My Father's Lotto Plan.

Once during a family dinner my father proposed a very elaborate plan for how he would appropriate a large sum of lottery winnings he will never have. It was as follows:

• Preemptively give the largest giftable (non-taxed) sum to all non-immediate family members and tell them to never ask for money again (pronounced "Fuck Off")
• Set up a yearly trust for the children that can only be accessed after performing certain "tasks" throughout the year. Essentially he would set up a social obstacle course to replace any 9-5 job we would have. Some tasks were simple: perform 1000 hours of charity. Others were more extreme: hike the Appalachian trail, sail solo across "an ocean". Essentially he was going to make sure that we did just a few years of the trust and invested rather than relying on a yearly trust. I have a feeling all of his kids were prepared to risk life and limb in his "Death Tasks" rather than saving and smart investing.
• His charitable donations were odd, revealing interesting alliances and even more interesting rivalries. For him, Little League Baseball was good. Habitat for Humanity was bad. We did not press him on why.
• So, after all of these pragmatic and gregarious ways of spending his money on everyone but himself we asked what he would selfishly buy. He wanted to start a sod farm with lots of animals. He said, "I read about how people use these pellets to heat their houses now. I want in on the ground floor." Go figure.

It was an interesting clinic in fiscal fatherism. He essentially just wanted to provide for his family but also take into account the externalities of charity, thrift, and savings.

After he was done with his plan my youngest sister, blessed with the greatest comedic timing of the children simply asked, "Do you even go to work anymore?"

A New Dawn....

So, I've started a blog that I hopefully can stick to. Over the past few years I've noticed that I have an anecdote for pretty much any topic of conversation.

"I work at the city morgue."
"Did you know that most cadavers' heads are used for plastic surgery refresher courses? You didn't really think about that signing over your body to science."

"My mother just turned 50."
"So did Barbie. Did you know that she was based off of a German doll that was a prostitute? She was such a hit because she was the first mainstream doll of an adult in the U.S. Her designer Jack Ryan was Zsa Zsa Gabor's fifth husband. He once was so mad at her that her dismantled her Rolls Royce and refused to put it back together."

Etc.