1. Be or know a scheisty attorney
2. Be or know a scheisty banker/accountant
3. Be or know a scheisty insurance guy
4. If you can’t win by cheating, try finding a different game
5. If your conscience won’t allow you to sleep at night, remember to try pills, booze, and masturbation
6. You CAN get away with negligence if you know how to properly whine… and lie.
7. Deny! Deny! Deny!

Let’s get straight into it, shall we? Scheisty has nothing to do with “scheisse” which are the porno movies I won’t admit to watching sober. (Upon further research, Merriam Webster online [http://www.m-w.com] has noted that it may probably have roots from the German scheisser, literally defecator.) Scheisty is the adjective form of “scheister” (shyster in modern English) which comes from Yiddish roots to mean something pretty damn close to a cheater, or someone who abuses the system for his own personal advantage, usually financial. That said, I would like to point out that you couldn’t spell scheisty without HEIST – which is the whole point of being in business in the first place. We’re ALL breaking our backs for a buck; why not make the process a little easier, no? So in an effort to help, I present the following article: The Seven Habits of Highly Scheisty People.

1. Be or know a scheisty attorney.

Yes, in order to ascend to the level of scheisty operations, the attorney is an absolute requirement! You’ll know the scheisty ones because they are the ones who sign their names with “esq.” at the end. Scheisty lawyers are the easiest to spot because they tend to prefer the word “attorney” rather than “lawyer.”

As far as why you want to be/know a scheisty attorney, esq. (aha! Got you thinking scheisty already!) all you have to do is think about it. You want to be scheisty, don’t you? If you do it right, you’ll need a good attorney to keep you out of all the trouble from all those people whose toes you stepped on.

2. Be or know a scheisty banker/accountant

DUHHHHHH!! The whole point of being scheisty is for $$$$$. That’s what it’s all about, after all. Because once you’ve made the decision to go scheisty, you’ve basically sold your soul (often on a rent-to-own basis, so don’t worry). So if you’re going to whore your soul, you might as well get a good price in return, right? Of course you should!! That’s where your scheisty banker/accountant comes in handy.

Ever heard of the expressions “fuzzy math” or “creative finance”? Yeah, all kinds of financiers are doing that nowadays, but the way to distinguish the truly scheisty banker/accountant is the one who will accommodate your “laundry” in spite of the company CFO who signs his paychecks. So why would they stick their neck out so far for a highly scheisty person like you? Easy! Because once they take care of you, you OWE them. And the truly scheisty bankers are the ones who put Jews to shame when it comes to calling in favors. Honest Jews (yes, an urban legend) don’t DARE to meddle with scheisty gentiles. This, even despite the original “scheister’s” Yiddish roots.

Also, be sure to note that bookkeepers are not mentioned in this section. The reason for this is that bookkeepers do not have an honest constituency. Most people wouldn’t even NEED a bookkeeper if they knew how to read a bank statement. If they had any remote idea how much they had in their bank account, this person would be absolutely useless. So now that we’ve established that you’re thoroughly clueless and aside from working your ass off to keep the coffers full and the checks from bouncing, your bookkeeper already IS screwing you because you’ll never give it a second thought. In fact, were it not for this article, how many of you wouldn’t be questioning the integrity of your bookkeeper? Even if it’s just for the household, “Oh my wife takes care of the bills!” Yeah, I’d take a couple extra hours on Monday morning and go down to the bank and have a talk with the scheisty manager to get the straight dope. Your bookkeeper’s soul has already gone to the collection agency.

3. Be or know a scheisty insurance guy

Heaven forbid you should die early and find yourself unable to fulfill your scheisty destiny. But in case death should be included somewhere in your plans (something every true scheister safeguards against by trying to screw DEATH too!), you’re going to need your scheisty ass insured. (As mentioned earlier, your soul will already be en lien at this point.)

On top of which, how many scheisty schemes don’t involve collecting from the big, rich insurance companies that the suckers keep paying into? Ahhhh, my point, exactly!

The scheistiest of insurance guys tend to hide cute word plays into their plans to throw you off. I’ve overheard many the shady insurer discussing things like giving customers the GIP and throwing them off with ratchets. What the hell does GIP and ratchet have to do with insurance??? Dunno, but if presented properly, I’m sure we’d ALL want as many ratchets as we can afford. In boxes, no less!

