Dr. Murray Trillionaire

Did you know that the average American spends over two hours a week in a supermarket and less than two minutes in public library?  Why?  Because libraries are more efficient.  And there’s money to be made if we follow the library business model.

Let’s say that you want to take a book out of the library on painting.  You need to go to the library shelves and look under the number 750 where you will find all books on painting.  Or perhaps astronomy is more your bag.  Just head over to the 520 shelves.  Economics?  That would be 330.  So no matter what library you go to, whether it be in Bismarck, North Dakota  or New York City, a book on transsexuals is going to be under 612.6 Interestingly enough, the Public Library of  Bismarck goes directly from 612.5 on sex with dwarfs to 612.7, concerning sex with Germans, without any mention of transsexuals, whether they be dwarfs or German or both.[1]  However, the   Public Library of Bismarck can not put books having to deal with creationism or intelligent design under the 612.6 section  unless it concerns the creation or intelligent design of transsexuals.  It’s the Dewey Decimal System.  It’s the law.  It’s wonderful to know that no matter what library I go to that I know where everything will be.  Sadly, there is no Dewey Decimal System for supermarkets.One of my local supermarkets classifies pickles as a condiment and puts it with ketchup and mustard.  But another supermarket believes that a pickle is a deli item and has it with potato salad and Cole slaw.  A third market, run by a family of Tamil separatists, views pickles as a dessert and puts it in between custard and frozen cookie dough.  Crazy as this sounds, you can even go to the same supermarket chain in different parts of the country and get confused.  While cheese covered grits can be found in aisles 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, and 17 in a popular super market chain in Pascagoula, Mississippi, you have to search deep into aisle 97, the Foreign Foods Section in the same super market chain in Marlboro, New Jersey.  How much time do you waste looking for pickles and cheese coated grits?  Valuable time that you could be spending eating instead.  Or reading a book on German transsexuals. My idea: let’s create a Dewey Decimal System for supermarkets, copyright it or patent it, and sell it to all supermarkets throughout the country, throughout the world. There have got to be at least a million different supermarkets around the world.  We’ll charge them each a $100,000 annual fee to use our system.  That’s a trillion dollars per annum in sales.  And it’s pure profit.[2]How will we implement?  Now this is your department, but may I suggest that we start by hiding in a supermarket (maybe in the frozen foods section) and at night when everyone is gone, we’ll reorganize the whole supermarket into a more sensible system.  Remember to bring roller skates so we can go from aisle to aisle more quickly and magic markers for our new signs.

[1] German has three genders: masculine (der), feminine (die), and neutered (das).  One uses the neutered das to say a girl (das Madchen), and yet one says der Transexual.  Fascinating, nicht wahr?

[2] Although Melvin Dewey, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System, has been dead for more than seventy years, he still remains one of the most controversial people to walk the Earth since the creation of time.  A radical thinker who supported the

I receive questions from my devout cult memebers (I mean fans) every day.  The most common question is how Mike and Carol Brady were able to afford Alice.  Carol didn’t work, and Mike was an architect who had to work at home cause he couldn’t afford a real office.  Did they really need Alice if both were home?  Don’t get me started.  I wrote my college dissertation on this.  Carol clearly came into this marriage with money and in a future post, I will detail more.  You’ll have to wait.  Yes, I am a tease.

Today, I would like to discuss the second most common question that I receive, “What’s the best way to become a trillionaire?”  The best way is to inherit a couple of trillion from a sickly old uncle that you never liked but have connived over the years to believe that you love.  Note that I say a couple of trillion because Estate Taxes for trillionaires are absolutely brutal.  It’s on Barack’s list of things to do, and there’s not a day that goes by that he doesn’t text message me that it’s on his list. 

DO NOT.  Most people assume that the best way to become a trillionaire is to start one million companies and have them each make a million dollars in profit.  After all, a million times a million is a trillion.  No argument from Murray here!  But let’s me realistic (I’m all about being realistic).  If you want to be a trillionaire in under a year (as you should, who the hell has time to wait), that means that you need to start 19,231 companies every week.  Doable.  But are you going to remember your e-mail address for each of these companies?  The password?  Will you be able to make sure that there is enough fax paper in each of your company’s fax machines.  That’s the real bitch, and I can’t tell you how many companies go belly-up because they ran out of fax paper (it’s the silent killer or is that cancer.  No it’s heart disease.  What the hell am I thinking, the silent killer is arthritis.  Anyways, I’m getting off track). 

