ON THE DAY of writing this, I saw a picture of someone dressed as the Chinese God of Wealth (far right in the picture above) protesting in the South China city of Guangzhou over unpaid wages.

That's silly. No one expects to PAY the God of Wealth. He is an astonishingly large one-way OUTWARD cash transfer conduit, moving money from money planet to deserving individuals: the exact opposite of my wife and daughters.

To be honest, I've always thought the God of Wealth's operation felt like a tax-reduction dodge, similar to those of other mythical characters.

I mean, that Santa Claus clearly runs a suspect operation. It involves NO significant sources of income and yet has massive expenses. This is a ludicrous business model used by nobody at all, except for YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and a thousand more of today's best known firms. And note that Santa lives in the Arctic, surely chosen as a tax-free jurisdiction.

Then there's Chang-e, goddess of the moon, and her mooncakes, the snacks sold at vast expense in her name all over East Asia. How much of this cash is repatriated to the moon? Probably zero!

There's only one mythical person I know who actually makes an income. The Tooth Fairy doesn't pay a lot of money to her customers, yet she ends up with a supply of high grade ivory. I bet she's selling it to China.

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OTHER THOUGHTS

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PSY, THE GANGNAM style guy, has just unleashed an even more irritating song. Look, I'm TRYING to feel sympathy for South Korea, it being right next door to a nuke-building madman and all that, but I'm sorry, things like this make it really difficult.

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DID YOU hear about the housewife from Mumbai who needed surgery after she'd failed to go to the toilet for 45 days? The Times of India said that when doctors at the Nova Specialty Surgery Centre asked her when she had last 'gone', she said: "Towards the end of February." I am going to show this to my daughters who spend many hours every day in the smallest room. From now on, once a week should be plenty.

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SCIENTISTS HAVE created a water bottle that turns Coca-Cola into a clear liquid. All you do is pour Coke into the OKO plastic bottle, made in Japan, and a super-powerful filter in the lid removes the color, so the drink emerges as a glass of unappetizing chemical-spiked sugar water. So, no change there.

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READER LIFT LURKER was excited by the news that next-generation smell-o-vision cinemas are spreading around the world. "The next thing may be movies that make you feel what the star is feeling," he predicted. "If a star is kissing a sensuous female, something soft and warm will touch your lips. If a star is hit in the face with a rifle butt, something hard will thud your head too. If a star gives birth by the natural method, you will be forced to breathe rapidly and feel like you are being pulled apart down there." I can hardly wait.

(Lift Lurker)

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MY NEIGHBOR said that having a dog was exactly the same as having a kid. "Okay," I told her. "I'll pay your dog's university fees, and you pay my kid's."

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