I Am Treasure Hunting!

After losing all of my treasure to the evil egg king, REX OVUM MUNDI I have had to go out to find some more. Treasure is so important to me. Not because I love wealth and the vast power it offers me. No, not at all. I love TREASURE because it makes me happy. That's all. I love big piles of gems and money and paintings and cars and ships and airplanes and coins and stamps and cattle and land and spaceships and pens and fancy cups and glasses and golden forks and knives and vast estates and giant undersea cities and all the rest just because it makes me smile and giggle to myself. Yes, I do actually also love it that I can buy and do anything in the world I want - that is nice too - but I just like the way all of the treasure looks in great big piles.

To get new treasure I have decided to do it alphabetically this time. Starting with Amber - that interesting mineral that is filled with DNA for creating dinosaurs and other monsters from the past. Too many people get all hung up on the money kind of treasure and forget about the scientific wealth that is all around them. I am not some greedy money-grubbing jerk! No! I am a man of science and refinement and so there are things in this universe that are more precious than money and one of those things is ancient DNA.

Some AMBER from my new TREASURE TROVE before I smashed it to get the fly DNA to put into a WORM!

Not only can it be used to recreate dinosaurs and stuff but you can also mix it with today's DNA to create cool new kinds of life that people might find very fun and interesting! I am such a master and working with DNA that this kind of thing is very easy for me. I just get out some of my amber, break it open with a rock or hammer and take out the DNA. Then I put that DNA into a cell and put that cell into whatever I want to change into a new kind of creature. Then, as the animal (or person!) grows the new DNA changes them by giving them the power of the animal whose DNA I used.

For example, the other day I found some amber with a fly in it. I put the fly DNA into a worm and the next thing I knew I had a flying worm! How cool is that?! What might you want a flying worm for? I can think of a few reasons:

• To use as bait to catch flying fish
• To make it easier for birds to eat without having to land on the ground
• To transport worms more easily over long distances
• To make it possible for worms to get off the ground so they don't drown when it rains
• To make my dream of a "worms on demand" bait delivery service a reality
• To create a new and scary plague (they will be much scarier than locusts!)

Too many rich people forget about what is important in life. The love their treasures (and who wouldn't) but they forget how important it is to think about things from a "360" degree perspective. Not me! I think - first, get some amber, next, get the DNA out of the amber, next, put the DNA into a cell, next, create something new and better. Finally, the world becomes a better place. That is why I love my treasure and why and I working so hard to get it back! Starting today with Amber and working my way all the way to zirconium. I will be too busy doing big things with all of my new treasures to write everything about all of them but I will be writing about some of the most stupendous aspects of my new treasure hunt! You will not want to miss it!

Committed to rebuilding my treasure hoard again, I am . . .

ANDY LAM! 

A Visit to My Vault!

One Ethiopian Birr, just one part of my fabulous wealth!

Yesterday I was talking to someone. This is something I think I do most days. In fact, if I think about it, every day since I was able to talk (which I can't remember because I think I was probably a baby at the time) I have spoken and/or been spoken to. This is the natural order of things for people like me, who have a fully-functional vocal tract and ears. So, as I was saying, I was talking to someone yesterday and the subject of PRECIOUS stones and metals came up. It reminded me of the fantastic treasures I have safely tucked away in the vaults deep beneath my compound and I decided that I ought to visit my vaults to roll around in all of my fantastic wealth and treasure!

Now I am not going to tell you how to get into my vault because to do so would risk someone sneaking in in the middle of the night, probably dressed in black and tip-toeing like a cat burglar, and stealing all of my wonderful coins and gems and jewels and gold bars and all of the other super valuable things I have down there. While I am not going to tell you how to get into the vaults I am going to tell you about my trip to them and all of the fun I had!

First I went over to the barn. That is where the entrance to the vaults is located. Not in the barn itself but in the silo that's right next to the barn. There's a ladder that goes up the side of the silo and I had to climb that first (yes, sometimes you need to go UP to go DOWN!). To get to the ladder this is a key pad you need to use. I pressed in the code: 5-5-5-5 and the metal grate at the base of the ladder opened. I began the climb. It was important for me to remember that every red rung on the ladder was a dummy rung and if I put any weight on one of them it would give way and I would fall. It's a simple but effective security measure!

