Most people have some ideas what they'd do if they were suddenly rich. Heck, rich people probably sometimes muse about what they'd do if they were really rich. Like maybe they'd keep two illegal immigrant women as maids, so when they rape and kill one the house won't go to shit until they can get down to Mexico to kidnap a replacement. If I were to somehow suddenly have gobs and gobs of money, I know what I'd do. I'd buy a couple hundred acres out in the woods somewhere and build a compound.

The word compound has picked up some negative connotations recently because of all the cults who stage their suicidal last stand against the government there, but at its core a compound is just a place where you have a bunch of buildings, and maybe a network of tunnels connecting them. And a general concrete-and-half-inch-steel-plate motif. Maybe some SAM sites to deter airplanes from flying overhead, and a wall around the whole place. Basically, what The Village would've been if M. Night Shyamalan had really thought things through.

Since there's only one of me, and I have no intention of starting a cult just to have someone manning the pillboxes, I'd have to invest in automated defenses of some sort. Maybe something like those miniguns from Aliens (only with more ammo, for fuck's sake) or maybe an amped up version of that robot Honda's making that looks like Samus. Which would be pretty bitchin' in its own right. And I'd put up signs all around my property that say "Trespassers will be shot by robot sentries and eaten by panthers." (Did I mention the panthers? I'd want to have at least one panther, as a pet and to help with cleanup.) Their families might still be able to sue, but they can't say they weren't warned.

Now, maybe it's just because I've been playing Locomotion recently, but I think it would be pretty cool to have a train running around my property. I'd have tracks running everywhere, down to the ocean, the lake, all the various buildings and fortifications. Like, if I wanted to take a kayak down to the lake, I could just throw it on a flat car and ride down on the caboose. And it would be a damn sight less work than lugging ammo out to all the turrets with a wagon or something.

Ilene wants to have some sort of "tasteful" stone footbridge over the stream, which is fine, but I think it'll look kind of out of place next to the rusty steel-girder train bridge. Or maybe not. Maybe it would be some sort of Hallmark scene, and Petter Hegre would want to come out and take pictures of freakishly busty anorexic girls being as unsexily naked as possible. They could even pose with my Samus-bots.

I'd have to stock the lake with trout or something, so I could go fishing. If there's no lake, I'll have to blast a hole in the ground and fill it with water. And if there's a lake, there should be fish in it, or else what would you do with it? And by fishing I mean using a remote-controlled submarine to shoot fish with a speargun. Otherwise, boooooring.

Obviously, my compound would have to be completely self-sufficient, with its own solar or hydro-electric power supply and a year's worth of chunky soup. And maybe some of the Samus-bots could be reprogrammed to farm. Swords into plowshares and all that.

In the event that I don't become stupidly rich (and I can tell you right now, 15¢ a week from Google ad clickthroughs is not going to cut it), I've got a whole 'nother set of plans drawn up. In the future there will be two types of people in the world--those who prepared for a zombie plague, and zombies.

Who the fuck is Billy Stanton, and why does he look 50? Stay tuned for the stunning conclusion of our guest series next Tuesday. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll question your sexuality. Just like any other day.