“Occupy My Wallet”

by Kelly Anneken, managing editor

Readers, I write to you from Zucotti Park, New York, New York, epicenter of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began when a certain editor of a certain online absurdist humor journal decided to beg powerful executives for a handout.  I wasn’t even going to write this article, but some jerk-ass-jerk named Hobo Pancakes Editor-at-Large Isa Hopkins saw me getting pepper sprayed on the news, tracked me down, and pepper sprayed me some more until I agreed to do my “job,” which I’d just like to point out is basically an unpaid internship which is basically white slavery.  So there!

But more on that later!  This issue is about finance, which Wiki-Know-It-All describes as “the management of money or ‘funds’ management.  That sounds much simpler than what I’ve been led to believe about finances, but maybe the Trustafarian who loaned me this iPad can explain all the complications to me after he finishes his mushroom and banana sandwich.

To be perfectly honest, I can’t think of anyone less suited to write about handling cash.  My plans to marry royalty went bust after some locals in the Royal Bafokeng Nation swiped my crocodile purse and beat me senseless.  My Lincoln Logs were in the purse, along with my passport, cash and return ticket home, so I figured I better wait to talk to Kgosi Leruo Molotlegi until I had some more material possessions.

I signed on with a band of Malagasy pirates and we plundered our way around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Atlantic until one of them tried to get fresh with me somewhere around Sao Antao.  Defenseless save for a single wooden leg I stole from an orphan in Angola, I managed to incapacitate the rest of the pirate crew.  Then I set sail for New York City, accompanied only by a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker that we swiped from some wussy Indian kid in a lifeboat. Once we drew close to the American coast, I set Richard Parker loose in Seaside Heights after showing him a photo of the cast of Jersey Shore.

I slipped into New York Harbor under cover of darkness in early September, just as the last of my pirate jerky ran out.  Broke, bedraggled, and bewildered, I somehow stumbled my way into the subway stairwell at Wall Street.  My first night, I shared a corner with a guy everyone called Crazy Leo, even though he told me his name was Frank.  Crazy Leo had plans to pull a scam on his family back in Iowa, but the plans were long and dull and involved, so I shoved him onto the third rail and hightailed it up to street level, where fewer people were wearing aluminum hats.

I started to feel the old hankering for piracy, the itchy fingertips longing to take what didn’t belong to me and sell it on the black market.  I looked around, seeing well-heeled men in snappy suits and spit-shined shoes, knowing that most of them carried little to no cash or stereo equipment on their persons.

Then it hit me.  There I was, surrounded by all the money in the world, and in a position to demand it!  Richard Parker would return from Jersey eventually, and when he did, I would use him to extort all the money I’d ever need for the rest of my life.

Still, I felt the need to warn the executives of their forthcoming doom, so I swiped a piece of cardboard from a nearby hobo and made a sign that read “Give me money.  Richard Parker is coming.”  As luck would have it, some feckless hippies happened to be passing at that moment and assumed I meant some economist named Richard Parker was coming, so they made signs and played hacky sack, waiting for Richard Parker to show up.  They called their friends and their friends called their friends, and that’s how Occupy Wall Street got started.

I don’t really mind that so many people are here, I’m just worried that they’re going to be disappointed when the real Richard Perkins gets here.  I’m also concerned that once I shake down the financial fat cats with my jungle cat, these loafers are going to want a cut of the profits.  If that’s the case, I’ll probably be looking to unload a bunch of hippie jerky by the next time I have to write one of these stupid non-commentaries.  So bring it on, Isa!  I hear hippie jerky goes great with pepper spray.

by Brett Stout

“Charleston Strangle Machine”

“Clowns got it rough these days”

“Bursting the Coffin Bubble”

by Isa Hopkins, editor-at-large

Financial speculation has long been regarded as a healthy, even necessary, part of a market economy: cyclical investment has its downsides (the inevitable “bust”), but during boom-times, new industries are nurtured through capital infusions fueled by little more than euphoria, the irrational belief that an industry can gain value forever.  And now, as the country – indeed, the world – struggles to regain economic footing after the deep recession caused by the implosion of the real estate market, another nascent euphoria is brewing — and if history is any indication, this too must burst..

