What the Rich Know that You Don't

You have to be rich to 'get' rich, if you know what I'm saying, and if you don't, you're probably a poor person. Here's some tips and ideas to get you started on becoming rich, because there is definitely enough for everyone on earth to be super annoyingly wastefully wealthy, and anyone telling you otherwise is a communist or loser.

How they're different from you: They're different, in qualitative ways, from people who are not wealthy, such as the middle class. Why is this? Read the linked article and get back. I can wait... So the point is obviously that the rich are simply a different breed, not plagued by the fear and uncertainty and the mentally-sapping contretemps of poverty.

You see, the world is actually quite fair if you're rich, so you can afford to make big gambles, wake up every day feeling confident, and do things that would make lesser mortals quiver with poverty-related fear and incompetence. It's not a function of exceptionalism written by a wanker kiss-ass, the article is trying to help you understand that you're poor because you're not as good.

They're different, end of story. The naysayers are a bunch of anxious and impecunious babies who like having their hands held by oversized governments and loudmouth hippies. Some day, hopefully, private security armies will give them what-for, and they'll realize they have to work and strive to be wealthy, and not spend their money frivolously.

Join the Culture: Do your time, immerse yourself in the culture, and be prepared to fight for your profits. Before long you'll be salivating at the announcement of layoffs and mergers, certain that the money being gouged out of the wealth of your country (nationalism is an outdated concept that only the middle class poor believe in) will end up in your bank account, ready to be moved offshore as soon as Big Brother turns his back. Information is your best ally, and you want the RIGHT information.

The mentality of fear is one that belongs to the underclasses, anyway. When you've got a yacht more than 60 feet long and a helicopter, do you really think some schmuck in a Corolla is going to be able to touch you? Not unless you get your town car snared in midtown traffic, and unless a big account is at stake, you shouldn't be there to begin with.

Do Your Research: You gotta help yourself first. You gotta understand certain things that poor people just don't seem to get, even after multiple applications of crippling poverty, minimal prospects, and curative destitution. Imagining that the cards are stacked against you is a fearful response not worthy of those worthy of riches. Seriously, if people just stopped being lazy and afraid, everyone could be wealthy. It's astoundingly simple and there are lots of books about it that were not written by snake-oil salesmen.

But, hey, you'll probably just sit there on the couch feeling sorry for yourself and imagining there's a certain way the world's run where decent living conditions are magically withheld from %80+ of all of humanity. Okay there, you red marxist fuck, why don't you go post on Tumblr about the %1 being a bunch of pathological parasites. See where that gets you, while the smart get going on a fantastic journey to wealth, power, and respect.

Today's Celebrity Death: Brought to You By Twitter

I know this is a serious event for lots of people, but for me it is a death in the midst of thousands of others that are not reported, so don't think of me as callous. I am a realist and goddamn, I am sort of happy the media only reports 'big deaths', because the worst kinds of death happen either en masse or without reportage.

Elizabeth Taylor died today at the age of 79, after ailing for some time and disappearing from the public eye. I just want to talk about how this affects me, personally, because this is my blog, and I am a heartless, callous, pseudo-realist type of person.

J.G. Ballard's novel Crash will never be the same after this moment. Vaughn's hoodlum scientist ambition to die in an automobile wreck with Elizabeth Taylor is now completely hopeless. I even doubt it will change any future reading of the book, but you have to admit (if you've read it. And you should.) that is now an even more ghostly tale with serious undertones of having been written almost forty years ago.

I've done my own research on Elizabeth Taylor today. Her last Twitter post (did she write or dictate them?) is dated February 9th, 2011. Let's gloss over it for now and find a memorable, positive, wise statement under 140 characters that we can remember her by:

Not at least until I'm dead, and at the moment I'm having too much fun being alive...and I plan on staying that way. Happiness to all.

6:20 PM Jul 22nd, 2010 via web

Which was in reply to this earlier, equally formidable post:

No one is going to play Elizabeth Taylor, but Elizabeth Taylor herself. 

6:19 PM Jul 22nd, 2010 via web

In retrospect: as somber as it is stubborn. She must have drifted into 'out of touch' after years of 'simulated plutocracy'. Lots of explanations and rationalizations and whatnot. It's sad for sad people. I myself felt a lot worse the day Leslie Neilsen died. But since I'm a horrible person I will reveal that these were all dictated, and her final post proves this, because what kind of hyper-rich, aging celebrity is going to plug her interview with a much less important celebrity in some unheard of, insular magazine?

My interview in Bazaar with Kim Kardashian came out!!! http://j.mp/eqQsGa 

 7:48 PM Feb 9th via Twitter for iPad

I guess this doesn't even solve the mystery. I was wrong. It is equally likely that a hip, image-obsessed aide would use an iPad as that an aging, ailing, rich celebrity would bother to try out this new plebeian cyber toy. I guess T.S. Elliot was right, and the final lines of The Wasteland stand like demented statues guarding the advance of the modern world. After only 131 tweets, too.

Sure, Twitter is filled with respectful, cautious asides to the regrettable death of this famous person, but lets not forget that she was the target of a car crash suicide in a very important (and awesome) 70's novel by an established dead writer. Go check Twitter yourself, and you can probably find other people with the same perspective. What's the real tragedy here? Geopolitics? Geological Disasters? Social Media? Celebrity Death? Or that nobody read and remembered Crash, by the inimitable J.G. Ballard?