Portland. A self-described aimless drifter has turned his lifestyle into a lucrative career. No kidding.
This is not a rags to riches story by virtue of hard work or perseverance or anything like that.
It is a story that baffles the mind and leaves the hard-working schmucks feeling a little more than a little sick to their stomachs.
It is a story about Ed Vort.
Vort, who admits that if he ever strung more than four consecutive days of work together he'd kill himself and everyone around him, now is rolling in the dough and would not--if he so chose--have to work another day in his life--which would add up to a total of three.
Vort's secret to success lies in a patented subscription service entitled "How To Get Rich Doing Almost Nothing." It's available on the internet and through mass mailings worldwide.
"A guy came up to me once," explains Vort, "right after I spit up breakfast on his shoes, and he said, well, first he swore at me, and then he said he wished he could live a carefree lifestyle like mine."
Vort was inspired by the man's words, but not so much that he actually wanted to do anything about it.
"After he cleaned off his shoes, he told me he could market my shiftlessness to the world and we'd both be rich. Well, I wasn't doing anything in particular, so I said go for it, just so long as I didn't have to break a sweat or anything."
The ironic part of the whole story is that Vort hired a lawyer shortly after his business partner successfully got their business up and running and making tons of money. As lawyers tend to do, Vort's lawyer sued the business partner for nothing in particular, but months of litigation forced him out of business. (In a side note: Vort refused to pay his lawyer because writing a check interfered with his aimless drifting.)
"It was ingenious," Vort admitted. "My business partner does all the work, I mean ALL the work, and he ends up broke. I still laugh about it at times."
But there is a downside to being so rich as a drifter. "Once in a while," Vort says, "I have to get dressed up for promotional photos, which I don't like at all. It cuts into my 'doing nothing time.' I just hate that. I mean, sometimes I wonder if it's worth all the fuss."
