"If I were a rich man... " (sung to the tune of "If I were a rich man... ")

I'm not one to brag (much) but I am lots richer than Alice Mhandara and she has 96 trillion dollars!

The difference is, Alice has $96 trillion Zimbabwe dollars... not quite enough for a bus ride home in Harare, its capital city, and I have 40 US cents which is worth more than a Zimbabwe 100-trillion dollar bill, perhaps with a picture of Scrooge McDuck on it. 

Inflation sucks. 

Eclipse 550

With all my riches in Zimbabwe-speak, I could buy my own private jet or two or three, if they were priced in those dollars. The cheapest is the Eclipse 550 at just $2.9 million. (It  doesn't have automatic roll-down windows or door locks and you have to reach outside and manually adjust the back-up mirrors.)

And while the people of Zimbabwe have a hard time coming up with the fare for a local bus ride, last year 16,784 pets flew with their owners on Netjets (like Hertz for the rich). Kind of an ironic comparison, yes?

Because I have been busy these past few weeks and haven't had time to blog, I'll throw in a few bonus extras to make you think I really know stuff:

Marajo Island on patrol

In Marajo Island (about the size of Switzerland) at the mouth of the Amazon River, adroit swimming buffaloes, imported from afar to help settle the remote island, have grown so numerous (450,000!) that the police use them to patrol the streets and create a softer image than police cars on patrol.

Born lucky? There is a well-known architect that was born on 5/5/55 on Fifth Avenue at 5:56 am. Aw, that's just like almost having the winning lottery ticket but you just missed by one. I'll give you a better lucky number example. My nephew was born on 7/7/77 at 77 o'clock in the morning. (OK, I just made the time up.) He is Swedish and his name is S(e)ven, S(e)venson. (That too but when you're on a roll, you just keep going.)

How would you like to die? The New York Times weekly research quizzed its readers and not surprisingly, 44% wish to die in their sleep while 29% more add peacefully in my own bet with loved ones. A heart attack, stroke or aneurysm say 15% and dying happily handles all but the 3% who don't know or don't want to die. Good luck there. When comedian Bob Hope was asked at age 98 where he wanted to be buried, he said, "I don't know... just surprise me."

Last but perhaps most telling, in her new book, The Selfie Vote by Kristen Soltis Anderson, she observes that "While the Democrats run ads in online video games, the GOP continues to buy 30-second spots during Jeopardy!"