Being happy is really quite simple. You don’t need much. You don’t need to be healthy or sexy or smart. You don’t need to be well read or vegan or Dutch. No, all you really need is money. Loads of filthy, disgusting, forever accumulating pounds, euros, yens, dinars, dollars and anything else you can get your grubby hands on.
Get your hands on it now. Right now. Dig in. I mean it. That’s right. Get a fistful. Both fists. Hold it in your hands. Run your hands through it. God, it feels good, doesn’t it? I mean, has anything ever felt better between your hands? Maybe, but you probably paid for it. One way or another, you paid for it.
Happiness and money. There are a number of ways to go about it. You can hope to be born with it. You can look like you’re worth it. You can fuck for it. You can beg for it. You can kill for it. You can steal it. Regardless, if you want to be happy, you have to get your hands on it. Loads of it.
Just thinking about it puts a smile on my face. You should see me; I’m really smiling. Years of orthodontic work and monthly payments compounded to create this smile. It’s nice, isn’t it? Not the smile. Money, I mean. Money; it’s why I’m smiling.
Some people don’t have it. They might have tons of it, but it’s really not theirs. They get it in small increments from Mommy and Daddy. For their whole lives it’s slipped to them and that’s really awful. Because the thing about money is that you want to have it all at once. You need to be able to shower yourself with it.
What’s better: a forever trickling faucet or thirty minutes of great water pressure coming from dual shower heads? It’s dual because misery doesn’t love company. No, that’s bullshit. Misery rolls solo. Money loves company. Try to leave it alone. You can’t. Everyone wants a piece and money doesn’t mind. Money is incredibly social and capable of great and selfish acts of philanthropy. Look at Honduras. They’ve been running on someone else’s money for decades.
I won’t say anymore about money except that I’d like yours. All of it. I need a new car, a bigger house, an expensive purebred puppy. I’d like to be a pillar of the community. I’d like to pay more in taxes. I’d like to dole out thousands to junkies, kindergartners, booze-hounds, stoned teenagers, people who wear t-shirts, public pool lifeguards and Jiffy Lube patrons. I want to give them all money. I want to give them all of my money because I don’t need it. I don’t need it because I’m happy[1].
So be a pal. Hit the ATM. Drain your checking account. You know what, while you’re there, empty that savings account too. Large bills please. When you’re as wealthy as me you have no use for fives or tens or twenties. Hundreds, crisp and clean like when the sun breaks out in April after a spring shower. I think Monet painted that once. Now that I’ve got your money, I think I’ll buy it.
So be a sweetheart and fork over the dough. You’re better without it. You don’t have enough to be happy anyway. But me, with all of your money, as an individual with a great concentration of wealth? I will be incredibly happy.
There’s no room for all of you who are just getting by. We’re overpopulated. More people need to starve. More people need to move out of their homes and into the streets. Why? Because I want to knock down the neighborhood where you grew up. I want to plow it down and build a pasture where my horses can run free and where my free-range organic chickens and bison can graze[2]. Then I’ll build an enormous home. Nay, a palace! Think Versailles. I’ll put in a man-made lake and stock it with koi. Catch and release of course. I might be rich, but I’m no savage.
And this is where you come in, my fellow Americans. See the thing is, after I have all of your money, I’m going to need certain things to be done. Destruction and new construction will breed jobs. Now that you’ve handed me all your dough, you could use the income.
I must warn you, I won’t pay you much. I don’t think you deserve it. Plus, I have a tough time parting with my money. Really, I do. Every time I give it away it’s like sending a close relative off on an ice floe[3]. It practically brings me to tears.
What do you say America, do you want the job or not?
–The Neapolitan Mastiff
[1] Said happiness is contingent upon the forfeiture of your wealth to me. Cash Only.
[2] If not graze, then do whatever the fuck those animals do with their free time.
[3] Obviously this is meant metaphorically. Ice floe don’t exist anymore. Though I won’t say that on the record. It’s a fluke that the weather has been unseasonably warm since the Industrial Revolution.
Exchanging Pleasantries 