Now listen, everybody usually immediately thinks of the standard stuff when it comes to “what would you do with a bazillion dollars” type questions; homes, cars, airplanes, yachts, banging multiple hotties at once, etc. Let’s just assume all that is taken care of; family and friends have nice nest eggs, favorite charities are well-funded, you have a different Lamborghini for every day of the year, and so on. What would you do that you’re pretty sure that no one else would do? (possible exceptions to the rules; if you want your house to be a replica of a famous castle or something like that, or if you want a working replica of the Batmobile, stuff like that.)
Me, here’s the top ten things I would do, no particular order:
Conduct the most thorough and exhaustive search EVER of Loch Ness, to finally prove or disprove the existence (or past existence) of Nessie. I don’t care if it involves hiring thousands of divers with military-grade equipment and hundreds of submersibles. Either we find something, or people shut up about Nessie already.
Recreate the palace of Versailles to use as an occasional retreat and party headquarters. Upgraded with premium sound system, of course.
Find a truly effective cure for allergies. Seriously, I’m sick of 'em. Maybe throwing money at the problem won’t necessarily solve it, but it’s bound to produce at least something really effective.
Privately funded space exploration programs. What are they gonna do, SDI me? Ha!
Take LARPing to a whole new level, with real weapons and technology that simulates the effects of various magic spells…then record it and show it on YouTube.
Real working lightsabers.
Recreate the Eiffel Tower in Akron, OH. Just because.
Start a drive-thru only restaurant chain called “You Want Fries With That?” that ONLY serves varieties of fried potatoes. Curly fries, shoestring fries, steak fries, etc. Oh, and some sort of beverage, I suppose. I would absolutely require employees who take the orders to ALWAYS ask “you want FRIES with that?” as well. Yes, I have a sadistic side.
Build a real-life Autobot.
Construct the absolute best dinosaur museum ever, with as many specimens as possible (original if possible, otherwise casts of course) of the most popular dinosaurs. We’re talking about at least 6 or 7 different T.rex mounts as well as a full-size sculpture of the animal as it would have appeared alive. I’m talking hundreds of dinosaur mounts in a stadium sized setting.
I’d have two houses, one in Australia, one in some part of the US with nice weather (California, maybe). I would spend approximately 6 months out of every year in each, so I would never have to deal with the sun setting early in winter again.
Nothing so weighty as items from the OP, which I’d have to put more thought into. Off the top of my head, I’d have a gorilla suit (well, at least one) in each separate building I owned. Perhaps I’d occasionally put one on, perhaps not…I suppose the point is that I’d have the option. I’m thinking I’d most likely set 'em up like a suit of armor in the foyer(s).
Heck, if we’re talking about “unlimited money”, I’d pay a certain number of people to go about their daily business wearing gorilla suits. Why? Simply for my own amusement. And also, just to do my part to make the world slightly more surreal, you see…
Open a bookstore that carries only SF&F books. It would be appropriately sectioned into high fantasy, low fantasy, science fantasy, alternate history, hard SF, soft SF, and merchandising (Warcraft, Start Trek–that sort of thing).
I’d pay entertainers I hate umpteen million dollars in return for removing themselves from the public eye forever.
Same goes with some politicians.
I would also buy up corporations I hate and shut them down. I would make sure that the rank-and-file employees are taken care of, but the execs would be SOL. Extractive and exploitative industries would be my chief targets, but I’d also make sure the whole smug fuck Wall Street cabal is put out of work and out of power forever.
I would go around buying any number of medium-sized companies that produced all manner of products, and reorganize their businesses such that the products were made and tested to my own standards of exceptional quality and reliability. I don’t care if this business model would fall apart or not; I’m tired of everything sucking, and the American practice of responding to decreased sales by finding new and innovative ways to save money by sucking even more is really starting to grate.
Also, I’d have a gigantic room piled full of pillows for jumping around in. Guests would see the Pillow Room as part of the standard tour, and invited to make use of it.
Not that it’s overly hard to come up with, but just FYI, I had this exact idea (right down to the name) about three weeks ago.
Interesting…but would you also require that these employees communicate via gorilla-like grunts and body language? I would. Helps reinforce the surreality, I think.
For some reason, this is cracking me up. I honestly can’t stop laughing. Which is a bad thing at work. SNORT
Ok, so what I would do with unlimited money - I would buy an Arby’s that was open only to me and people who I said could go there and they would only make what I wanted them to make. And a McDonald’s. And a gyros place. And a hot dog/italian beef place. And a pizza place. And I’d make the McDonald’s make breakfast croissants (because that’s the only think I like at Burger King and I don’t want to buy a whole BK because that would be a waste of money for only one sandwich, right?)
I’d adopt every single dog from Save-A-Pet and build them a house with people in it to love and care for them.
And I’d open a bar. A small one, with limited food, Old Style on tap, a small bowling alley, and a 2 bedroom apartment upstairs I’d live in. Maybe in, like, Green Bay.
And I’d buy Sandusky, Ohio. I’m not really sure why, I just would.
I’d hire a bunch of people to remove every bleeping eucalyptus tree from California(1). And probably a lot of other non-native species as well. If I really have unlimited money, I’ll happily pay the owners of the trees to remove them and plant replacement trees (2).
I doubt this is unique, but as G-d as my Witness, I’d Never Fly Coach Again!
(1) I might dig up James Lick’s body and kick it in the ass, just as a bonus.
(2) Fruit trees, maybe cherries. I like cherries.
eta: and I’d create a sea cucumber farm for olivesmarch4th.
Ah, I already have an idea percolating for just this occasion.
When I drive, I get very, very sad when I see road kill. Poor sad Bambi, just wanted to cross the street. Rabbits, raccoons, foxes, also sad. The worst is when it’s a dog or cat that was probably someone’s pet.
So, I’m not sure what is the BEST idea, but I’d first fund research to see what makes the most sense.
Initially I had thought about some sort of training program where the animals would be taught how to cross the street. But rabbits might not be that smart.
So then I was thinking plexiglass. Every interstate in the country would have a tall plexiglass fence. However, nothing is worse that dirty, grubby plexiglass, and part of the fun of driving is being able to see interesting things. This would even create jobs because I would need to hire a small army of people to be out cleaning the plexiglass fence every few days.
I think tunnels are also going to come into play. Some animals need to move around their habitat, so if they’re prevented from doing so by the plexiglass fence, they will need a tunnel. Or maybe a bridge.
I’m still not sure how we would stop the animals from wandering up the entrance and exit ramps – then they would be trapped by the very plexiglass fence that is supposed to be helping them.
I’m not sure…I think it might be contingent on what their day-to-day business was. In many cases, wouldn’t the discrepancy between the (outlandish and unexpected) costume and normal behavior make the situation more surreal than it would be otherwise?
Perhaps the right course of action would be to require some occasional gorilla-like outbursts. Say, put a vibrating cell-phone in the suit; whenever signaled, the wearer launches into an outburst; signal by ringing the cell at random times throughout the day (anywhere from once a day to once an hour).
Oooo – if we’re going for surreality, and given my penchant for gorilla suits, I’d pay people (or, perhaps just supply the suits) to do a gorilla-suit flash-mob. Say, in Grand Central Station. Or, better, Temple Square (in Salt Lake City), about 1/2 hour before services.