Money is a very important thing in society.
Without it, we'd all be "bartering", which means that we'd argue for
weeks whether two chickens was worth three llamas and then get in
a winner-takes-all fight about it. Although it still involves transfer
of goods and all that good stuff, barter just can't stand up to the
amazingly cool powers of the monetary system. So, you ask, how do
I go about getting this 'money'? There are a couple of easy ways...
Rob's
Guide to
Making
Money
(of
course! what else?)
Robbing A National Treasury
This is a very quick and easy get-rich scheme, if you consider
it easy to bust past many armed guards and locked doors, and then
more armed guards (and more locked doors... hey, and then more armed
guards, too). Otherwise, it takes a bit of work (and you have to put
up with being on that stupid 'America's Most Wanted' list if you succeed).
If you aren't up to treasuries, you can resort to petty occupations
like stealing candy from babies, but it doesn't pay well; you just
get candy with baby slobber on it, and no one will even barter for
that, much less pay you money for it.
Finding Buried Treasure
Now, this could be slightly harder, since, as the name might suggest,
you have to actually find it. I would place more bets on crashed Spanish
galleons rather than buried chests, if I were you. The chests tend
to be scarce, and, if my knowledge serves me correctly here, are often
guarded by undead pirates and ghost skeletons and stuff. Then you
have to hire exorcists, and we all know how effective they are. So,
just rent some scuba gear, leap into the surf, and swim out to sea.
When you see crashed galleons, then investigate. Eventually, a school
of blue sharks will find you and eat you, but, hey, you might see
some treasure along the way.
Looting the Peasantry
From what I've heard, this was a popular sport practiced by people
of olden times (the days of yore and whatnot). Essentially, you grab
a sword, bonk peasants on the head with it, and steal their money,
if they actually have any. It's not too hard. Then you chase any nearby
soldiers around a bit, burn down some thatch houses and run away.
The only problem is we have a lack of thatch houses these days; those
darn shingles don't catch on fire as easily. Plus, there aren't all
that many peasants wandering around, and if there are, they're probably
just reenactment people and aren't even carrying any gold pieces.
Yeah, and the soldiers don't use medieval armaments anymore... some
might even shoot you before you could effectively chase them around
and bonk them with your sword. So maybe it's not all that great of
an idea, for this millennium, anyway.
Being the Guy who
Writes Spellchecker Dictionaries for Microsoft
This job would really suck, since it's a lot of work and you probably
don't get paid all that much. However, in light of the fact that this
silly program didn't come prepared with important words like "bonk"
and "RobComm", and I had to take time out of my schedule to add them
myself, I think we need a new person for the job.
Being a professional
minesweeper
Well, this isn't all that hard. Just hire yourself out to the military,
and they'll point you in the direction they want you to go. When you
step on a mine, you'll blow yourself up, and the military will know
where the mine was. It probably pays well, I mean, since you'll never
live to get the money, they'll offer you quite a bit. Of course, you
could use detectors and all that junk to better your chances of not
actually stepping on the mine, but that would be a lot of work, which
this article is trying to avoid promoting (except for the spellchecker
bit). Plus, they wouldn't offer you as much money, since you'd stand
a chance of living. A slight variation on the casing improves the
job, however...
Being a professional
Minesweeper
This is my preferred job. You sit at a computer and play this cool
little game, which I may have mentioned a few times in the past, called
Minesweeper. For the uninformed, it's a game where you randomly press
little boxes until you lose (you can press them non-randomly and win,
too). Being a professional Minesweeper involves no work except twitching
your index finger and slightly moving the mouse. I bet the pay would
be really good, too, if you could find someone who would pay you a
lot of money to do it. Otherwise, it doesn't pay well at all; in fact,
the job doesn't really exist. I made it up for the purposes of this
article. So you can't be one. Sorry.
Addendum
At any rate, there is also this little
thing called "work", where you get a "job" and do things like fill
out forms or lift heavy boxes. It supposedly provides money, too,
but I think the ratio of money to work input is bad enough that it's
not worth it. Just skip it and stick to the treasure... at least blue
sharks are more personable than bosses are.