NEW MONEYMAKING SCHEMES

Let's see...I believe I've already written about my plans for an alternative homeless magazine ("Several Smaller Issues that Really Add Up") and my tortilla-with-picture-of-Virgin-Mary moneymaking schemes, so it's clearly time to come up with a new one.

Because, of course, I'm broke, and having a full-time job and doing contract work on the side is clearly not providing enough, as evidenced by the fact that I do not own a home recording studio, and have yet to indulge in anything that could be described as "jet-setting". And so far, plans to be a world-famous musician with chart-topping albums, finding a cure for cancer, and being a published author have failed to come to fruition.

For a while, I was considering bagging it all and becoming one of those guys who pushes ice cream carts through the Mission in San Francisco during the summer. Seems like a relatively stress-free life; nobody really expects much of you when you sell ice cream out of a hand truck for a living. Except for the kids, maybe, who are hoping not to get anything too melty-melty.

I've only been approached by a man mistaking me for a prostitute in London once so far (my odds were far higher in the Mission, but I was offended--it wasn't so much being mistaken for a whore as a *cheap* whore that got to me), so selling my body is out. As I've mentioned before, if I could find someone who would buy by the pound, I'd be set.

"Kept Woman" and other variations on the theme are also not doing so well. This is doubly sad because there were all kinds of promising side businesses involving things like the black-market baby trade that now seem forever beyond my grasp.

When I was at college, my friend, Robyn and I, and a great idea. We were going to run a service for women with loser boyfriends. You know how it is--you are doing fine until you talk to the guy on the telephone, and then you hear yourself saying things like, "Oh, no, I understand. You only slept with my sister once, after all, and you *were* drunk...." We figured we could plant little chips in the female client's telephones, and then when the boyfriend was on the phone, we'd conference in, and every time she said something backboneless, she'd receive a small electric shock.

This never seemed to catch on, either.

Perhaps I could rent out myself and other members of my family--we're in constant crisis, and it seems only fair that we capitalize on this, in the very most "capital" sense of the word. There isn't a party you couldn't get out of with my family as yours. "Sorry, I really can't make it tonight--my sister's house just burned down." Or, "I need to take a few days off of work--my niece has finally turned up in Los Angeles, and I think she's pregnant, but it was hard to tell what she was saying because she sounded drunk."

It's all about the marketing, really.

Or what about stalking? I've had four--or is it five? stalkers, now, and I *totally* know how it's done. Are you jealous because everyone else has had a stalker, and you haven't? Jealous of all of the attention? I'm your woman!

Hmm.

That sounds like a lot of work, frankly.