By Harley Quinn

I’m a wealthy man today, but not so long ago I was as far down on my luck as anyone could be. I lost my job as an actor, making TV commercials. You know that ad for Loonyesta, where a guy is happily snoring away while a huge, green lunar moth hovers over his head? Well, that was supposed to be me.

Ya see, I hate bugs. When that big moth started in a flappin’ ‘round my face, I couldn’t stand it. I brought a can of bug spray into the studio and hid it under my pillow. Well, here come that dratted moth agin. Jist when he started in a flappin’, I let him have it with that bug spray, right in the ole kisser. It was curtains for that ole moth, I’ll tell ya that. As it turned out, there was a shortage of trained lunar moths that year so I set back the commercial’s production schedule eight months. The director wasn’t very happy. In fact, he was greener than the dead moth. Anyhow, that’s why I was unemployed.

In the space of one month, I was homeless, hungry and destitute. I wandered down by the bus depot and saw a guy setting up two milk crates and a plank behind his van. He put up a hand-painted sign that said: “I.B. Nightflyer-Mortgages”. He called me over and showed me how I could get a mortgage with no income, no down payment and no up-front costs. Well, I signed right up and bought a house. Then I signed up some more, and bought an apartment complex. I rented out the apartments and moved into the new house.

Everything was O.K. until my mortgage payments went through the roof and a few of my tenants quit paying rent. Next thing ya’ know, they was forclosin’ on me.

Well sir, I went to court and boy did I get a surprise. It seems as how ole Mr. Nightflyer sold my mortgage to somebody who diced it up, shredded it, fricasseed it, reformulated it, regurgitated it and ephemeralized it. Here was this high classed lawyer representing a multi-national bank, an’ all he had to show he was the lender, was a yellow sheet of paper from a legal pad with some Chinese writing on it. The judge threw him out of court and I went back to my place and continued living rent-free. I decided to share the wealth, so I cut my tenants’ rent in half and still made a fortune. I even threw a few bucks towards the town for taxes since they weren’t gettin’ any from the escrow money, since no one can prove who I owe my mortgage money to.

It sure is a privilege to be able to wake up in the morning knowing I am millions of dollars in debt, with forty-three cents worth of equity in real estate, and knowing I’m gettin’ richer every day. What a great country!~