Lighter Fare

Here's one from the Onion.

LA JOLLA, CA—Since several shrewd investments in software start-ups pushed his net worth over the $1 billion mark last fall, Mark Stern has been attempting to cultivate eccentricities commensurate with his new wealth, the venture capitalist said Monday.

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Stern prepares to fly his newly completed rocket to a movie premiere 100 miles away in Hollywood, via the moon.

"When you have $975 million, you're just like everyone else," said Stern, 41, from the bow of Excelsior, a 58-person canoe that he commissioned for a world-record paddle around the world. "But I'm a billionaire now. People expect me to use my money to feed my ego to the point of borderline insanity."

I'm pretty certain this is how I would react.

"I started doing stuff like recoiling from shaking people's hands, smelling everything I picked up, and referring to myself as 'the anointed one,'" Stern said. "Nothing too out-there or grandiose, just some basic weirdness to keep up appearances while I tried to come up with the really original oddities."

"I did retain some of the more esoteric affectations, though," added Stern, brandishing a pure ivory cane topped with a crystal sphere containing a lock of his recently deceased mother's hair.

Though he now houses five of the world's 40 remaining albino alligators in his custom-made lucite dining room table, Stern had until recently been noted for his frugal tastes.

"Mark drove a 1999 Toyota Corolla, and he used to pride himself on shopping at the Men's Wearhouse even though he could afford much nicer things," longtime friend Thomas Bowen said. "Now he only wears jumpsuits made of some space-age micro- fiber paper that he incinerates after one use, and all I ever hear about is his hydrogen- powered rocket sled that he's taking to Antarctica to break the sound barrier or something."

Kid H.