Tominus Prime

Okay, there is no Bob Vila…and if you’re old enough to remem­ber that show, I’m sur­prised that you’re read­ing this blog.  But I just decided to write a quick post on here to apol­o­gize for my long hia­tus.  I’ve been super-busy with my work and my other blog, work­ing on a few side projects in the meantime.

So, in the few pre­cious moments that I could grab for myself, I decided to let you all know that I will be com­ing back in full force, and soon.  My best friend James has moved home from Seat­tle, and his graphic design work has recently been inspir­ing me to take the blog in a slightly dif­fer­ent direc­tion.  So we’ll see how that goes…lol.  In the mean­time, I hope you’re all doing well, and I’ll be back soon…;)

Les­son #96: Always pose dra­mat­i­cally after every victory.

Herein lies the final install­ment of my overly ambi­tious cross-blog project.  These last two lessons will prob­a­bly be the ones that are best under­stood by hard­core WoW play­ers, which is why I saved them for last.  Enjoy, everyone!

5. “Get out of the fuck­ing fire!”

This is a mantra that has been become noto­ri­ous among large WoW groups, espe­cially when fight­ing a par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult in-game boss.  It comes from the ten­dency of most WoW bosses(and real-life bosses) to pause mid-fight and start drop­ping cir­cles of fire, or waves of fire, or, in some hor­ri­fy­ing instances, tor­na­does of fire.  But, believe it or not, the real prob­lem isn’t the fire.  Every­one knows that the fire is com­ing.  Every­one knows what to expect.  The prob­lem is that play­ers some­times focus so much on try­ing to max­i­mize their per­for­mance that they get tun­nel vision.  They for­get the dan­ger and they start focus­ing on only their attack rota­tions* or their spell rota­tions, because they want to out-perform every­one else.

*Note: Attack rota­tions and spell rota­tions refer to the sequences of keys pressed while fight­ing in World of War­craft.  Each press cor­re­sponds to a dif­fer­ent attack or spell, and when they are pressed in the cor­rect sequence, they can increase your over­all dam­age substantially.

When you’re busy try­ing to mas­ter a rota­tion, it can be pretty easy to for­get that there’s a swirling cir­cle of death right below your feet.  Until that cir­cle drains all of your life away and you can no longer do anything.

Sur­pris­ingly, this is how many of us approach our work.  We estab­lish rou­tines that we feel will give us the great­est boost in performance…and then we fol­low them.  We attempt to mas­ter them.  But then one day, a lit­tle cir­cle of fire pops up beneath our feet, telling us that cir­cum­stances have changed.  It tells us that we need to stop for a while and change it up.  Maybe you just had a baby.  Maybe you just got mar­ried.  Maybe your job respon­si­bil­i­ties have changed.  And these are all things that require us to be fluid.  They require us to take a few steps away men­tally.  But we don’t.  We get so caught up in our rou­tines that we for­get the big pic­ture.  And so we keep grind­ing away…until that lit­tle cir­cle of fire drains us com­pletely, and we soon find that we have no life left.

Being the best is great.  Max­i­miz­ing your per­for­mance is fan­tas­tic.  But don’t let it come at the expense of the rest of your life.

If we don’t want to burn out…every once in a while, we need to get out of the fuck­ing fire.

6. Suc­cess is a num­bers game.

On its face, WoW is a game of beau­ti­ful graph­ics and enjoy­able game­play, but at its heart, it is a num­bers game, pure and sim­ple. And just as in life, noth­ing is guaranteed.

You can increase the chances that your strikes will land.  You can research until you know every strat­egy and dun­geon lay­out ever con­ceived.  You can fine-tune your abil­i­ties to the point where you are almost unstop­pable alone.  But you are never assured victory.

No mat­ter how well-equipped you are, no mat­ter how well you play, there are always fac­tors that can work against you.  Some­times your group­mates will be incom­pe­tent.  Some­times the mon­ster you’re fight­ing will glitch and become immor­tal by accident(yes, it has hap­pened).  Some­times you’ll spend hours in a dun­geon only to dis­cover that the one ran­dom item you came in for didn’t drop.  It hap­pens.  So what are you going to do about it?

