Run-DMSteve

I’m applying for a job in Trump’s cabinet. Why not, at this point I have as good a chance as anybody. I could hang in there for 10 days, do something I won’t admit with a porn star named after the weather, and play chess with the Russians (they’ll collude to let me win). I guarantee you that no one in that confederacy of dunces knows anything about ’80s music, except for Rick Perry, who still dances in his underwear to “Wake Me Up (Before You Go Go).”

Yes, I’m leaving soon for a trip to D.C., and then I fly to Massachusetts and Antique Parent Land, where all the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and the children are middle-aged. I won’t be back for a while. But before I go, I have to settle something, and that something is the challenge I threw down in my last, very exciting post about spare change. Somebody won. Bigly.

I have a friend who goes by the handle Accused of Lurking. He’s also a superhero who fights disorganized crime as Khaki Man. Accused of Lurking is one of the scariest people I know. He’s so organized that the Library of Congress, knowing they need help, keeps him on a retainer. (When Lurk was 12, they paid for his retainer.) If you give him something, he will not only save it, he’ll cross-index it. Accused of Lurking is the only person I know with the stamina to interview 15 contractors and input their data in a color-coded spreadsheet before he decides who is going to paint his fucking house.

Facts stick to Lurk and never fly away. He could break Jeopardy. Things stick to him, too. Rosebud! He lives with every computer he’s ever owned, including the Apple I he bought out of Steve Jobs’ garage in Los Altos in 1976. (He also lives with a woman who, on the occasion of their marriage and through total force of will, compacted her name from 20 letters to seven. She’s scary, too.)

Thus you won’t be surprised (but you will be frightened) to learn that Accused of Lurking has almost exactly guessed how much money my jar holds when it’s full.

Drum-machine drum roll, please.

The amount in the jar varies based on my impatience to go spend the cash already and how many quarters I steal from myself while the coins are building up. But the range never varies: $65 to $68. I write the dates and the amounts on the inside of the lid.

$65.85 on January 22, 2018
$65.35 on September 23, 2016
$68.98 on June 9, 2014

Accused of Lurking’s winning entry: “My mayo jar guess is $65.”

Second place goes to my friend mikenr with $51.43. “Given the parameters of your story,” mikenr writes, “your mayo jar should hold $51.43. But my official guess will be – one cent (virtually, no, literally, guaranteeing me an interview-free interview, merciless or otherwise, which is a ‘prize’ I do not care to win. But it’s the journey that counts, right?).”

In third place we have my friend Mr. Seaside, who sent this story:

Looks like $21.73 (though this estimate may be as much as $3.47 too high). Gallon glass jars are the way to go in coin accumulating. I had a friend who picked up all of the coinage he found on his daily walks. After decades of doing so he had 5 or 6 large jars of cash with coins dating back as far as the 1920s. Then he ‘cashed in’ before he was able to cash in the coins. Just a small part of his legacy.

Nice try, boys, but you will never be as scary as Accused of Lurking. As Count Floyd used to say, about something that wasn’t scary at all, “Vazn’t that scary, kids?” before pretending he was being filmed in 3D by repeatedly lunging at the camera. To commemorate Lurk’s triumph, he will receive a lifetime supply of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat, and a lousy copy of our home game. No, he will be mercilessly interviewed. No, I think I’ve done enough of that already. He’ll receive something, because he deserves it. Perhaps an ash tray from my first cabinet meeting, but not the contents of my jar the next time I empty it.

When I get back, we’ll explore the House of Herbie Hancock, spin the most depressing albums of the 21st century (that post will not be required reading), and I’ll unveil my latest innovation in marriage technology: Anti-Wife Movie Night.

Until then, Ryan Zinke says, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”