It appears that nothing brings out the greed in me more than the knowledge that at any moment, hundreds of dollars could spontaneously appear in my bank account.  I can hardly stand the suspense.  Any of you old people out there, has this kind of thing ever happened before?  Will we one day tell our kids about this? “Back in ought-eight, George Dubya gave us all a bunch of money.  That was right before the bread lines and the riots….”  We will all sound like characters from Dr. Zhivago.

Speaking of things we will tell our children.  I wonder if the next generation of human beings will have any concept of what actual wooden furniture looks like.  In my office at work, there are three different kinds of particle board furniture, all with their own imitation-wood stickers.  If it weren’t for Lindsay’s grandmother, we would not own any real wood furniture, I don’t think.  It makes me wonder if eventually  wooden furniture will be completely gone.  All that our children will know are the fake wood things.  They will see something real and think, “Man, that looks so terrible.  The grain is so inconsistent.  Look at this bookshelf I got from Ikea.”

Of course if the Dr. Zhivago scenario holds true, they will be living 20 to a house and burning that fake wood furniture in the fire place to stay warm.

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: I told myself it was beneath my dignity for arresting a man for pilfering firewood. But nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man, and the party was right: one man desperate for a bit of fuel is pathetic; five million people desperate for a bit of fuel will destroy a city. That was the first time I ever saw by brother, but I knew him and I knew I would disobey the party. Perhaps it was the tie of blood between us, but I doubt it. We were only half-tied anyway. Indeed as a policeman I would say, get hold of a man’s brother and you’re halfway home. Nor was it admiration for a better man than me. I did admire him, but I didn’t think he was the better man. Besides, I’ve executed better men than me with a small pistol.