When it hap­pens in WoW, peo­ple will­ingly throw them­selves into the same dun­geons over and over again until they’ve got­ten it right and got­ten every­thing they want.  It might take days.  It might take weeks.  For some, it might take months.  But still, they do it.

Out in the real world, these same peo­ple will try some­thing once…and then when it doesn’t work out for them, they give up.  They say they’re no good at it.  They say it’s a waste of time.  But what they don’t real­ize is that real life and WoW really aren’t all that dif­fer­ent.  It’s not that they’re doing it wrong.  It’s just that they don’t under­stand that things work the same way out here as they do in WoW.  No mat­ter how good your gear…no mat­ter how pre­pared you are…no mat­ter how talented…you will fall many times.  Maybe you didn’t get a job.  Maybe you got shot down for a date.  Maybe you lost the big game.  But the big ques­tion is, are you going to give up?

…Or are you going to run that dun­geon again?

Thanks so much for read­ing, my friends!  That con­cludes “5 Pro­duc­tiv­ity Lessons I Learned from World of War­craft”, but if you’re sad that it’s over, don’t worry!  I thought of quite a few more lessons while I was putting this last install­ment together…and if all goes well, there may be some future install­ments in the works! Thanks again for read­ing and enjoy­ing, and please share!

Like the title says, my RSS feed kinda went AWOL for a lit­tle while, thanks to a page nav­i­ga­tion plu­gin that’s proven to be more trou­ble than it’s worth.  If you’ve been try­ing to sub­scribe and it’s been giv­ing you some has­sle, don’t worry.  I gave it a good talkin’-to, and everything’s all squared away now.  So get back to sub­scrib­ing, you weird lit­tle content-monkeys…:D.  Thanks for being patient.

–Tom

Hello, and wel­come back for the sec­ond round of pro­duc­tiv­ity lessons I learned from World of War­craft.  I’m breath­ing a huge sigh of relief that peo­ple are lik­ing it so far, let’s keep it goin’…:).  Kick­ing it off with num­ber 3…

3.  Work smarter, not harder.

In the World of War­craft, just like in the real world, you get com­pen­sated for cer­tain actions.  If you kill a crea­ture or com­plete a quest, you’re rewarded with a small bit of cur­rency or a ran­dom object that you can sell to a ven­dor for cur­rency.  You spend your time, you get paid for your efforts, and you can use that com­pen­sa­tion to buy some­thing that will enhance your over­all expe­ri­ence.  Sounds like a haunt­ingly famil­iar sit­u­a­tion, doesn’t it?  And I’m sure you’ve known your share of co-workers that spend an undue amount of time at work in an effort to earn a pro­mo­tion or a lit­tle bit more money.

Well, WoW also has its share of worka­holics.  I’m talk­ing about play­ers who have spent over 24 hours at a time(yes, really)killing mon­sters non-stop in pur­suit of that almighty gold coin or level.  We call this kind of behav­ior, appro­pri­ately enough, “grind­ing.”  And it means exactly the same thing as it does in the work­ing world.

These play­ers usu­ally burn out long before they reach their goal, and with good reason.

While I applaud focus­ing on your work, and liv­ing with pur­pose, you should also learn how to stream­line your work, as I said in the first arti­cle.  There are only so many hours in a day, and unless you want your work to become your life(and I assume you don’t), you should start learn­ing how to work more effi­ciently, instead of try­ing to force more hours into your work­week.  That way lies madness.

4. Not every­thing is treasure.

In WoW, peo­ple are con­stantly hoard­ing stuff.  And the major­ity of it isn’t even use­ful stuff.  If a vul­ture drops a giz­zard that can be sold for 39 cop­per pieces(the WoW equiv­a­lent to pen­nies), there is some­one some­where that has a bag full of vul­ture giz­zards.  I’m not even jok­ing about that.  When play­ers start out, these items are col­lected and sold to a ven­dor, because that’s one of the few ways that a new player can make money.  It’s a nor­mal thing.

The trou­ble comes when you’ve been play­ing for a few months or years, and you start attribut­ing value to items that have lit­tle to none.

