Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

Hey, Aaron! Read this, and tell me if you're not thinking of our old fictional friend from college, in whose name we acquired a Discover card....

(OK, the story is this: once, Aaron and I took one of those ubiquitous Discover Card applications that proliferate on college campuses like rabbits, and filled it out with a fake name. [OK, we used that wonderful juvenile crack-up name, "Phil McCracken".] Under "Gross Income", we put something like, "Yes, it is." Under "Sex", we put something like "Never between meals" or some such, all the way down the line. For some reason, though, we used Aaron's actual mailbox address for the thing. Then we sealed it, dropped it in the mail, and forgot about it. [I don't recall if we were drunk at the time.]

Yep, you saw it coming: a few weeks later, a card arrives in the mail for Phil McCracken. They issued the card. And what's more, we had a female friend call Discover and claim to be Phil's wife, requesting an increase in the credit limit.

Since then, I've always had the suspicion, lingering in the back of my mind, that our entire economic system is in fact constructed upon a finely-tuned foundation of bullshit and nonsense.)