True Story©... The Big Payoff pt I

     Okay, so I bombed the fuck out in that interview a couple of weeks ago and no one came to my defense financially.  I was left with little recourse.  I was forced with the ideas of either franchising my dick or flipping what little money I did have into the streets.

     Well there’s a couple of problems with those…

1 – Franchising my weewee, even if in a COMPLETELY professional manner, would be in violation of my home situation and things could become less than cool.

and…

2 – I don’t know the people I once knew to just go all Breaking Bad and shit.

     So I am left to use what I got to get where I want.

And man, FUCK am I far from “where I want” right now.  Shit, I even tried to rob Santa Claus!

Wayment…

That’s IT!

     Sanctions on North Korea to make them poorer have ATTEMPTED to shackle their trade of one of their main commodities; coal.  Since I landed myself on the permanent naughty list with the aforementioned attempt to jux Santa, I somehow now have an infinitely self-replenishing bag of coal.  The United States’ appetite for dirty filthy fucking coal is waning in the advent of cleaner and cheaper natural gas, but other countries still LOVE the shit.
With countries unwilling to deal with North Korea to buy THEIR coal, all I have to do is secure a meeting with the right people in the right places, show them how my magic bag gives me unlimited coal and I am basically PRINTING my own money right?

And therein came the problem.  Apparently, just randomly going out and asking international energy ministers about the possibility of selling them all the coal they might need  - totally undercutting the prices of ANY other nation – triggers some MAJOR whistles and I don’t need that kind of heat on me.

     I would have to aim lower…
Think, Phillip, THINK!

Do trains still run on coal?

I searched feverishly on Google to find out how I could work this whole magic bag of coal thing without alerting any authorities or triggering an IRS audit.  I found that while most coal-burning trains in commercial applications are a thing of the past, there is still a market for them in tourist and heritage lines.
That right there is a better idea, actually.  If I am dealing with tourist and heritage lines, people using old trains in theme parks and the like, I am dealing with smaller private companies run by an individual who is more for his bottom line than the responsible sourcing of their fuel.  This also means that I could easily find out a name of an individual to try to contact, show up with my magical sack and show them what it do.  MUCH easier than going into a probably corrupt and potentially hostile foreign government and putting my whole life at risk.

     So still on Google, I searched for transportation museums, Wild West themed parks and the like.  I also had to bone up on terms like “bituminous/subbituminous, lignite and anthracite” before showing up prepared to make a whole ass of myself.
Looks like the fat man put me on with a potpourri of bituminous and anthracite coals, meaning I have some high grade and mid-grade shit.  I also learned that the top level stuff can be used in metallurgy to make iron and steel.  That means I might have an even better go of it when I make it up into Appalachia.

     Now armed with a plan.  The bituminous goes for about $50 a ton and the anthracite almost a facecard each.  My presentation was simple.  I found the names of managers or big wigs, I would try to get face time with them, wherein I would show up with the bag of coal and a shovel and just go to work of never emptying the bag.  Then I would take their order, half of the industry price, cash up front and we would work out the logistics and delivery side of it on a handshake.

     I started with a small transportation museum in Arkansas that I will not name.  Their train runs three times an hour and in that time runs through 7 tons of coal.  In an eleven-hour day, considering that they stop running the train in the last hour of the night, that is 63 tons of coal PER DAY, six days a week.  Holy shit, that is almost 19,000 bucks!  Considering that they HAD been paying twice that every operating week of their year and that was one of their highest expenses, he JUMPED at the chance to fuck with me.

I booked a hotel room and the transportation manager commissioned every one of his big strong-back employees to get in here and shovel three months’ worth of  anthracite out of my bag.  Working in shifts, it took them four days to shovel it all.  I didn’t have to get my hands dirty personally.  Once the bins were full, I walked off with $226,800.

     I probably should have quit while I was ahead.  I had enough money to take me through a year, more than five times what I would have made showing up to work like a diligent little employee, to be honest.  But I had stars in my eyes.