I’ve heard many vari­a­tions of this sce­nario: “Oh, I can’t get rid of this sword, I got it when I killed that thing that time.”  Do you ever use it?  “No, but I can’t get rid of it, it’s valu­able.”  Yeah, but it’s not.  It’s worth 75 cop­per.  “You just don’t understand.”

Or this sce­nario:  “Man, I can’t get rid of this hel­met, it’s got lit­tle wings on it.”  Do you ever wear it?  “No, but look at the wings!”  How would peo­ple even know it’s got wings if you don’t wear it?  They can’t see into your bags.  “Yeah, but I’ll know.”

So peo­ple start fill­ing their bags with these “cool” and “mean­ing­ful” items that they never use.  And they end up hav­ing to buy big­ger bags(which can be very expen­sive) or more bank stor­age space(which is also very expen­sive), just to store things that they don’t really need.

A great exam­ple of this is a friend of mine who had been wait­ing months for an extremely rare weapon to drop from a boss.  The weapon finally dropped, and all inter­ested par­ties were asked to roll dice for it.  He rolled, and he won.  He was so excited.

Now, it’s impor­tant to know that when you win a roll for some­thing, the game usu­ally moves it directly to your bags.  But because his bags were full, the weapon stayed on the boss’s body.  He didn’t notice this lit­tle fact until the body had dis­ap­peared, and the weapon dis­ap­peared with it.  Need­less to say, he was devastated.

But there’s a good les­son to be learned here.  Keep your con­tain­ers empty.  Whit­tle things down to the bare essen­tials.  Use what you can.  Get rid of what you don’t.  Because it doesn’t mat­ter if it’s swords, or purses, or out­dated ideas, there are just some things that aren’t worth hold­ing on to.  Oth­er­wise, how will you ever make room for the things that are really important?

Thanks again for read­ing, friends.  The final install­ment is com­ing soon, and I’ll be throw­ing in a sixth lesson…for free!  Which is some­what redun­dant, con­sid­er­ing the first five lessons were also free, but the sixth one is…even more.…free.  Some­how.  It’s very com­pli­cated.  Thanks again!

Les­son #1: Every great war­rior needs a pig.

This is an arti­cle that I’m simul­cast­ing on both this blog and my grown-up one. I nor­mally don’t cross-post on my blogs, but I’m just happy to have cre­ated some­thing that actu­ally holds appeal for BOTH my audiences…lol.  I know it’s not the usual ridicu­lous fare, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

I’ve been a part of the World of Warcraft(WoW) com­mu­nity since 2005.  And over the years, I’ve gone through sev­eral phases of addic­tion, rang­ing from casual dab­bling to com­plete immersion.

To be hon­est, when I started up my free­lance writ­ing busi­ness, I was more than a lit­tle con­cerned that WoW would be my down­fall.  Self-employment pro­vides folks like me with the abil­ity to set our own hours…and with WoW loom­ing large in the back­ground, that seemed like a fairly heavy temp­ta­tion to bear.  But sur­pris­ingly, I was able to stay focused on  my work and only play WoW in a spe­cific time win­dow that I had sched­uled for myself.  How was I able to main­tain pro­duc­tiv­ity, even in the face of such lux­u­ri­ant other-worldly good­ies?  Iron­i­cally, I learned to become pro­duc­tive through PLAYING the game.  And I’d like to share a few of those lessons with you.

1. There is no such thing as instant gratification.

When you play WoW, you gen­er­ally don’t get things auto­mat­i­cally.  Do you want titles and pres­tige?  Do you want that big, shiny axe you’ve always had your eye on?  Well, then you have to start from the bot­tom and work your way up.  And if you slay what needs to be slain, and you do the quests that need to be done, then you’ll reach the elite ranks in time.  Occa­sion­ally, there will be peo­ple that can help you by giv­ing you advice and tools.  But at the end of the day, only you can help your­self improve.  And that can’t be done with­out time, dili­gence, and effort.

