with him to sell of to other less prepared students in exchange for pop tarts and blue test books.) However I’ve recently devised a plan to break this cycle of monetary exchanges (Actually it is my second plan my original plan involved marrying a wealthy 20 something billionaires.), and that plan is t-shirts. T-shirts are created for everything from T-shows, to family reunions, to surgery for explosive flatulence. T-shirts are far more universally accepted then the dollar and as near as I can tell are the primary currency used on the internet as nearly every site has them and with business casual devolving to just casual the primary garment of the future. There seems to be two elements to a successful T-shirt, first a clever picture and/or phrase, and second how it clings to the female chest aria while exposing the belly button. To that end I’ve created a clever catch phase to end all my problems.
And the slogan is #$(I##ksajlfjsadln casksdfsakcmsald………………………………………………

*This Rant terminated at government request. Please have a nice day.*