Addicted to Cash

For all of you that crave cold, hard, cash...never fear. You're not struggling with the deadly sin of greed. As it turns out, you're addicted to cocaine. In a recent study conducted by the University of Massachusetts' Yuegang Zuo (and presented last Sunday at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington DC) it was found that traces of cocaine taint up to 90% of paper money in the United States. The bills become contaminated with cocaine through contact during drug deals, directly through drug use (via methods such as snorting through rolled bills), and through contact with other tainted bills in banks' currency-counting machines.

The amount of cocaine present varied from .006 micrograms (several thousand times smaller than a grain of sand) to over 1,240 micrograms (around 50 grains of sand). Washington DC had the highest incidence of contamination with over 95% of the bills testing positive, while the cocaine averse mormons led their mecca, Salt Lake City, to have the lowest average levels.

This seemed surprising to me, so I decided I should test the findings myself. First, I threw a couple one dollar bills into the blender until they reached a snortable, powder-like consistency. To ensure that the bills I were using would indeed be laced with cocaine, I made a quick trip to L.A. and asked dear, sweet, addicted, Lindsay Lohan for change for a five.

So I would have something to compare the experience against, I also took some cash and ran down to Nordstrom to purchase a pair of shoes--resisting the urge to sniff the bills on my way, so as not to cloud the results.

I recorded my findings using the patent pending 100 point Nathan Pleasure Scale. So you have a frame a reference, previous tests have found that watching the musical "Wicked" from orchestra level seats scored a 91, while cleaning spoiled milk from a refrigerator scored a 6.

Snorting the dollar bills wasn't a particularly pleasant experience. Aside from the headache, the nosebleed, and the three day sneezing fit, it didn't have much effect. I didn't find myself craving more cash to snort, I wasn't cruising the streets seeking out my cash dealer, and wasn't wasting all my hard-earned cash on cash. Meeting Lindsay Lohan didn't really provide any measurable benefit either--total trashbox. As a result, the experience scored a 9. Slightly better than the spoiled milk, but a far cry from a night at the theatre.

On the other hand, the shoe shopping experience scored a 76. I found myself gleefully perusing the myriad assortment of fanciful footwear--which, in and of itself was quite pleasant. And I was like a kid in a very expensive candy store when I stumbled upon a must have pair of totally rockin' Marc Nason loafers. I made the purchase and felt a high that no five-dollar habit of snorting five dollars can provide.

So it would appear that I'm not addicted to the cash itself after all. I was way to willing to exchange it for something of more tangible benefit. I'm not sure if this throws me back in the deadly sin of greed category, but if so, I'll be easy to recognize. I'll be the corpse with the kick-ass footwear.

I found this little program that takes all the words in your blog entry, and makes a graphic representation of them--with more frequently used words represented in a larger font. Totally useless for the most part, but I think I might start including one of these at the end of every post. Sort of a summary that throws word order to the wind.