Damn, dawg. Can you believe it? Once again Kawhi Leonard did something. However, this time it wasn’t a nothing something; it was a bad something. You’ve probably heard about it by now: He took money from a fake company or something and then Steve Ballmer was actually the money haver/giver and it was like “whuuuut.” Crazy. I bet people call him "Basketballmer" sometimes and he doesn’t like it.
Maybe that’s why he wanted to go through a shell business to completely cheat the league.
However, it seems the league doesn’t particularly mind, for whatever reason. Maybe it’s because doing stuff is hard. Have you ever done a thing before? It’s like … I don’t know the word for it. Have you ever done nothing? Yeah. That’s nice.
And when you do something, sometimes it’s bad. We just talked about that four paragraphs ago. You know?
If this seems like a cyclical, vapid use of English words and syntax, then you’re very observant. That is the correct way to feel about this. Why does this not matter more to people? It seems like the only answers to that question completely call the credibility of the league into question. IT WASN’T VERY CREDIBLE IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Anyway, let’s make bank. Here are some silly shell businesses people can use going forward because apparently crime is legal now. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you want to give me money illegally hmu on bsky
1) Tetris LARPing
Think about it.
You probably thought about it too long. If your head hurts, you messed up.
But yeah. Think of one big, grassy field with people dressed up as Tetris blocks slowly walking from one end of the field to the other, rotating 90 degrees at a time, hoping to line up at the end in one big 10-square line all together. Perhaps many side by side.
The lines don’t disappear because that would be against the laws of physics, and I know that because I have an English degree that took me eight years. Can you tell?
This would be incredibly dumb, so it’s the perfect way to pour a bunch of money from point A to point B. Who is going to investigate Tetris LARPing? It’s like how dumb people think being gay works: Once you get anywhere near it, “oh no, now I’m infected.”
Well, that’s how it is. If you investigate money laundering in Tetris LARPING, you wake up two weeks later in Kansas walking two miles east dressed as a T-block.
2) A physical music store
You guys are probably too young to remember this, but back in the '50s, you used to have to go to stores in places like A Mall or A Strip Mall to get music. But it wasn’t this crazy, digital music that kids in the '60s are used to. It was a piece of plastic you’d scrape against concrete or some very specific types of asphalt. If you didn’t scrape it at the right speed, the song was in the wrong key and your mom made you start over.
“That’s not jingle bells. Do it better. Do it right.”
Anyways, nowadays physical music is played by diving scalp-first into a very wet type of glass that doesn’t-exactly-but-kind-of vibrates against your skin, and bands like Thrice and New Kids on The Block sing to you through your pores. Each record costs eight bucks but you can only listen to them once. After that, the glass cools and becomes a really annoying, very large solid mass that you have to dispose of according to the rules of your state or county.
3) Dunkin Donuts
Dunkin took the “Donuts” off their name, so that means you can claim it now. It’s free! Like other people’s mail!
I think this would work well. If people got suspicious they’d probably start investigating the more popular Dunkin instead. America runs on Dunkin. That’s their slogan. That has nothing to do with anything.
But, if you made it the slogan for your shell business, you could say “America runs on Dunkin Donuts” and it’d be like camouflage. It always takes like eight attempts before the word camouflage looks right. That’s why camouflage is so effective.
4) Christian McCaffrey
Pretty self-explanatory.
5) AI-powered VTuber Twitch streamer
The only thing LLMs are good for is ... I bet you thought there was an end to that sentence, but no. LLMs (and I’m not saying this as a writer fearing replacement, because the only AI that can replace me is one that hallucinates; they shut those ones off) are not just a net negative but a near universal negative. It’s like I’m watching people's brains melt in real time. You do not want me to be the last person left. I need other people to make my anti-psychotics.
But, now that we’ve established that this idea is based on something inexpressibly terrible, let's continue digging toward hell.
The VTube model must be hot. I don’t mean attractive; I mean there must be flames coming off of the model. Think of Lightning McQueen, but add a vaguely anime-looking 3D representation.
The model must only speak in song. If there are any words spoken that are not in perfect pitch, they must be apologized for and there will be a big Twitch giveaway of hit game Civilization III by Tom Brady.
I don’t know how you get money through this, but the vibes feel like they fit.
6) Duck-based electricity generation
Sometimes ducks just kind of chill on the water. They look pretty placid. Just like swim swim honk swim honk swim swim swim honk honk swim swim. Eat bread. Hear someone say, “Don’t give ducks bread!” Be like, “Dude, it’s okay. Everything in moderation. I’m a duck. I know these things.”
The money in this one is clear. Do you know how much money people pay for ducks on the open market? The U.S. duck market is pretty well-regulated since the duck stock-shorting scandal back in 2016, but dude. There are so many ducks out there. You just can’t keep track of them all.
So you give money to one duck. That money goes to the player you want to pay. That duck then gets on one of the many computer terminals the ducks have in their office and writes a fake LiveJournal entry being like, “Oops! Lost all my duck money!”
The exchange rate from duck money to human money nowadays is pretty favorable to people like Kawhi. That is to say: people as a species.
In conclusion
We’ve hit on six potential and extremely illegal businesses from the six quadrants of the modern business-financial-economy-investment-world-scene: pretending, media, restaurants and hospitality, zoom, AI and ducks.
Buy buy.
Money. Extremely. However, on the other hand, please consider the following: There is no way to potentially expose that kind of thing unless we provide adequate context for the stuff on the other end. By no means should we be caught at the end of this financial quarter with the previously expressed level of capacity or capability. I have said since the beginning that the best way forward is not backwards but instead the opposite of backwards: forward. Do not give in to the temptation that you (you) are not the least, but instead you are average-ish but more but not all that more. Instead, think you yourself as it. The one and the only.