The tech bubble.  The housing bubble.  And now: the coffin bubble.

“Some people think coffins are a small market,” says Brian Dunham, chief of post-mortem financial artifacts at Goldman Sachs.  “But here’s the thing: everybody’s gonna die.  Not everybody is gonna use the Internet, or buy a house, but everybody’s gonna die.  Death and taxes, amirite?  And the Feds have a monopoly on the second one.  They’re really strict about that.”

Dunham has been instrumental in pushing up the market value of several death-related firms, most notably the industry leader Caskets’n’Things.  “We get ‘em cheap, from China,” says Walter Pryzzhic, CFO of the Oklahoma City-based conglomerate.  “Nobody gives a shit about a Chinese casket – I mean, what’s a little lead gonna do?  Kill ya?”  The red-faced and heavily bearded Pryzzhic slaps his hand against his thigh in mirth, chuckling uproariously.  “Ah, I love my job,” he says when he regains his breath.

The market for funerary accoutrements has been heating up for years now, driven largely by flashy, wealthy televangelists, who consider lavish casket spending to be an investment: what is the funeral of a televangelist except one last occasion to prove one’s holiness?  And what better way to demonstrate spiritual supremacy than with a $350,000 platinum-and-teak coffin, detailed with ivory inlay and plush mink lining?  The trend has spread to luxury coffins of all stripes: for $1.2 million, celebrated graffiti artist Banksy will tag your casket, and you can be buried in a one-of-a-kind treasure.

“Really,” says Pryzzhic, “it’s about expressing your uniqueness well into the afterlife.  And letting future archeologists know that you’re some hot shit.”

Caskets’n’Things has been growing at an enormous rate; their revenue has quadrupled over the last five years, while their sales volume doubled.  Meanwhile, their closest competitor – J.M.F. Fine Casketry – has taken a different tack.

“Working with Banksy has been a real coup,” says James Madison Fitzhugh III, the company’s president.  “We’ll be introducing a Damien Hirst model soon, and recently signed Andres Serrano. All limited editions, of course – you can’t expect the artist who gave us Piss Christ to suddenly turn mass-market!”

Fitzhugh and and Pryzzhic occupy two distinct areas on the retail spectrum – one mass-market, the other luxury goods – but, according to Goldman Sachs’s Dunham, each is merely replicating the strategies which made housing such a hot commodity at the start of the millennium.

“Coffins are pretty much real estate for the afterlife, so it’s a natural transition for the market to make,” says Dunham.  “And there’s always going to be a small sector of upscale consumers who will pay out the nose for a one-off, an irreplaceable artistic object – what’s genius about J.M.F. is they’re the first to really apply that sense of luxury to coffins.  After all, what’s the point in frugality when you’re dead?  Why not blow your wad on a really great coffin?  The government is just gonna take it otherwise.”  Dunham taps his computer screen.  “I just bought a 0.2% stake in Caskets’n’Things for CalPERS.  Largest pension fund in the world.  At the returns they’ve been getting, this should shave about three percent from California’s budget crisis.  That’s health care for a few thousand poor kids right there.  Just because people want to get put in the ground in style.”

And what’s Dunham’s cut of that transaction?

“I get paid appropriate management fees,” he tells me, curtly.  “My compensation is not at issue here.”

Has Dunham bought any product from Caskets’n’Things?

“Hell no,” he snorts.  “They’re the McMansions of eternal housing.  I’ll leave that to the aspirational classes, thank  you very much.”  He taps his keyboard and spins the monitor around on his desk, to face me.

“This,” he announces, pointing at a photo of a fire-engine-red coffin, painted with tropical fish and with a shark’s formaldehyde-preserved head affixed to the top, “is the new Damien Hirst model from J.M.F.  Only thirty available in the entire world.  That’s where I’m gonna sleep.”

Hirst is a provocateur whose artworks – which have incorporated dead sharks previously – regularly fetch millions at Sotheby’s.  What does a Hirst casket run?

“One point eight mil,” says Dunham, matter-of-factly.  “Chump change, really.  For a chance to rest in peace?  I’d spent a billion.”