Displayers of affection and all good intentions
Why don’t you just send me the bill – Tweedy/Scott
Money talks, as Neil Diamond informs, but it don’t sing and dance and it can’t walk. Bullshit walks, according to Bobbi Flekman. I dig the Wilco lyrics and the idea of being able to cover the bill instead of sitting through the dinner. It’s the very definition of fuck-you money, which is some good money to have. Loose change, chump change .. any change is good. If you’ve got the money honey I’ve got the time.
A banker friend of the family related a story to me recently about a company Christmas dinner where person after person got up to sing the praises of the bank and all the good it had done. “Then,” he said, “a small woman got up to speak – a caretaker for an elderly patron or former employee. ‘Money,’ she said, ‘is shit.’ And then she sat down.” This banker friend said everyone at the table sat stunned until he began to clap, and then they all joined in politely. “I was a banker all my life and had particular insight to what money can do to people and families,” he told me. “She had a point.”
Some people claim to have no interest in money. This likely extends as far as their lack of interest in food, followed closely by shelter, clothing etc. Then there are those whose have such a singular interest that it eclipses whatever said money can buy. They’d rather sit on a cold night with a number on a ledger than a log on the fire. Gambling holds special interest for some of these people because they’re dealing with the pure rush of the number; feeling the surge of its rise and angst of its fall. Many of them die with a lot of money and leave it to those by whom they wish to be remembered most fondly .. and then they fight over it amongst themselves.
A rich start-up guy in San Francisco recently took to leaving envelopes of cash around the city for lucky citizens to find. Some questioned his method and asked why he didn’t simply target those most in need or deserving and give them the dough. I suspect it was because it wouldn’t have been as much fun or made him feel nearly as cool. I say it’s his money to do with as he sees fit. Were I in his shoes I would have started a foundation for gardeners in Golden Gate Park and called it Rick Monaco’s Hedge Fund. But that’s just me.
So concludes my two cents on the subject. Not much of a blog entry, but nobody’s paying me for it.
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