Shalampax Speaks

Hi peeps, in my last post I told you about Openfly miraculously stumbling upon Marie in a bar in Honolulu. Here’s the latest. Marie left Hawaii yesterday and returned to her place in California. Before going, she invited Openfly to join her. Openfly, not having anything better to do, went.

Openfly assures me that she is in the United States legally. She claims that, on the advice of Marie, she checked in with an office of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) shortly after docking in Honolulu and sharing a drink or two or three with Marie. According to Openfly, CIS granted her a B-2 tourist visa that allows her to stay in the United States for up to six months.

I find this rather bizarre because very few countries recognize Shalampax. And among those handful of nations that do acknowledge our country, none, to the best of my knowledge, recognizes our passports due to the fact that they are printed on newsprint using a cheap inkjet printer and the picture is stapled on.

Nonetheless, Openfly swears she has a valid B-2 visa.

When I said that Marie returned to her “place” in California, that might have been a bit misleading. According to Openfly, Marie’s place consists of several acres—Openfly is not sure of exactly how many—within an hour or two’s drive of somewhere that Marie refers to as “Big Sur.” I don’t know if that is a town, a landmark or a well-hung guy named Sur, but from the way Openfly talks about it, I think I’m supposed to be impressed.

Marie runs a five-star resort on half of her property. On the other half, she runs a hippie-retro commune. Surprisingly, the commune makes as much money for Marie as the resort does. Apparently, there are a number of old hippies who gave up being hippies, joined the establishment, made a ton of money, and now want to retire and relive their hippy days.

The story of how Marie was able to buy her land and start her businesses is interesting. After fleeing Shalampax and returning to the United States, in addition to being largely responsible for initiating the hippy movement, she started a cult that competed with Shalampax’s cults religions. Our cults religions were only getting started back then, so she had no problem competing with us.

Marie’s cult was quite lucrative, but she shut it down when the authorities started hassling her and threatening her with charges related to the cult. Clearly, there’s not nearly as much religious freedom and commercial latitude in the United States as there is in Shalampax.

Marie used the money left in the cult to construct the resort on the property where she had built a religious retreat for her cult. Later, when her old hippie friends started calling her up wanting to recapture the spirit of their hippie days, she built the commune.

That’s history, but the future is looking decidedly exciting for our little Openfly. She wants to stay in the United States and Marie thinks that might be possible, even within the law.

Marie suggested that the easiest route that Openfly could take to a U.S. green card and eventual citizenship would be through an EB-5 investor class visa. The U.S. gives up to 10,000 of these visas each year to people who invest at least $1 million in a U.S. business, or just $500,000 or more in an area of high unemployment, and hire at least 10 Americans.

It looks like things are moving forward in this regard. Marie and Openfly have come up with an idea for a business that Openfly can start. The owner of a large chunk of property adjacent to where Marie runs her retro-hippie commune wants to sell his property. Marie suggested that Openfly buy the land and build an outlet mall for manufacturers of new age paraphernalia. The now rich, former and retro hippies will love it.

I know what you’re thinking. Where would Openfly get that kind of money? Well, it was as great of a surprise to me as it will likely be to you, but Openfly is rich. Very rich. Over the past few years she had been given many shares in a number of Shalampax spam and cult religion companies as gifts in return for “special favors” she performed for the various owners.

Shortly before leaving Shalampax, Openfly sold those shares back to their original owners for hundreds of millions of dollars, half of which she invested in dividend-paying U.S. blue chip stocks, most of which have held up reasonably well even under the current economic conditions. The other half is socked away in accounts in some of the few rock-solid (thanks to government bailouts) U.S. banks.

This was wise of her because, considering our reputation, the U.S. authorities would, no doubt, have looked askance at any investments in Shalampax companies. In addition, shares in those companies are not very liquid outside of Shalampax.

So, that’s were it stands. It looks like Openfly may not be coming back to Shalampax. That should make Cherrytart, Openfly’s former best friend, very happy because it will mean that she’ll be able to take over Openfly’s apartment in Shalampax. It would serve Cherrytart right if she got Openfly’s apartment and then was the one selected to fill the gap in Shalampax’s population that was created by Openfly’s departure.

I’ll keep passing along information as I get it, peeps.

Till next time, be cool. I don’t know what that means, but it’s something Openfly picked up when she took a stroll through the commune.