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Kali
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New York, NY
Kali sings in bands, writes about music and books, and very much enjoys composing essays on weird-o things she would (or wouldn't) do for $1,000,000 at www.livewrongandprosper.com.
Projects by Kali (1)
Kali is Backing (12)
Recent Posts by Kali
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Kali
Posted project update #7A Simple Request...
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Kali
Posted project update #6Live Wrong and Prosper Want YOU!
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Kali
commented on a projecttest
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Kali
Posted project update #5Thanks, And A Few Rich ODDS And Ends
First of all, THANK YOU.
Thanks so incredibly much to each of you for helping Live Wrong and Prosper...The Book get made. Thanks to all the new backers, thanks to those who've been supporting since the beginning -- thanks to the lot of you. We're very, very close! And you're awesome for getting us there.
So, while I'm giving thanks, I figured I might as well share a few millionaire-focused stories. There's an old joke that poor people are crazy, while rich people are eccentric. If that's true, I've gathered a brief collection of people who are eccentric like nobody's business. Hope you're as fascinated by all the odd details as I am.
Happy holidays. And thanks again.
Sir George Sitwell (1860-1943) was the 4th Baronet of Renishaw and the son of Sitwell Sitwell, whose parents apparently couldn’t be bothered to think up a first name that wasn’t exactly the same as his last name. George is mostly known for inventing a small pistol for the sole purpose of shooting wasps, which was useful to no one and changed the world only in the sense that it let everyone know he had too much time on his hands for coming up with stupid inventions. An avid farmer, George once attempted to pay his son's Eton education fees with fruits and vegetables. He also tried to have his cows decorated with a blue and white stencil of the Chinese willow tree pattern, mostly because he thought it made the cows look cool. In 1913, rather than pay off her debts, he let his wife, Lady Ida Emily Augusta Denison, be sent to prison for three months. George kept a wide selection of medicines around, but misslabled all the bottles to throw off any drug thieves. He was a profilic writer, producing numerous works that went unpublished despite brilliant titles such as The History of the Fork, The History of the Cold, Wool-Gathering in Medieval Times and Since, Domestic Manners in Sheffield in the Year 1250, Acorns as an Article of Medieval Diet and, my personal favorite, Lepers' Squints. According to his daughter, George came up with the unpopular adage "There's nothing a young man likes so much as a girl who’s good at the parallel bars." A notice at the gate of his manor read "I must ask anyone entering the house never to contradict me in any way, as it interferes with the functioning of the gastric juices and prevents my sleeping at night."
Hetty Green (1834-1916) was a real cheapskate. When her father died, she inherited $7,500,000 -- a lot of money in 1864, and enough to make me poop into a colostomy bag for a year today -- but apparently not enough for Cheaps Green here. When Hetty learned that the bulk of her recently deceased aunt's $2,000,000 fortune had been left to charity, she tried to contest it with a will written in her own handwriting. (She lost the case.) Hetty was an early proponent of the Kanye West "We-Want-Prenup" school of thought, and she insisted millionaire Edward Henry Green renounce all rights to her money before their marriage in 1864 (she divorced him in 1885 after she had to pay off one of his debts). Hetty invested wisely and eventually became the richest woman in the world while continuing to strive for the title of Cheapest Person EVER. When her 14-year-old son, Ned, hurt his leg in a sledding accent, she took him to a charity hospital to save money. Once recognized as the famed millionairess she was, Hetty stormed off, saying she'd treat the wounds herself. The Mother of the Year Award definitely went to another recipient that year, since Ned ended up getting gangrene and had to have his entire leg amputated. Hetty refused to use heat or hot water, did not wash her hands, re-used envelopes and conducted most of her business in the halls of her bank, so she wouldn't have to spend money to rent her own office. Each day for lunch she ate oatmeal heated on a radiator; spent each night under a different assumed name in boardinghouses across New York City to save money and avoid paying taxes; and once allegedly spent an entire night searching her house for a two-cent stamp she'd misplaced. Hetty owned just one black dress she wore every day; she instructed a scrubwoman only to wash the bottom (because it was the only part that was dirty) and paid her just a portion of her fee, reasoning that she only cleaned a portion of the dress. Her creepy look and miserly reputation (and quite likely a healthy dose of sexism) earned her the nickname "The Witch of Wall Street." When Cheapee McGee died she was worth about $100,000,000 -- or roughly two billion 2010 dollars.
Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson (1883-1950), also known as Lord Berners, was a descendent of Edward III of England. As a child, after learning that dogs instinctively swim when thrown into water, he tossed his dog out the window, assuming it would fly. (As a rule, dogs do not fly, and neither did this one. It survived the one-story fall, however.) After Gerald turned out to be too much of a handful around the house, he was sent to boarding school at Cheam. There, he had a brief affair with an older male student, but the relationship "abruptly ended after Berners accidentally vomited on the other boy." (You cannot make this stuff up.) As an adult, Gerald became an esteemed composer, painter and author -- and a wee bit of a weird-o. He had the pigeons at his estate dyed pink, electric blue and shocking purple, and tried to convince neighbors to do the same with their horses and cattle; kept a pet giraffee with whom he took his tea each afternoon; and installed a clavicord in his Rolls-Royce so he could create music while being driven through the countryside. On a 100-foot tall viewing tower at the front of his estate, he hung a sign that read "Members of the public committing suicide from this tower do so at their own risk." Gerald died in 1950. The epitaph on his gravestone reads:
"Here lies Lord Berners
One of life's learners
Thanks be to the Lord
He never was bored"
Howard Hughes, Jr. (1905-1976) is kind of a rock star in the whole Rich-People-Acting-Really-Weird scene. For starters, the guy was *really* good at multitasking -- he produced big, Oscar-winning Hollywood movies, dated beautiful starlets, was a flying ace, an engineer, a designer, founded a medical institute, was a descendent of an English royal consort, a dapper dresser, a bit of a looker and born quite rich. He also had a very serious case of the OCDs, which is how he got on this list. Howard had exhibitied some obsessive behavior early on in life (friends reported he had a special fork that sorted peas by size), but 1947 was a banner year for his odd behavior, and the beginning of a downward spiral. That December, Howard informed his staff he'd be screening films at a studio not far from his home. What should have taken a few hours lasted four months, with Howard never leaving the dark screening room, where, naked, he watched reels of films on endless repeat, consumed only milk and candy bars, and settled for empty bottles in place of a proper bathroom. He didn't bathe, or cut his hair or nails the whole time (even after emerging, Howard only had his hair and nails cut once a year from then on). He then attempted to buy all the chain restaurants and four-star hotels in Texas, his home state, including those that had gone out of business. (The licenses were turned over to his medical institue and resold.) He became obsessed with the movie Ice Station Zebra and screened it 24-hours a day in his home. A dedicated germaphobe, when Howard noticed dust on other people's clothing he insisted they remove the item and clean it. He spoke to his wife, Jean Peters, only via phone from a nearby room (she filed for divorce in 1971). Howard had contracted syphilis as a young man, and his eccentric behavior may have been exacerbated by the disease. He was also addicted to codeine, morphine and other medications, and frankly, that probably wasn't helping. Howard died on April 5, 1976 (the place is subject to some debate). At the time, his 6'4" body weighed 90 pounds. There were also signs of kidney damage, and x-rays showed broken off hypodermic needles embedded in his arms.
Homer Lusk (1881-1947) and Langley Collyer (1885-1947) were the stars of the lost pilot episode of Hoarders. The descendents of an old New York City family, and able to trace their arrival in America back to the Mayflower era, the siblings seemed destined for a fairly posh existence. After the death of their mother and father in 1923 and 1929 respectively, the Columbia-educated (Homer in law; Langley in engineering) brothers shut themselves inside the Harlem mansion their family had once shared. And this is where the story gets both interesting and awful.
As their once fancy Harlem neighborhood went to seed, the Collyers grew more and more afraid of venturing outside. After thieves repeatedly attempted to break into the house, they boarded up the windows; Langley began building booby traps all over the mansion to ensnare any would-be intruders. In 1939, the gas, electricity, telephone and water were turned off due to non-payment, and the brothers began using a small kerosene stove for all their heating needs. Langley -- the "engineer" -- attempted to restore energy using the engine of an old Model-T. (It didn't work.) By now, Homer had gone blind and was suffering from rheumatism -- you might've guessed these two weren't so into doctors or yearly check-ups -- so Langley (relying on medical books once belonging to his doctor father) prescribed a diet of 100 oranges a week, black bread and peanut butter. (It, um, didn't work.)
