On Theft and Time Travel

"Forget about that fire raging right
under my crotch — what time is it?"

More than I'd care to admit (but not so much that I'm too ashamed to admit on in a public blog), I spend a lot of time thinking about time travel. In fact, I've even written plays and the occasional article about it.

Obviously it's because I live in the past and am occupied with many regrets that I would like to someday remedy or erase, but one offshoot of my time-travel musings involves finding ways to make a lot of money with the assistance of transportation to (and, in most cases, from) a long time ago.

I tend to overcomplicate things when it comes to the consideration time travel, however — but not from a purely technical standpoint. I don't care about physics or metaphysics — which for all I know might be the same thing — nor am I interested in the actual transportation vessel. I'll let the scientists or physicists or metaphysicists handle the mechanics like how thick the walls of the time machine would be.

What I focus on (other than trying to kill the parents of my enemies before these enemies are conceived, which is fodder for a different post) is determining the most practical way to make a lot of money off time travel with ease and without causing too many major disruptions in future world history.

Most of my time-travel money-making opportunities involve stealing stuff and bringing them to the present day where they'll be considered old and therefore valuable. Here's a representative example of a scheme I've considered, along with some of the potential roadblocks to achieving financial independence:

Like Pulling Teeth, or, uh, Fixing Them

Right now, living alone, it's as if I'm not the father.

Last I blogged, a tooth that was bothering me for some time finally chipped on Sunday, my first full day living alone while the wife and kids relax (read: drive each other crazy) in Florida. On Monday I was able to secure an appointment with my dentist for the following day.

Unfortunately, the only time that I could snag was at 12:30pm, and smack-in-the-middle-of-the-day appointments usually mean I have to burn a personal day. But I was permitted the rare option of working at home, which meant I was kept company in the morning by Maury Povitch and his time-honored techniques of dispelling the ambiguity of disputed paternity. One of the episodes on this particular day was called, and I'm not kidding but I wish I was, "Your Baby Doesn't Have 12 Fingers...He Can't Be My Son!"

Spoiler alert: Mr. Dozenfingers was right.

On Lost and Found Money, Part I

Historical re-enactment.

Sunday morning I found a twenty-dollar bill at the bagel shop. I spotted the folded double-sawbuck on a table full of baked goods near the counter. There were no customers around, nor was there anyone walking out of the shop as I walked in, so the person who'd left that twenty was unlikely to be nearby -- and I don't think it was part of some kind of found-money social experiment.

I've blogged and vlogged about my encounters with losing money, and Mrs. The Anthony Show and I have endured several ebbs and the occasional flow of cash throughout our lives. Just last week I'd been alerted by a helpful automated phone call from Chase that my bank card was being used in California to purchase nearly 300 dollars' worth of perfume.

Fortunately, the bank put a stop to those fraudulent shenanigans and mailed me a new card within a week's time, but I had to hit up my father for a short-term cash loan since being super-fluid is not how I usually roll.

Anyway, when I saw that twenty-dollar bill, I could feel the pain of the person who lost it. Maybe it was someone like me, who shouldn't be buying bagels and egg sandwiches for breakfast anyway when there's perfectly good cereal and eggs at home. Or maybe it was some well-to-do fellow who parks in the fire lane in his BMW X6 and peeled off a twenty from a roll he carries in his pocket, secured with a rubber band used to keep broccoli in line. After all, if he wasn't carrying a bouquet of twenties, surely he would have noticed his missing money when it was time to pay.

I didn't think it would have been practical to give the money to the cashier and assume that the person would have returned looking for it, and because it was twenty dollars and not, say, the ninety or so I misplaced in a parking lot last summer, and because I figured someone else would have just pocketed the money anyway (and I don't mean that in a moral relativist kind of way) I just concluded I was experiencing one of those few times that some random event worked in my favor, even if it had to be at the expense of someone else.

Still, I felt guilty buying my breakfast with it.

POSTSCRIPT: Later that day, I took the kids to Target, and my son found a bank card on the floor. We dropped it off at the customer service desk. I'll never know if the owner of that card will realize that she lost it at Target, but at least I'll know that she won't be losing any money because of it.

Penny-Wise and Pound-Retarded

Those vertical lines are starting
to look like prison bars.

Do you keep complete track of all your finances and diligently track and prioritize your expenditures? If so, congratulations! I now hate you with the irrational venom I usually reserve for someone like Ed Burns or any number of people in whose honor I drink the Haterade and will blog about in the future. 

If you're like me — and I mean that in a good way — you find yourself throwing away money on what Harvard economists classify as "crap," while refraining from purchasing the things that you actually need. I connect this behavior to the my inability to finish many/most/all of the things I begin, whether it's the half-assed paint job in the stairwell or that garage that never seems to get completely de-cluttered.

And I simply endure the inconvenience that these situations create, such as having to see blue masking tape that has lined some of my basement moldings since 2003, because I'm either lazy or cheap or (most likely) live most of my conscious moments in a miasma of denial.

And yet...