Life is exactly the same way, though many peo­ple seem to for­get that fact.  There’s no magic pill that you can take to become an instant mil­lion­aire.  When you enter col­lege, there is no “Grad­u­ate” but­ton that rushes you through the process.  If you want to become the best in your field, you have to take respon­si­bil­ity for your own advance­ment.  Learn what needs to be done.  Work at it.  And with time, you’ll learn how to stream­line the process and get things done more effi­ciently.  It won’t be instant, but it’ll give you a lot more insight into how to max­i­mize your poten­tial.  Which brings me to the next lesson…

2. Know your role.

In my years of play­ing, I’ve found that there’s noth­ing more annoy­ing or less effi­cient than peo­ple who don’t under­stand their role in a group.  When a player is sup­posed to be heal­ing, the last thing you want to see is that player rush­ing to the front lines to punch that big mon­ster in the face.  Things like that are what cause entire groups to fail.  If you’ve never played WoW and you don’t think you can relate, let me ask you this: Do you have a co-worker that seems to know noth­ing about their job, and just comes in every day to surf the web or hang out by the water cooler?  The prin­ci­ple is roughly the same.

Now, am I seri­ously com­par­ing WoW to a job?  Per­haps.  Imag­ine a group of capa­ble, moti­vated, intel­li­gent indi­vid­u­als being led astray by a sin­gle incom­pe­tent.  Now am I talk­ing about a WoW group, or your work envi­ron­ment?  Some peo­ple have trou­ble telling the difference.

But my point is this:  in all things, we should know our appro­pri­ate roles and act them out with pur­pose.  When it’s time for me to be a writer, I for­get the rest of the world and I write.   When it’s time for me to game with my friends, I log on and I kick ass.  When it’s time for me to be a boyfriend, I.…boyfriend.  I boyfriend like hell.  What­ever that means.  But that’s what allows me to live to the best of my abil­i­ties:  focus­ing on one role at a time.  I hate to recruit the age-old adage of “Work hard, play hard”, but I fear that I must.  Giv­ing 100% to what­ever you’re doing at any given moment is cru­cial to becom­ing a more effec­tive per­son.  I’ll even throw in, “A jack of all trades is a mas­ter of none.” for good mea­sure.  You’re welcome…;).

Thanks for read­ing, friends…I hope you all enjoy this, as it was a very fun post to write.  There are at least four or five more lessons forth­com­ing, so please stay tuned!

–Tom

I think it’s one of the turn­ing points in a gamer’s life when you real­ize that age and respon­si­bil­ity have started to rob you of your abilities.

Full dis­clo­sure: I am an absolutely awful Star­craft II player.

Exhibit A:

For those of you who are hav­ing trou­ble read­ing the num­bers inside my QQ face there, I’m Rank 7 Bronze in 1v1’s and Rank 81 Bronze in 2v2’s.  I have been play­ing this game on and off for about a month and a half.

I.  Am.  Terrible.

And as a life-long gamer, it hurts to know that I’ve slipped this far.  Granted, I was never an amaz­ing Star­craft player, but I could hold my own once upon a time.

If I was Sil­ver or Gold, I might be a lit­tle more enthused.

But when you’re a Bronze player, there’s not a whole lot to look for­ward to in terms of advance­ment.  What am I gonna do, grind my way up through the ranks and cross my fin­gers for Plat­inum?  Not gonna happen.

I just don’t have that kind of time any­more.  I’ve got grown-up things to do.

If I was 18 again and I had the time to ded­i­cate to re-mastering this elu­sive Craft­ing of Stars, I would think about it.  But I’m not.  I’m a grown-ass(loosely speak­ing) 30-year-old man with a free­lance writ­ing busi­ness to main­tain and two blogs to produce.

I only have enough time to log on, get my ass handed to me, and spend a half hour cry­ing about it over a gal­lon of but­ter pecan ice cream.

But even with that tiny win­dow of time, I held on to that fleet­ing dream of mak­ing it up the ranks for a lit­tle while.  Until the Kore­ans took it all away from me.

Now, I’m not try­ing to be stereo­typ­i­cal.  I grew up around Kore­ans.  80% of the guys I game with here on Guam are Korean.  Hell, my best friend since third grade is Korean.  And I am here to tell you that the Star­craft joke is no stereo­type.  It is fuck­ing sci­ence.  Almost every Korean player I know is Plat­inum or Dia­mond sta­tus, and I’m con­vinced that even a Korean with Parkinson’s dis­ease still has a 75% chance of win­ning a Star­craft game against you.

This the­ory was solid­i­fied by a recent game against my best friend James.

