Confessions of a Schlemiel
I once got a papercut opening a Band-Aid. And my luck hasn’t improved. I didn’t even know that I was an investor in a oil-drilling company until I received notice of its bankruptcy. While I perused the packet of legal documents–looking in vain for any intelligible sentence amidst the jargon–I had to wonder how an oil company could lose money. Was it drilling through shale using silver spoons? I could get 500 barrels of oil a day just running a comb through Mitt Romney’s hair.
Now the corporation was offering itself as a buffet to its creditors, but it first required the stockholders’ consent. As the mystified owner of 45 shares, would I please approve the payment of $12.4 million to the company’s top executives? For my effort and inadvertent investment, I would have–and this is the legal phrase–a zero percent claim on zero percent on the company’s assets. Unfortunately, the enclosed permission slip only offers me a yes or no choice. I might have proposed a severance package with a guillotine.
Yet, such effortless chaos requires a certain genius. I am a Salieri of schlemiels compared to these Mozarts of mayhem. If only we could find the perfect niche for such monumental incompetence…They really be should running Iran’s Nuclear Arms program.
And let’s not forget the historic significance of this day: https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2010/08/05/how-the-irish-created-catholicism-2/