Here’s the magic formula: 18 companies that can each net you about 56 billion.  Now this is realistic, and it’s doable.  I’m all about being realistic and doable.  Wait a sec., Let me change that.  Why don’t we make it that the magic formula is 20 companies that can each net you about 56 billion.  That’s going to let us fail twice.  Not that we will.  But worse comes to worse, we can use the extra 112 billion that we make to give to charity or to start a new game show.  I’m getting sick of The Price is Right.

There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t get a call or an e-mail from someone who assumes that I know Bernie Madoff!  Just because we’re both very rich and Jewish, everyone assumes that we know each other.  Just like they assume that just because I’m very beautiful and speak Spanish that I know Charo.  I do.  But what they fail to realize is that Bernie is a New York Jew.  I’m a New Jersey Jew.  Our worlds rareley collide.  Nonetheless, Bernie and I were both actively involved a couple of years back in a charity event for The Lincoln Tunnel.  I never liked him.  I was an active supporter of adding concession stands to the Lincoln Tunnel.  I mean what if you get hungry while in the tunnel?  There’s nowhere to eat.  Bernie felt that it would be unjust to have food in the Lincoln and not in The Holland.  Although Bernie could give two shits (excuse my French) about people, he has always been a loud voice for equality amongst tunnels (and bridges).  And I do greatly admire him for that!  He has never shown any preference for either The Goethels, The Verazzano, or the GW.  At least not publicly.  Charo has.  But then Charo has never swindled billions from the rich.  I guess it’s up to our maker to decide who will have a seat next to Desi Arnaz in heaven! 

Any how, Bernie and my path meet again.  He happens to be in the same cell block as my grandmother: Grandma Sadie.  Bubbie is currently doing time for parking 2 hours and 15 minutes in a spot in Boca that had a 2 hour limit.  If she pleaded guilty, she probably could have gotten off with a $10 fine, but she pleaded arthritis, and the judge who said his bursitis is even worse gave her twenty years.    She’s off the street.  Thank G-d.  Any how, Bernie is bragging to everyone that he came up with the world’s biggest Ponzie scheme.  Gammie’s upset because she has nothing to tell her friends.  She’s ashamed.  So I’ve come up with a bigger Ponzie scheme.  And unlike Bernie’s, mine is for the good of mankind (or at least the one that lives in Boca).  It has nothing to do with bridges.  What are the two biggest problems facing Boca?  That’s right, of course, the nation’s debt is now, as Grandma likes to say, “millions and millions of dollars” and there are no good desserts at THE Chinese restaurant of Boca, The Golden Unicorn.  I mean let’s be honest here.  The Chinese are a great people that have given us the abacus and egg rolls, but their desserts suck (excuse my Chinese).  I mean who the hell serves lychies for dessert?  Not even the French!  That’s just wrong.  And a fortune cookie just doesn’t satiate the need for sweets after a salty meal. 

So here’s my Ponzi scheme: go out and buy ten thousand boxes of Girl Scout cookies (95% of mine are going to be Thin Mints).  But you do what you want.  It’s a free world although it’s really not.  Take out half the cookies in each of your boxes and save them for when you need a sweet nosh.  Put the other half back in their boxes and nobody’s none the wiser.  Now we barter the half full boxes (and not the half empty ones) back to the Chinese in exchange for all the national debt money we owe them.  No exchange of money.  No taxes, and we can still write off the cookies as a donation (keep the receipt).  The Chinese still have their “one child policy”, and I don’t think they have any daughters left.  So if my sources are correct, they are in desperate need of Girl Scout cookies.  Everybody benefits.  Now excuse me while I go out this morning to sell some of my 100,000 thin mints in the Lincoln Tunnel.  Heading my way?  Please have exact change.  I’m low on quarters.