SOOT

As soon as I win the Powerball I'm going to build a big house and live in the chimney.  Just in the chimney.  I'm never going to come out.


I will build an extra fireplace and when you visit you can stay in that chimney.  It would be too tight for both of us in one chimney.  And that would defeat the purpose.


Ah yes, the purpose.  The purpose is guidance, and reliability on guidance.


If I'm in the chimney I can't be somewhere getting into trouble, somewhere masking off crime scenes, somewhere herding empty beer cans with a leaf blower, somewhere wiping up the dog pee, somewhere obtaining photographic evidence of the last surviving chimera on the planet, somewhere listening to Melanie screech about her skate key and her candles in the rain.


You get the idea.


In my chimney (and only if I have had the presence of mind to build some fires before I move in), in my chimney if I really contort and bend I can eventually lift up my arm from along my side and get my hand up by my face, and from there I can scratch a message in the soot.  I can read the message (in the dark?) and know that I am still there.  It will be very painful to get the hand in position but the passing of information is serious business and some suffering should be involved.


I can't eat in my chimney so I guess I will die.  Probably it won't take very long either.  I guess if I do that then eventually my body with shrivel and twist and become smaller and even more eventually, it will decline into bones and fall in a noisy pile at the bottom of the chimney.


While I'm in my chimney I won't be able to spend the rest of my Powerball winnings.  If I have invested wisely I will have a lot of money when I die, or at least by the time they find my bones.


As soon as I win the Powerball I'm going to buy the tallest tree on earth and climb it and live at the top with only a slingshot and green suspenders.  The suspenders are for comfort.


The slingshot is for shooting out the newsy eye of the cameras that will come.