My Lotto Results - Guess Who's going Back to Work Today?

I'm not a compulsive gambler.

Not because I think of gambling as a sin.  Not because I  know enough about math that I know how astronomically low the odds of winning are, not just for the big prizes but to even come out ahead on the smaller prizes.  And not because I don't feel the temptation to try.

It's because I take rejection so hard.  Rational or not, when I lose, I take it personally.  My disappointment is so high that it takes me weeks or months that I buck up enough to try again.  This sense of taking it personally is what prevents me form spending my life in a casino, or scratching off an endless stream of tickets at a convenience store.

And no, winning small amounts does not impress me.  They just get re-invested into more tickets (which I'm sure is what the game designers want) until I finally crap out, and my heart lies just as smashed as if Betty Lou turned me down for the high school dance.

I remember from my favorite novel about a dystopian future, 1984, how a brutal dictatorship help control the masses, the proletariat, their put upon and increasingly declining lower middle class.  They keep them entertained with inane sitcoms and banal TV programs, they watch violent sporting competitions, the news keep them hopped at all the wrong people, they are built up to hate the other and go along with foreign wars to keep them at bay.  And they have the lottery, where they gladly give away their meager savings to have a statistically impossible chance to win big money.

The Powerball lottery was ginned up a few months ago to pay out the big prize on a less frequent basis. They realized that participation went up when the payouts got big enough for people to take notice.  Apparently 250 million dollar payouts were not enough to attract attention anymore.  While increasing the range of numbers used for the regular numbers, they lowered the range for the powerball.  This increases the chance for a low rung prize, making more people think that they just missed out, and why not reinvest that small amount into more tickets?

Knowing all this, guess who still bought tickets?  That's right. I did.  And guess how much I won?

Well, I'm headed to work this morning, ain't I?

Maybe another time.  If I can get over the rejection.  The lottery and Betty Lou - like two peas in a pod.