And so it went on like that, with Langley only leaving the house to gather water from a nearby park and to collect food from the garbage. On these nightly excursions, he also gathered junk he found and brought it back to the house. Soon, the rooms were filled top-to-bottom with stuff, with only a series of tunnels carved out for moving from room to room.
Long story relatively short, on March 21, 1947, the police received an anonymous call that there was a decaying body in the home. Officers visited the house but had a hard time getting in -- all the doors were locked, the windows barred and the foyer "packed solid by a wall of old newspapers, folding beds and chairs, half a sewing machine, boxes, parts of a wine press" and a bunch of other things that collectively fall under the big umbrella of "crap." Finally, they broke into a second floor window where they discovered the body of a recently deceased Homer. A manhunt ensued for Langley (in the meantime, police continued to clear away junk, including 19 tons from just the ground-floor of the house. Over the next week, another 84 tons was carted out). On April 8, the body of Langley was discovered just 10 feet from where his brother's body had been found -- he'd accidentally set off one of his own booby traps and died under the weight of a pile of junk. Homer, blind and helpless without his brother's aid, died several days later of starvation and shock.
In the end, police removed more than 130 TONS (!!!) of rubbish from the house, including "baby carriages, 3,000 books, several phone books, a horse's jawbone, a Steinway piano, an early x-ray machine, a doll carriage, rusted bicycles, old food, potato peelers, a collection of guns, glass chandeliers, bowling balls, camera equipment, the folding top of a horse-drawn carriage, a sawhorse, three dressmaking dummies, painted portraits, pin-up girl photos, plaster busts, Mrs. Collyer's hope chests, rusty bed springs, the kerosene stove, a child's chair (Note: the brothers were lifelong bachelors and childless), more than 25,000 books, human organs pickled in jars, eight live cats, the body of the old Model-T with which Langley had been tinkering, tapestries, hundreds of yards of unused silks and fabric, clocks, 14 pianos (both grand and upright), a clavicord, two organs, banjos, violins, bugles, accordions, a gramophone and records, and countless bundles of newspapers and magazines, some of them decades old. Near the spot where Homer died, police also found 34 bank account books, with a total of $3,007.18 (about $40,000 in 2008 dollars)."
Hilariously, a Wikipedia entry on the brothers notes that "there was also a great deal of garbage."
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Kali
Posted project update #4A Few Things that Are Out of Our Budget
This post is exclusive to backers.
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Kali
commented on a projectYou guys -- thanks so much for the encouragement and enthusiasm! You're the best!
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Kali
commented on a projectI've played this version as well! It's fun to mix it up -- to see not only how much it would take for someone to do a dare, but also how *little*. It's surprising what people will do for not so much money. And by "surprising" I mean "deeply troubling."
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Kali
commented on a projectYou guys -- thanks so much for the encouragement and enthusiasm! You're the best!
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Kali
Posted project update #3How Much Is One Million?
This post is exclusive to backers.
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Kali
commented on a projectI've played this version as well! It's fun to mix it up -- to see not only how much it would take for someone to do a dare, but also how *little*. It's surprising what people will do for not so much money. And by "surprising" I mean "deeply troubling."
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Kali
Posted project update #2This is What People Will Do for Just $50,000!!!
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Kali
Posted project update #1An Example of How it Works
Here's an example of a question that includes my answer!
Would you set up a phony charity along the lines of Make-A-Wish, with the sole intention of disappointing terminally ill children?Little kids are funny. But much, much less so when they are dying. Maybe it’s the constant agony and pain or the facing your mortality at a ridiculously young age or maybe they just stop trying, but dying kids are really no laughing matter, and neither are get-rich-quick schemes at their expense. Trust me, I know (don’t ask). And as much as that Mr. Show skit where Bob and David play these two sleazy idiots who run “Dream of a Lifetime” — a shitty “Make-A-Wish” knock-off that asks dying kids their dreams and half-half-asses trying to fulfill them, and then never does to the extreme — is hilarious, in real life, that kind of thing is not so funny. It’s cruel and awful and if you’re like, “Me? Oh, I’m in importing and exporting and defrauding dying kids. Them little terminally ill bastards are where the real money is!” then there is probably something wrong with you, in my expert medical opinion. (I am Dr. Psychologist Lady, E.S.P.) So no on this one, but that skit is really fucking funny and you should watch it (here: http://www.youtube.com/watch.... Really.
