Things Money Can’t Buy

Things Money Can’t Buy

• No matter how rich you are you can’t insulate yourself from hearing Hotel California at least another 1,000 times before you die. I am living on another continent under an assumed name and that horrible song comes on over the Muzak in the book store where I am shopping. What is a guy in self-imposed exile supposed to do? How could being fabulously wealthy help me in this situation? It doesn’t cost anything to stick my fingers in my ears and say, “ Na na na…I can’t hear this, na na na…I’m not listening.” Do you remember that bar scene in the first Star Wars movie? Hotel California was playing on the juke box. You can’t escape it anywhere.

• Money can’t buy you knowledge of a foreign language; for that you need lots of hard work and apparently a larger brain than the one I was issued.

• Money can’t free you from the utter vulgarity and offensiveness of the human body. We are all the same. I don’t care if you are Bill Gates, the sultan of Brunei, or a guy who cleans public toilets in Calcutta (Calcutta was voted as having the dirtiest public toilets in the northern hemisphere…or is Calcutta in the southern hemisphere? Are there only two hemispheres? It seems like there should be four. Whatever, Calcutta has gross public toilets. I think that even geography professors can agree on that.). No matter what tax bracket you occupy, your body is an inventory of foul noises, discharges, growths, oozings, drippings, odors, and leaks—and those are all above the waist. What goes on inside your pants is too disgusting to discuss on the internet. I’m trying to keep this clean.

• I don’t care if you are James Bond drinking French wine at $250 a glass; drink enough of it and you will wake up the next day feeling like shit. Hangovers are mercilessly democratic.

• Money can buy love, sex, hand jobs, blow jobs, erections, fake boobs, inflatable dolls, dildos, butt plugs, cock rings, ben-wa balls, pocket rockets, French ticklers, nut busters, colon extenders, prostate clamps, urethra enhancers, testicle tighteners, and rectum high-lighters (OK, some of that shit is made up. Can you name them?). What money can’t buy are the things you need to say to a woman during sex if she likes the talkative kind of sex. Talking dirty isn’t just about laying out a bunch of four letter words, it’s an art form, you moron. Maybe your lover is as much of a slob as you but I doubt it. You can start by reading some poetry, and unless your mate is also your prison bitch you aren’t getting any sexier by listening to that hip hop crap.

• I think that we can all agree on one thing, even the Palestinians and the Israelis, even the Sunnis and the Shiites. We all know that nothing tastes better than well-cooked bacon, and it isn’t expensive at all. Forget about lobster and caviar; bacon has those beat hands down. Bacon tastes better than a lobster and caviar soufflé, so skip the fancy French restaurant and order a BLT.

So why do we kill ourselves trying to make money when it can’t buy the important things in life? All that I need is some well-cooked bacon, cheap Spanish wine, and a Paz Vega look-alike and I’m a happy, farting, burping guy who can talk dirty with the best of them. Hotel California is a curse that the entire universe must endure.