True Story©… Old Bamma Care

 

     I once said “I’on know who’s big mama need to hear this, but Ginger Ale is just soda.”
I was immediately jumped by six nonagenarian grandmothers with canes.  I legit did not learn my lesson about THINKING such things, only about saying them aloud.

     So I got to thinking…  How many more of those “remedies” they gave us in the 80s that didn’t actually cure shit, so much as made us just a little bit more comfortable until our honestly-pretty-damned-effective immune systems circled up the wagons and handled business as designed?  The Google search sent me down an internet rabbit hole which I found both intriguing and re-traumtizing, I will talk to my therapist about that part next week…

     It also gave me an idea…
Remember, back in Soft Eyes, when I explained just how much you could get away with just on the strength of the fact that people don’t pay attention to shit?  Well we’re back on that!

     I had to put a plan in action and that plan clearly required some exploitative tactics.  More on that in a minute.  My city is getting out of the Housing Projects business and more into housing vouchers, or designated scattered sites as available housing has become less and less available.  What you may NOT know, though, is that you can rent a place in the PJs or scattered site even if you don’t “qualify,” you just have to do so at fair market value.  If we know anything about how gentrification works, you know that any housing in and around those areas tend to be more affordable than other areas.
Those neighborhoods also tend to be lacking on things such as grocery stores and healthcare facilities.

     I’m CLEARLY not opening a grocery store, so that leaves one option.  The only thing to it is that I can’t SAY I am offering “healthcare,” I have to present it as a consulting business and apply for an LLC to keep what may come of it out of my personal shit.  I drew down $1500 from the SpamBack funds for deposits and such, then rented a 2-bedroom house in one of the scattered sites.  I went on FB and started a business page for ‘Old Bamma Care LLC,’ directing contact to that address and Moe Phillips’ burner phone number.  The language of the page was suggestive that I am offering healthcare information services, but that serious issues should be directed to an actual professional which we clearly were not.
SUGGESTIVE is operative, in that no promises were ever made.  Furthermore, the small print at the bottom after the Contact Us had all the “don’t sue us” legalese needed.

     I knew the misdirect was working when people were calling about “Obamacare,” clearly ignoring the words in front of them…  Soft Eyes, I tell you!

     So how, if there was no actual work being done, does such an undertaking make money?
Thanks for asking.  Y’ll remember that doctor in Chicago 10 years ago who only charged $5 a visit and didn’t bother trying to deal with insurances?
[link]
Well this ain’t 2012 anymore, that $5 is $15 now.

     Business?  BOOMING!!!
Doors were set to open at 8am, people were lined up to get in at 6:45 with fifteen dollarses in hand and ready to be seen.  Averaging, by myself, 8-10 “patients” an hour at $15 a head until I had them all out the building at the end of the day was netting me $1500 a day, with my only overhead being--…

WAIT!

I can’t talk about “overhead” until I talk about exactly what it was I was doing.
F’rinstance, if someone complained of a stomach ache, they would be given some saltine crackers and ginger ale.  Someone with a bee sting would be given some meat tenderizer to put on it.  So on, and so-forth.  Some of this shit is high-level effective in bringing comfort to the infirmed, but none of this shit is “medicine,” especially when you consider that the other room in the house just had a row of cots for people to lay down on for an hour and watch old The Price is Right episodes on constant streaming.  I repeat, there is not even a passive or hidden suggestion that I exist to even ATTEMPT to cure anything, because ginger ale is not medicine.

…  so yeah, overhead…
$1100 for projects-adjacent housing, $55 for internet, $25 for water $150 for electrical.  These are the as-planned monthly expenses.  I spent $50 of the remaining $170 on cleaning products and the remainder on ginger ale and saltines from Sam’s Club. I pulled an old desk, TV and PC from the storage building here at my house.

For those keeping score at home, notice that I am covering monthly overhead EVERY day on average.  My LLC serves it that I am absolutely not a healthcare company, only informational.  I would not be providing any drugs of any kind – not even over the counter – so no worries related existed.  Safeserve certification allowed me to be fine providing the soda and crackers.

$1500 a day Monday through Friday, mostly from the people in the neighborhood, for three weeks paid the rent forward for a year and I settled in the house to enjoy the remaining $12k with my wife and children…

… then it happened…

The local news did what they THOUGHT was a feel-good story about a new area organization that seemed to have popped up out of nowhere to offer its marginalized community some healthcare assistance.  They had chased down public record and hadn’t been getting responses to their attempts to get to the mysterious Moe Phillips for comment on the good he was doing, framed in an attempt maybe to drum up some more support to expand through a possible non profit.
As we were on the couch waiting on Jeopardy to come on, wife-person had something to say…

Wife Person: “Heh, Moe Phillips”

Me: “…”

Wife Person: “You didn’t!”

Me: “Umm…  no?”

Wife Person: “Is that where you’ve been every day, where all this--…  You can’t keep this money!”

Me: “I can’t give this money back!”

Wife Person: “Why not?”

Me: “Because I provided goods and services as I promised.”

Wife Person: “But you--…”

Me: “…  didn’t promise ANYTHING more than I gave.”

Wife Person: “How?”

Me: “People. Don’t. Read.”

Wife Person: “Amazing”

Me: “Ain’t it?”

Wife Person: “I can’t let you keep doing this.”

Me: “It’s about four and a half bands a week, we could afford to take a week or three off any time we want.  If we do it for a year, we pay the house off and--…”

Wife Person: “…  kill it…  Karma ain’t gon' reward a scheme.”

Me: “You never let me have any fun.”

     I called the housing authority on Tuesday morning to end the lease, they will refund the remainder of the 12 months at the end of this month.  I turned off the utilities and ate an early termination penalty on the internet.

 

Back to the drawing board, folks.