Caltrops - The Knuckle Shuffle - Re: That answers some of my questions

Forum Overview :: The Knuckle Shuffle

by I need clarification 08/15/2004, 11:01am PDT

Ray of Light wrote:

Would someone care to provide a backstory? I can't ejaculate when mystified.

Ray!

Something about Romania becoming too impoverished to afford to cloth their famous gymnasts, much less send them to the olympics. Long rumored to be a secret fan of gymnastics, it turns out that hundreds-of-thousands-aire industrialist and sometime-philanthropist Ray! has a complete gymnasium built underground on the sprawling Ray! estate, ready and waiting for any uniformless former Soviet bloc athletes to come and persuade him to help fund their olympic dfreams. The gymnasium was actually in the space that was originally going to house the olympic-sized pool or perhaps the olympic-sized indoor, year-round ski jump. Previous to that, the space was allocated for a private, 36-lane bowling alley, but it turned out that female professional bowlers, especially when naked, were somehow less than stimulating to watch, even secretly. When Ray! had first purchased the property, all he knew about the vast backyard was that under it he would construct the greatest secret masturbatorium-in-disguise the world had ever (not) seen.

But that was a few years ago, when home loan interest rates were so low. As the economy slowed and the Fed began inching those rates back up, Ray! was beginning to question the wisdom of pouring so much capital into what had to be, in the long run, a somewhat shakey investment. How could he even list the additional facility if amd when he sold the entire property? Wouldn't it make some of the buyers a little nervous? And if he didn't mention it and it was discovered later, could he be sued? Even if he wasn't sued, it's a sure bet he'd suddenly become infamous, the crazy guy who'd built a bowling alley/ski jump/pool/gymnasium/track and field facility (OHHHH, how he'd secretly craved that since Jackie Joyner-Kersee... those fingernails... he'd have to employee a full-time manicurist, as well, he supposed). No, better to keep his money in mutual funds. He'd managed to scrape together a nice, little nest egg over the past couple of years, why blow it on the gymnaswimajumpatrackatorium now?

Also, Ray! was pretty sure there were zoning and construction laws that would make the whole enterprise a giant headache, and would probably take years to complete. And while the Neverland Ranch had worked out so well for Michael Jackson, the backlash seemed to make it all somewhat less worthwhile. Ray! didn't need that kind of publicity, that's for sure. Especially with the pressures at work right now. Christ, you'd think when they brought him in as a consultant, they would anticipate his recommending some changes. Isn't that what a consultant does? And that fucking asshole of an IT manager. "Check me out, I have my Microsoft certificate and an 'I Grok Spock' t-shirt, I guess I'm sort of technical genius." He was tempted to just abandon them, just move out of town somewhere. Maybe get a nice little apartment, one of those in a complex that has a pool and a tanning deck. Don't some of them have hot tubs these days? That'd be wild...