As you pour money into your gas tank today, and wonder how you'll pay for your kid's next orthodontist bill, I give you permission to quietly curse the name of Sheikh Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan. If you can pronounce his name.

He's a 63-year-old billionaire, and part of the family that runs Abu Dhabi, which is part of the United Arab Emirates. You guessed it . . . oil money.

With a fortune of about $23 billion, he does stuff like: buy a Mercedes in every color of the rainbow . . . then adds them to his collection of 200 cars . . . all of which he stores in a custom-built pyramid.

His latest method of wasting giant wads of cash was to carve his name into a private island. He had "H-A-M-A-D" carved into the desert in capital letters, and the name is TWO MILES ACROSS, with each letter over half a mile tall.

It's so huge, the "H", the first "A", and part of the "M" have been turned into canals. And you can see the whole thing from space. What an a-hole. Almost makes you want to buy a Prius. Almost.

(The Sun)

 

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