Now James is Korean, but he’s not one of these hard­core Kore­ans that eats, sleeps and breathes SC strat­egy.  He’s a great dude and all, but in terms of the Star­craft food chain…he’s just some fuckin’ Korean.  He’s not leg­endary.  He’s not Diamond-ranked.  He’s just a ran­dom Korean dude, for all intents and purposes.

I had been play­ing for a month when James mes­saged me from his WoW Battle.net account and told me he had just scored the game.  I imme­di­ately threw down the gaunt­let with­out remem­ber­ing what man­ner of mytho­log­i­cal beast I was throw­ing myself up against.  In my zeal, I had some­how for­got­ten I wasn’t going to be play­ing against a per­son.  I was going to be play­ing against a god­damn Korean.

10 min­utes into the first game, I was bru­tally reminded of my predica­ment, and con­ceded with a bit­ter “GG.”  My full month of expe­ri­ence had been laid to waste in the path of a Korean that had just started play­ing that day.

I demanded rematch after rematch, assum­ing that I was just being over-eager and sloppy.  But even when I was play­ing at the top of my abil­i­ties, this moth­er­fucker was con­sis­tently tear­ing me apart.  Not so much as a “please” or a “thank you,” just a con­stant wear­ing away of my dig­nity and the faint scent of kimchee-based lube.

The expe­ri­ence was…humbling…to say the least.

Since that day, I have resigned myself to play­ing cus­tom maps only,  secure in the knowl­edge that the creeps in the TD maps won’t laugh about butt sex­ing me every time I lose.

But now I can’t help but won­der if there are any other grown-up gamers out there that feel my pain.  Maybe we should start a sup­port group.

Update: HOLY SHIT! I think the Penny Arcade guys have been read­ing my mind…or at the very least, my diary.

One of my friends has been bug­ging me to add a Google Friend Con­nect wid­get to my site for quite some time now.

I’ve been fend­ing him off with witty retorts like, “What the…”, “I don’t…” and “Hnnnhh?”…but they only work for so long, so I finally decided to buckle and just install the damn thing.  So you may notice a slight chaaaange in the side­bar.  That would be the new­ness that is…the new widget.

So if you want to be my friend…(oh, please, please, say you want to be my friend…*puppy eyes*)…follow me on Friend Con­nect and be part of the magic!

On a side note, Tomi­nus Prime has finally bro­ken 5,000 vis­i­tors in the three weeks since I started writ­ing.  I have no idea how good that is in rela­tion to any other site, but it just does my heart good to know that there are more peo­ple read­ing than just…y’know…me…lol.  And who knows?  I might actu­ally get elected King of the Inter­webs one day after all!   And things wouldn’t have gone down like this if you guys weren’t so awesome…so thanks so much for sup­port­ing me and por­ing through my half-mad scrib­blings.  You are all kick-ass rock­star motherfuck­ers.  Pre­tend I didn’t swear.

In thanks…here’s a top-secret pic­ture of me out­side of a Denny’s in a pirate cos­tume hold­ing my wal­let.  Don’t ask why.  Just drink it in.

And please keep read­ing!

Love,
Tom

Dancers, as some of you may know, will occa­sion­ally come and give a cus­tomer a lap dance under an unspo­ken agree­ment that they will be paid for their ser­vices.  But I was the only poor kid in a group of rich kids.  And the strip­per had just made one more in a long line of bad life choices.

“Haaaaaaaaay, cuu­u­uu­tie,” she squeaked, “what’s wroooooooooong?”

I didn’t say any­thing.  I couldn’t say any­thing.  Because I had just found out why she was hold­ing her hand behind her back.

Her entire left hand was com­pletely cov­ered in a cast.  A cast which was now sit­ting on my thigh, glow­ing under the black­lights like the world’s worst nov­elty lamp.

My lower jaw began to drop in hor­ror as I slowly real­ized that there was a ter­ri­bly unsexy half-naked stranger with a bro­ken hand sit­ting on my lap.

