I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with all of these Barack Obama commemorative plates that I invested in shortly after the 2008 general election. I’m assuming that they’re all skyrocketing in value as I write this, but I didn’t realize how tough investing actually is. Like, I totally didn’t think about the fact that, while my money is maturing in my victory-plate portfolio, I’m really not able to use any of it. And times are getting tough. I’m starving.

Every once in a while I’ll try to bring one of my victory-plates around and try to buy stuff on credit. The problem is getting these plates anywhere. They’re very fragile, much more delicate than you’d expect, and I’m not really comfortable stacking them up so they’re easier to transport. But then again, if I choose to leave them in their special commemorative victory-plate protectors, then I can’t carry more that two or three at the same time.

One time I went to the Home Depot and one of the cashiers seemed interested in making a trade. After a brief negotiation, we struck a deal: two and a half victory-plates for an extension chord and a nine-volt battery. So I handed over the victory-plates and waited for change. But the cashier wasn’t allowed to give me cash back for plates. She cracked one in half. Two and a half victory-plates. But then she told me that, now that she was looking at this plate cracked down the middle, she wasn’t sure if it had the same value as it did when it was whole. I tried to argue that it wasn’t a clean break, that it wasn’t precisely down the middle, and that I’d be willing to part with the bigger half if we could just get on with this transaction. Unfortunately for me, a manager came over and shooed the cashier away. Turns out she wasn’t a cashier at all. She was, once, like months ago, but she got fired for being crazy. But she kept showing up randomly in an orange vest acting like she still worked there. I asked the manager about the victory-plates and he told me sorry, cash only.

“What about the certificates of authenticity that came specially numbered with each plate?” I asked the manager. “Aren’t those kind of like banknotes? Like how dollar bills used to be used so that people didn’t have to carry all of their gold around?” The manager wouldn’t budge. I demanded to see a different manager. He said fine, walked away, but then came back fifteen minutes later claiming to be a different manager. It was clearly the same person. I’m not an idiot. Home Depot has the worst customer service.

I hope the Euro collapses. I hope that, by the time this article makes it up on this blog, the Euro is gone. That’s what I need. I need a society with absolutely no dominant currency. I initially wrote that I hope that the US dollar collapses, and while, yes, that probably would have proved to be somewhat of a vindication in the short-term, with everyone else carrying around wheel barrels full of useless greenbacks, unable to trade them in for even a loaf of stale bread or a gallon of expired-but-not-yet-spoiled milk, and I’d be sitting on a fortune in cold, hard, recession-proof, economic collapse-proof victory-plates, I realized that I probably wouldn’t want to actually live in a society completely overrun by financial ruin. No, I’d rather use the value of my victory-plates to exploit a separate society, like Europe, and then use that wealth to live very comfortably over here. Greece looks like it’s going to need a new currency pretty soon. I think I have enough Obama plates to cover at least the mainland. I’m not sure about all of the islands though. I think my parents have some George H. W. Bush commemorative silverware locked up in an undisclosed location somewhere. I keep trying to get them to show me where it’s all being stored, but they’re so secretive with their cutlery, which, I guess is a smart move. There’s no way I’d ever tell anyone where I’m hoarding all of my wealth.

Part of me hopes Obama doesn’t win come November, not because of any politics or anything petty, but it’s because I’m pretty sure that reelection-plates rarely fetch as high of a market value as commemorative, stunning, historic victory inauguration-plates. I’ve already called up the Franklin Mint and put special hold orders on any potential Romney dishes, or Romney limited edition soap dishes, and they said OK, but they needed half of my Obama-plates as a deposit. But none of this is helping me out with my finances. Like I said, I’m starving here. I have all of these plates but nothing to put on them to eat. Not that I would actually use the victory-plates as actual plates, like I wouldn’t put food on them or anything stupid like that. I just thought it was a nice little image there, the absence of food contrasted with the abundance of plates.