4. If you can’t win by cheating, try finding a different game

There’s a reason you want to only know members of the other scheisty trades as opposed to being more than one of them. Those who master all 3 of the main scheisty trades (i.e. if you were your own attorney, banker, and insurance guy) you would cease to be a scheister and, instead, be a super-villain. While the omnipotence and incredible power associated with super-villainy may strike you as grand, beware that super-villains ALWAYS get taken down by super-heroes. Super-heroes don’t have the time to bother with your every day run-of-the-mill scheister. Besides, you want to AVOID attention to what you’re doing, remember? So rather than working on your reputation, work on your networking skills, sizzle chest.

Scheisty professionals are actually very easy to spot if you know what to look for. They are usually dressed tastefully (while on the job), have warm reassuring smiles, and speak in relaxed, sincere tones. However scheisty professionals do have their “tells”.

Many a pinky-ring has given away a scheister. If your insurance guy has cufflinks that match his tie clip or (worse!) his tie tack, guess what? Scheister! Shiny gold tooth? Yes, you have a scheisty dentist.

5. If your conscience won’t allow you to sleep at night, remember to try pills, booze, and masturbation

Just like being new on the job, making the decision to go scheisty comes with a lot of anxiety. You may be nervous about little things like retaliation from the suckers you’ve screwed, the long arm of the law reaching past your scheisty attorney, or even something as silly as karma. (On a side note, the cow-worshipping Hindu concept known as karma is Punjabi for BULLSHIT.)

Don’t look down on those who find power in that bottle of rye from the bottom desk drawer. Ponce de Leon (scheisty explorer) only divulged to a very few the TRUTH about the Fountain of Youth. In order to feel young and invigorated, the water needs to be frozen and put into a glass of Scotch.

Also, those pills took lots and lots of scheisty pharmacist man-hours to come into existence!! Why deny your brethren? They did the scheisty right, only they put a LOT more creativity into it. I’m SURE they had down the attorney, the banker, and the insurance guy – but they THEMSELVES reached into another vein of trade. That’s all.

As far as masturbation is concerned, PLEASE spare me. C’mon, if you were able to screw anything else, you wouldn’t be so bitter and busy trying to screw everyone out of all their cash to begin with.

6. You CAN get away with negligence if you know how to properly whine… and lie.

I have seen this tactic used SO many times and SO successfully against me in my younger days that I simply cannot pass it up. If you feel your time is valuable, then you have offered up a commodity to have a scheister exploit against you.

A whiner is like a telephone that rings and rings and rings. Nobody in their right mind wants anything to do with it, but it irritates on SUCH a fundamental level, right down to the basic instincts that you will do or give in to ANYTHING just to make it stop.

Once you ascend to scheisthood, this just becomes a part of the game. You can tell true master scheisters from the slight hint of a smile when someone tries to pull the whining game on them. (Much the same smile our forefathers gave our French brethren when being recounted tales of wartime bravery.)

The whining tactic is a direct descendent of the congressional filibuster. Imagine being told ANYTHING and EVERYTHING from how the chapters in Moby Dick that discuss how white the whale is are actually metaphors for the independence of Northern Ireland from Great Britain to how the different types of tread on tired can affect your car’s mileage in different climates and driving conditions. If you were able to make it through that sentence without pausing, even barely, then I need to rewrite it.

But honestly, sometimes, once the dust settles, you’re going to have some smartass with a voice recorder or a stenographer or SOMEONE who SOMEHOW sifted through all the karma you put out and tried to decipher your still subtly shrouded meaning, the answer is simple: LIE.

While I was writing and editing this article for submission, I was approached by many in an effort to prevent me from releasing the contained information. Much like the idiots who protest the efforts of Modern Drunkard Magazine, they are pretty staunch and persistently attack and attack regardless of just HOW white I make the whale out to be. So in an effort to conserve breath and just deliver the killing blow, I just continue typing and repeat over and over, “What article? I’m not writing any article! I said, ‘I’m not writing any article!!’” Which leads me to:

7. Deny! Deny! Deny!

The best example of this comes is Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaaf. You and I know him best as Comical Ali or better yet, as Baghdad Bob – Saddam Hussein’s infamous Information Minister during the liberation of Iraq.

Remember him? How could you forget??? Master of such gems as, “There are no American infidels in Baghdad! Never!” and, “I can say, and I am responsible for what I am saying, that they have started to commit suicide under the walls of Baghdad. We will encourage them to commit more suicides quickly.” These treasured quotes are part of what make me a lasting fan of the former Information Minister. He was scheisty down to his very last day in office. Naturally, SOME of the things he had to be honest about. “I speak better English than this villain Bush.” I mean, you can’t call the sky green in the middle of broad daylight. Upon being reached for a quote, Mr. Al-Sahaaf replied: