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Serious money, Guinness a sip at a time

Mr Obama’s proposed Financial Stimulus package, which he is (wait for it) trying to borrow the money to implement, is serious money.

How serious?

To equal it, you would have to earn more than a million US dollars in every single day since Christ.

If you slogged through a ten-hour day, that’d be USD$100,000.00 an hour. If you worked Mondays to Fridays only, USD$140,000.00 an hour.

For me, even spending that much would be difficult. Spending a million dollars (about 1½ million Aussie dollars), no worries. Doing it for the thousandth time (having earned a little over a tenth of 1% of the package) would be a bit harder. When you got as far as the crucifixion (call it ≈25AD from a birth in ≈2BC, so roughly 8 billion dollars), what would you spend it on?



After being visited in the green nation by his two brothers from overseas, Paddy wandered into the pub to order 3 pints of Guinness in three separate glasses. Then he sat at a table on the other side of the room, took a sip from the first glass, a sip from the second, a sip from the third, then back around again & again until he had finished them all.

He went back to the bar to order another round.

The barkeep nodded, then said, “Paddy, t’ be sure, your Guinness goes flat real quick when I draw & you drink three glasses all in one go. It’d be much fresher & taste much better if you ordered one glass at a time.”

Paddy responded “Nooo... I’m drinking one for my brother in the ’States & one for my brother in Australia, as we agreed I’d do.”

The barkeep smiled, nodded again, drew Paddy 3 glasses, & watched him wander off to drink those.

Paddy did this regularly every day for several months, then one day ordered only two glasses.

Curious, the barkeep watched him, then when Paddy returned to order 2 more, said “I don’t want to intrude into your grief or anything, but are your brothers all right?”

Paddy grinned, & said, “Yah, we’re all fine... it’s just that I’ve quit drinkin’...”

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