My fellow alum Skins is gearing up for one of those fund-raisers again, wherein he raises a varying amount of cash from the primitives, generally in the $15-35,000 range.
No one ever knows exactly how much is raised, and of course my fellow alum is not required to admit that, Skins's island being his personal private property.
Many seem to think that Skins, Lord Marblehead EarlG, and the elusive enigmatic Elad fleece the primitives, as if it's a bad thing, but I'm of the minority opinion that Skins & Co. deserve every cent they can get out of the primitives, and far more.
Keeping the primitives in line is a tough job, and I don't think most people would be up to it, even for a six-figure salary. It's harder than trying to keep a bunch of syphilitic dwarves cooped up, maintaining the primitives.
However, I think my fellow alum could do much better.
My suggestion is that each primitive pre-pay, say, ten bucks each month into the Bank of Skins's Island, and at circa 5,000 primitives, that would bring in $50,000 each month, or $600,000 a year.
Each primitive would then be charged 50 cents for each original post, and 5 cents for each comment, and for the pleasures of gratuitously insulting Republicans and conservatives, double that amount, to a dollar and 10 cents, respectively.
And for the joy of using obscenities, an extra 10 cents for each one used.
Now, the primitives most likely would exceed the prepaid ten bucks, generally by the third day of each month, and herein lies the beauty of the plan.
My fellow alum could collect more on "penalty" fees than on posting fees.
Such as having an "over-the-limit" fee of, say, twenty bucks a month.
And there's all sorts of other penalty fees that could be assessed, such as charging five bucks for each original post put into "General Discussion" when another forum already exists on Skins's island, for that particular topic.
And, say, two bucks every time a primitive edits a post other than for a misspelled word.
We're no longer looking at a measly $50,000 a month here; we're looking at a lot more money than that, from all these penalty fees.
Because "General Discussion" is prime real-estate, eagerly sought-after, while the other parts of Skins's island are ignored, perhaps my fellow alum could institute some sort of "Gold Membership" on Skins's island, having primitives pre-pay twice the monthly amount for the privilege of posting there, instead of in the other forums.
With of course twice the posting charges, twice the penalties.
This would have the salubrious effect of taking pressure off of "General Discussion," and "growing" the other forums.
I could make my fellow alum a millionaire, if he'd only listen to me.