I don’t know if she had cho­sen me because I looked unin­ter­ested, or because I was the tallest, but in that moment, we both imme­di­ately regret­ted every event that had led up to this moment.  I was sit­ting there, hor­ri­fied and close to cry­ing as this strange woman pity-danced me with an equally fright­ened look spread­ing across her face.  In her defense, she was a trooper, and she kept going, deter­mined to get her tip come hell or high water.

I pan­icked, look­ing for a way…any way…to get her off of me.  But we were in it now, and there was sim­ply no way for either of us to exit grace­fully.  I felt bad, because I know she was try­ing to be sexy…but I could have sworn that I could actu­ally feel my penis retreat­ing from her in terror.

I just wanted to ask her to get off of me, but I was so scared…because I assumed that every­one in the club would sud­denly say, “Wait a minute, this guy doesn’t know proper strip club eti­quette!” and point and scream like a bunch of body-snatchers.  And then the police would come in like Demen­tors and drag me to my mom’s house for a proper ass-whupping.

Luck­ily, one of my class­mates saved me at the last sec­ond by flash­ing a dol­lar at another dancer.  “Money!”, I thought to myself, “that’s how I get her off of me.  I just need to give her some money and she’ll move on!”  So I imme­di­ately started fish­ing around in my pock­ets for my wallet…desperately try­ing not to touch or pay undue atten­tion to the stripper’s hand.  It kind of felt like she was try­ing to keep my dick as a hostage and I was fran­ti­cally scram­bling to put together the ran­som money.

Now, being fif­teen, I was not aware that exotic dancers are usu­ally tipped in bills.  And, like I said, I was the poor kid in the group.  So I dipped deep into my wal­let, and came up with the change from my lunch that day.

At this point, the strip­per had stopped grind­ing and just stood there star­ing at me with one eye­brow cocked as I sat there, shame­fully shak­ing a vari­ety of quar­ters, nick­els, and pen­nies out of my wallet.

It ended up being approx­i­mately 89 cents.

I held my hand­ful of cupped change up to her with a meek smile, and I think this is all she saw.

Not under­stand­ing why she looked so sad and con­fused, I tried my hard­est to think of some­thing that some­body mature and polite would say.

The best I could come up with was, “Ummmm…thank you?”

She started cry­ing uncontrollably.

And that’s why I don’t like strip clubs.

When I was 15, I entered a strip club for the first time.

And in spite of how awe­some most teenage boys might find that…it was a really awk­ward moment for me.

My class­mate was cel­e­brat­ing his birth­day and his dad decided it’d be a good idea(for some rea­son) to take his teenage son to a local strip club and ini­ti­ate him into man­hood.  I’m not even sure if my class­mate was legal at the time, but he was a cou­ple of years older than the rest of us and his dad owned one of the largest beer dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­nies on Guam.   So it wasn’t even an issue.

Fun fact: Guam has the high­est con­sump­tion rate of Bud­weiser, SPAM, and Tabasco per-capita than any­where else in the U.S.  But are we not all equal in the eyes of diabeetus?

Any­ways, my class­mate asked some of the guys in our class to tag along…presumably so it wouldn’t be awk­ward.  But it was.  It totally was.

As soon as we walked into the club, every­one was excited but me.  I was ner­vous because I was the youngest one there.  And the tallest.  So I had this gnaw­ing fear that I was the one that was going to get carded and caught.  I had this weird idea that the strip club had its own lit­tle police force, and if I got busted, they would hold me cap­tive while they called my mom.  And then she would come down, beat my ass, and embar­rass me in front of all the nice naked people.

So, as we sat down in front of the stage, I tried to hide the fact that I was a minor by putting on what I call my “grown-up” face.

Depart­ment store mas­sage chairs also make me very uncom­fort­able. Which kind of defeats their purpose.

It was what I thought a grown-up looked like.  And as you can see from this pic­ture of me, I have a very poor idea of what a grown-up looks like.  When­ever I try to look grown-up, I just end up look­ing uncom­fort­able — like I’m politely stalling as I des­per­ately think of a way to escape.  And that’s exactly what the strip­per saw when she came on stage, and the whole sit­u­a­tion began to unravel.

In all fair­ness, the strip­per was not at all sexy…which is say­ing a lot, con­sid­er­ing she was per­form­ing for a group of boys that found lin­gerie ads sexy even when there were no women on the page.  It’s sad when you’re danc­ing for some­one that would actu­ally find your bra and panties sex­ier if you weren’t in them.

