I love this country. You can be anything you want to be (even if you're a below average student, recovered drug-addicted alcoholic, born-again, right-wing Christian), live anywhere you want to live (especially if Daddy bought your way into the governorship of a state where he didn't have to pay taxes while he was President so you could go to rehab), and dream as far as your imagination can take you (well, we'll let someone else do that for him; otherwise, the image of a pasty white guy in Bermuda shorts clapping for some toothless strippers rolling around in his backyard comes to mind). It's that dream that someone else came up with that does it for me: 87 billion dollars.
Now, I can fill up pages about what philanthropic things I'd do with that money. I can barely name 87 people to give one billion dollars to, yet alone 8,700 to give one million to or 870,000 to give one hundred thousand to or even 8.7 million to give ten thousand dollars to. I don't know about you, but ten thousand dollars would make a pretty big difference in my life. So instead of pointing out the obvious fact that this country will never be out of debt with a Republican in office or do anything fiscally responsible for 'the people', I thought I'd jump off the soap box and come up with some things I could do with 87 billion dollars (not that you'd ever hear from me from my private island hideaway). So Strap this on for September:
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The Top Ten More Interesting Ways to Use Eighty Seven Billion Dollars
10) Fill an Olympic size swimming pool with eighty seven billion drops of Cristal for a women's only naked pool party.
9) Start my own arts center fully equipped with a stage for live theatre, movie studio, recording studios, dance halls, etc., for women of all sizes and shapes to do their art. Women owned and operated.
8) Distribute 87 billion shots of tequila, lime, and salt (or Prozac for the alcoholics) to the world to have a drink at the same time to get everyone to just lighten up.
7) Try eighty seven billion seconds with women as the leaders of every country. You do the math. It's around 2,800 years. Seems fair to me.
6) Buy a bevy of scientists to come up with a proper cloning of Nicole Kidman for my own personal collection of redheads.
5) Purchase my own private jet to whisk me off to any destination with Hooters-style flight attendants and pilots.
4) Place private web cameras at the showers of the designated homes of my favorite redheads linked only to me.
3) Put 870 million one hundred dollar bills in a warehouse to be guarded by Angelina Jolie in full Lara Croft style.
2) Strategically release 87 billion pigeons around the White House.
1) Have a blowout wedding to the love of my life, Robin, on my own private island with 500 of our closest friends.
Lisa Rock is a syndicated columnist based in Chicago and can be reached at StrapThisOn@aol.com .
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