"Powerball Reflections"

Q: "Mr. Roach, now that you've won Powerball, how do you think that your life will change?"

A: "Geez, I'm glad you asked. I've been planning this for a long time... Here's what I have figured out so far:"

"With a portion of my untold riches, I plan to buy the sovereign nation of Chad, immediately rename it Barry, and install myself as supreme ruler..."

My mind races...

* A giant 200-foot tall bust bearing my likeness is erected in front of the royal Winnebago. It is made entirely of Bondo and painted with various colors of rattlecan primer. Incredibly lifelike, its features sag and crack in concert with my own.

* Owners of SUVs will be sent to re-education camps where they will be taught to drive the speed limit, not run yellow lights at 60mph, and to wipe that asinine look off of their faces.

* I take Florence [Alice -ed], the maid from the Brady Bunch, as my royal concubine. In her honor, every woman in the People's Republik of Barry wears powder blue work clothes, orthopedic shoes, and a white apron. Dinty Moore stew is proclaimed the national food, Schmidt's the official beverage. Monty Hall will be the Minister of Culture, Chuck Whoolery my Exchequer of Currency. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass will play at all official functions. "A Taste of Honey" will be our national anthem.

* I surround myself with a crack staff of lackeys, bootlickers, and career yes-men culled from both industry and academia: my word is gospel. Mediocrity is amply rewarded, innovation suppressed at all costs.

* I wear a white belt over plaid shorts, black socks, blue vinyl jacket with someone else's name on it, and brown suede Hush Puppies with crepe soles. I cut my own hair most of the time. Only the front of my shirts are ironed – the sides and back will be deeply wrinkled. All of my shirts have conspicuous pit stains.

* On December 18th, my royal birthday, all able-bodied men emulate their ruler by wasting the whole day repairing old cars. Knuckles are bloodied, curses hurled, cheap beer drunk, and foul smelling liniment lathered on lower backs.

* Paparazzi document my every move. I single-handedly reinvent popular culture for my own profit: a horde of famous hangers-on follow me nightly to Red Lobster for fried scallop orgies washed down with watery 7-UP served in dirty plastic cups. Leonardo DiCaprio soon becomes addicted to fried scallops. While at the Betty Ford Clinic, he gets a highly visible pimple that will not go away. His career ruined, he hurls himself in front of a bus and is killed instantly.

* Polka music becomes chic, Jimmy Sturr a national icon, plaid pants wildly popular, and white buckle shoes de rigeur for any self-respecting teen rebel. I will, of course, reap another outrageous fortune by buying up all of this crap well before the unwitting public falls under my spell and prices skyrocket.

* The President of the United States will pay me a state visit wearing a monogrammed bowling shirt and $5.00 bin shoes from K-Mart. He will praise my sage wisdom and call the nation of Barry "the new paradigm for developing countries". On behalf of my subjects, I hand him a bouquet of plastic flowers stuck into a jagged piece of Styrofoam. Deeply moved, he bows his head and weeps openly for the benefit of the television audience. The bouquet remains on his desk in the Oval Office for the remainder of his term.

* I rule cheaply, erratically, and arbitrarily. Scandals are commonplace. Foreign aid money spent on hush money for shady out of court settlements.

* I keep the company of faded starlets and feed them cheap food purchased with expired coupons. We are seen everywhere, clad in ill-fitting garments from the clearance rack at Wal-Mart. I court, cavort openly with, and publicly humiliate in rapid succession: Ginger from Gilligan's Island, Shirley Jones, Florence Henderson, and Cloris Leachman. I am now a "lady killer".

* There will be 32 / 79ths of a chicken for every 57 pots. The other 4,471 / 79ths of the chicken will be spent on a lavish casino in the shape of a huge "M". All work is performed by fat Teamsters. Despite widespread malnutrition, Teamsters have a constant supply of fresh donuts flown in at incredible expense. At this palatial casino, all of the dancers are flabby and the food served cold. Cheap booze is funneled into empty bottles. Paul Williams will do three acts nightly, at gunpoint if necessary, for as long as he has air in his lungs. Blue-haired grannies go broke pumping tokens into my rigged slot machines. Their dentures are seized, their debts to me converted to servitude on my behalf, and they are sold as white slaves to Howard Johnson restaurants, the rest of their days spent pre-chewing entrées for the senior citizen menu.

* When I get bored, I invade neighboring Ethiopia using surplus Italian tanks and Fiat trucks. I blame the crushing defeat on anything that pisses me off at that time. Likely scapegoats: cheese food and cable-access TV.

* I reorganize the entire economy to mass-produce CS coupe strut braces to be sold at $349.95. Poverty vanishes within weeks and the state coffers bulge. However, when all 26 of the structurally sound coupes have these strut braces in place, global demand plummets and Barry faces the worst economic crisis in fifty years. I spend the next four months on a Mediterranean cruise ship pondering possible courses of action. Our situation is further complicated when $326 million of emergency funds provided by the IMF disappear shortly after I lose three consecutive shuffleboard games to Lou Johnson, a carpet salesman from Milwaukee. He was one slippery bastard.

* In late autumn of the first year, I pretend to fall into a deep trance before the assembled populace. Upon regaining consciousness, I proclaim that Michael Bolton is a martian infiltrator whose records are nothing more than coded messages for invisible spacecraft orbiting the earth. He is burned in effigy and his records incinerated in a huge pyre. This whole charade is so successful that I soon plan 39 similar trances covering a variety of topics, often months in advance.

* When I become sick of being supreme ruler and man-god of Barry, I anoint a successor during an extravagant halftime spectacle at the Super Bowl that bankrupts the country. I have narrowed the choice of a worthy successor down to Gary Coleman or Rick Schroeder, who decide the issue in a fierce steel cage death match using nothing more than plastic forks. Coleman wins by default as Schroeder is disqualified for using foul language.

* A bloody coup follows my abdication and Coleman is cooked in boiling oil. During the brief civil war, the casino is shelled continuously for three days by heavy artillery. This is only time that all of the toilets function properly. When the armistice is signed, Barry is be renamed ‘Lester’ and fades back into obscurity.

* After that, I lounge around in my undies, beer in hand, watching soaps. I need some time off.

M