And it’s not that she wasn’t pretty.  She was just incred­i­bly dirty-looking.  And not in a sexy way.  In a hepati­tis way.

She shuffled/stomped on stage, grabbed the pole, and started grind­ing on it lazily hold­ing her left hand behind her back.  I just glanced at her uncom­fort­ably, assum­ing that that is what one is sup­posed to do at a strip club.

And then she locked eyes with me…smiled…and started walk­ing over.

I have never known fear as inti­mately as I did that night.

[to be continued…]

When­ever I think about what it’s like to be wealthy, I don’t think about socially con­scious bil­lion­aires like Oprah or Bill Gates.  I think of Richie Rich. I think of Scrooge McDuck.  I think of this guy.

And this is the burn­ing ques­tion:  if you were that rich, why would you NOT want to kiss a tiny giraffe and gig­gle about it?  There’s way too many bil­lion­aires out there using their money to do bor­ing things like mak­ing more money.  Why aren’t you out buy­ing out­landish shit?  It’s like see­ing a mas­sively buff guy work­ing out at the gym.  What the fuck are you doing here?  You won the game already!  Go eat a god­damn KFC Dou­ble Down!

Now, granted, I’m speak­ing from a some­what less advan­ta­geous finan­cial posi­tion.  If we’re being com­pletely hon­est, I’m only slightly above this point…

…but when I even­tu­ally become King of the Inter­webs, there’s a lot of things that I’d want to do with the mil­lions, bil­lions, and cotil­lions of dol­lars that come with the posi­tion.  They’re things that I think every rich per­son should do, just out of prin­ci­ple.  Here’s a brief list of some of them.

1. Learn to swim in money.

Based on my exten­sive research, a proper bajil­lion­aire keeps all of their money in a sin­gle giant vault…for some unex­plained rea­son.  Also, 95% of their wealth must take the form of gold coins, pep­pered with the occa­sional giant gem and/or paint­ing of a duck that looks like the Mona Lisa.  If you’re going to be stock­ing all that cash in one place, you bet­ter damn sure learn how to swim in it. Don’t ask ques­tions.  Just learn.

There’s noth­ing more embar­rass­ing than tak­ing a swan dive into your new-found wealth only to frac­ture your jaw and bleed out while Scrooge McDuck stands off to the side, laugh­ing and call­ing you a noob.

2. Train a panda for battle.

I’m not sure if I even need to explain why this is awe­some, but I’ll do it any­way, just in case.  There are very few things in this world that will trick an assas­sin or mas­ter thief into let­ting down their guard.  One of them is the panda…Nature’s ninja.  If you train your panda well enough, your would-be assailants will still be cock­ing their heads to the side and going “Awwwwww” when it evis­cer­ates them with its broadsword.  That’s right.  Your panda has a moth­er­fuck­ing broadsword.  What’s more awe­some than that?  Noth­ing.  That’s what.

3. Go fish­ing for home­less people.

I’m pretty sure this must be some sort of given.  Take a $10,000 dol­lar bill or any other chump change you might have lying around and attach it to a fish­ing hook.  What’s that, you say?  There’s no such thing as a $10,000 dol­lar bill?  Wrong.  When you’re a que­sadil­lion­aire like I’ll be, you can give any­thing mon­e­tary value merely by declar­ing its worth.  If I decide to pay some­one in Monop­oly money, they will have to accept it as if it were real money.  Fact.

Any­ways, after you’ve attached the bill to the hook, invite your local home­less to con­gre­gate near your shark pool(or koala pit, or wher­ever you keep your angry wild ani­mal of choice.)  When they’re assem­bled, just dan­gle the bill over their heads and award it to who­ever can snatch it up first.  You get enter­tained, and they get paid.  It’s a win-win situation.

You said it, fella.  You said it.

Any­ways, that’s it for this install­ment of “Things All Rich Peo­ple Should Do.”  Hope you all enjoyed read­ing it as much as I enjoyed cre­at­ing it.  If you did, please share it with your friends so we can all get to work mak­ing me King of the Inter­webs ASAP.  Thanks for read­ing!