Witz Pickz: Found Money!

I have found money! No, I’m not saying that as an overly proper proclamation like, “and then I found five dollars,” I’m saying it with caps. Found Money. I have Found Money. And I don’t mean the kind where a nun from Sierra Leone found some money of mine and wants to send it to me if I could only send five thousand dollars for fees and taxes so that she can process it legally in the eyes of both the United States and God oh and also any extra I send will help save orphans with AIDS. No, that’s not the kind of Found Money I’m talking about, although I’m pretty sure as this post progresses I will start to think otherwise.

I received a letter in the mail a few months ago from a reputable bank saying that an account of a bond turned up in my name and since it has sat for so long in their bank, it’s about time they notified me of it (yeah, typing that to read, it DOES look sketchy, but I promise it’s not). And this isn’t the first time this has happened to me. A few months ago, MORE Found Money made its way to me in the same fashion and I actually received it. Apparently bad accounting and confusion means I get Christmas several times a year. Or more so, it’s like when you leave a ten in your jeans and wash them, and then randomly find ten bucks the next time you put them on—and it’s been through the wash so it looks a little beat up and fake, but you keep your fingers crossed that it’s legitimate.

So I went down to the bank to get the letter notarized before I could send it in. That’s when the bank lady said something baffling. I told her why I was there and she said, “Oh yeah, a lot of people have been getting Found Money recently.” Really?? What?? “A lot” of people are receiving FOUND MONEY? What world are we living in? APPARENTLY, a shit-ton of money was misplaced years ago and now everyone’s finding money. Is that even possible? It’s certainly not plausible. As My Friend Who Formerly Had A Pool said, “that’s why the economy is in recession! Everyone hid their money like squirrels years ago!” There’s no ACTUAL recession, people just need to go and find their money, or have it find them.

My only explanation for this is that technology must have finally caught up with the problem. Like how people who have been searching for their relatives and lineage for years are finally able to get a full family tree with very little effort. Well, now all that sneaky money out there is able to be tracked down and given back to us. It makes me wonder what Matthew Lesko has been up to recently, and if we owe any of this joy to his behind the scenes antics.

This also legitimizes my life choices over the last few years. Sporadic work and sketchy income has been buoyed by extremely coincidentally timed found money claims. For a world where not working is looked down upon, the Universe sure has been sending me mixed messages and helping me out. Does this mean that there could be millions of dollars owed to homeless people, but they just don’t have the email or physical address available to receive the claim letters? It just might.

So anyway, only time will tell how this Found Money pans out, but the fact of the matter is that we live in a world where Found Money is possible, and that’s pretty awesome.

No Scam No Scam No Scam,
Witz

ADDENDUM TO WATCHING SHOWS ONLINE:

Here is an addendum to my television show links post the other day. One of the sites, “show-links.tv” was shutdown last week as UK police arrested the host of the site for piracy felonies. What doesn’t make any sense is that the guy wasn’t actually doing ANYTHING. His site is simply a collection of links pointing TO illegal and legal content. His site is just the hub, and none of the actual content is hosted by his (or any of these) sites. All the content is hosted by other sites and what they choose to host is their responsibility. The site even has a disclaimer saying that they take no responsibility for the content that is externally uploaded and linked to their site. They warn the hosts not to have pirated material. As far as I can see, they are entirely in the right legally. Now, it can be argued that they were still making this content more easily available to the public, but when 50% of the content is hosted by You Tube, how can the intermediary really be held responsible? Morally, it might be “wrong,” but legally they should be sound. WHICH LEADS TO THE QUESTION of whether or not people who link to sites like that are also breaking the law. By posting a youtube video of illegal content on a blog, am I or Bill Simmons, or anyone else breaking copyright laws? That would be a tremendous step backwards in information sharing, as it means that links to articles, products, etc. would all be violating copyrights. My guess is that they will either settle this case or the defendant will get off, but they are sending a message and, unfortunately, it’s a inane one. For every one show-links.tv that gets shut down, ten more will spring up in its place with the same disclaimers.