At the top of the silo ladder there is a platform with a door - and another keypad! I pressed in the code: 5-5-5-5 (I use that for most things since it's so easy for me to remember!). With a quiet whirr, the door on the platform slid open and I stepped into what I like to call my "grain elevator!" (you see, because it's an elevator in a silo that's full of grain, get it!) and punched in the code: 5-5-5-5 to unlock the elevator. Then I pressed the floor button. To trick people, I have a lot of buttons on the elevator control panel, mostly numbers but a few letters and a couple of symbols as well. Unless someone presses the right one (the one with the $) the elevator is locked and an alarm sounds and my security team arrives in no time flat!

I pressed the button with the $ and the elevator began to go down. It takes several minutes because the elevator starts way up above the ground (at the top of the silo) and has to go deep underground (to the vaults. In order to open the elevator door I pressed in the code - you guessed it - 5-5-5-5! Stepping out of the elevator there is a long corridor with bare light bulbs hanging every five feet or so. Along the corridor - which is bare concrete - are plain metal doors. Each door has a number and each number is "5." I did this to confuse people even more.

In order not to confuse myself I had the door to the treasure room painted green with a big gold $ on it. I walked to that door and entered the code (5-5-5-5) to unlock it. The door unlocked and I stepped into the vault. I have one of the most ingenious things in the vault - a "sensor" that "detects" motion and "turns on" the lights automatically. This labor-saving device lets me see in the vault without having to flick the switch that is next to the door.

When the lights came on I was able to behold my treasures! Let me list them here for you to be boggled by!

• A million pounds of gold - mostly gold bars but also some giant nuggets that I found when I was exploring some abandoned mines in South America once.
• A pile of rubies that is 10 feet tall.
• A pile of emeralds that is also 10 feet tall.
• My fabled "pearl pit" which is like those really fun ball pits you see at amusement parks or fast food restaurant play areas; but instead of being filled with colorful plastic balls, this one is full of precious pearls!
• A mountain of Spanish doubloons that is so tall you need an oxygen mask to get to the top. I found these in a bunch of shipwrecks on the bottom of the ocean.
• 1000 paintings by very famous painters, mostly they are on velvet which is such a wonderful material for really bringing art to life.
• 10,000 suitcases full of money. All kinds of money (except doubloons, which I keep in a mountain) including French Francs, Deutsche Marks, Belgian Francs, Austrian Schillings, Maltese Lira, Greek Drachmas, Dutch Gulden, Cypriot Pounds, Irish Pounds, Portuguese Escudos, Estonian Kroons, Italian Liras, Slovak Korunas, Finnish Markkas, Latvian Lats, Slovenian Tolars, Lithuanian Litas, Spanish Pesetas and Luxembourgian Francs. This money along is worth so much!
• A huge vat of molten platinum (I like to be sure to have some liquid assets!)
• My collection of fishing lures.
• A library of the most famous and rare books in the world.
• Some very old food that is bound to be worth something.
• Some very old clothing (mostly from the days of Ancient Egypt) that is bound to be worth something.
• A collection of vintage powerboats.
• My fleet of 20 747s. Unfortunately, because they are all in the vault and I can't get them out I can't actually use them anymore :-(.
• One million bottles of the best wine in the world.
• 99 bottles of beer on the wall.
• A gram of yslthayt (the rarest material in the universe. It hasn't been discovered by earth scientists yet and I had to promise not to show it to anyone for a super long time).
• Another mountain of assorted gem stones. I don't know what they are but they are very shiny and very precious.
• Every piece of mail I have ever received and copies of all of the mail I have ever sent, even all of my bills!

I would go on but I realize it may seem like I am bragging about my tremendous wealth and treasures. That is the LAST thing I want to do! I am, as you probably have guessed by now, one of the most humble people in the world, no - the solar system, no - the galaxy, no - the galactic cluster, no - the universe, no - the multiverse, no - all time and space, forward and backward, folded and unfolded. It also happens that I am tremendously blessed with riches that exceed the collective wealth of the entire planet for all time. But I don't let it go to my head!

With WAY more than two coins to run together, I am . . .

ANDY LAM!