Chapter I: Pay-to-Piss

“Those damp piss dollars add up.”

Imagine an untamed wilderness full of precious woodland creatures living in their hidden tree holes, eating their foraged tree nuts, swimming happily in the same shimmering ponds they drink from, all surrounded by jewelweed, beautyberry, hydrangea, milkweed, phlox, dandelion, and clover. Now imagine that you are a disembodied presence just sort of floating around above this wild splendor, and you have eighty thousand dollars burning holes in your large ghostly pockets – what would you do? The shrewd trader may invest this money into stocks, placing their fate in the hands of capricious market forces; the selfless do-gooder may donate this money, giving that money back to the people who truly need it; the hardcore gamer may ignore the woodlands altogether, spending this money on the ultimate PC complete with one-hundred-terabyte solid-state drive that contains literally all the games; the bleeding-heart socialist may evenly distribute this money, sharing the wealth amongst the community; the amateur writer-philosopher may bemoan the current state of humankind, burning the cash before writing a long essay about how money is the root of all the bad stuff in the world; and the venture capitalist may use this money to bring in a fleet of bulldozers, tree harvesters, tractors, and backhoes to raze the land bare, exterminating thousands of breezy birds, caterwauling coyotes, rummaging raccoons, funny foxes, war-dancing weasels, and dashing deer – all in the name of building The World’s Greatest Theme Park.