I'm rich!

There is a very real possibility that by this time next week, I will be a multimillionaire.

While my chances may be dogged somewhat by the fact that I seem terminally unable to motivate myself to go and buy a lottery ticket, I consider this a minor setback.

I also grant you that even if I did manage to shuffle down to the gas station (I actually do need to fill up the tank... take that, odds-makers!) and buy a ticket or two, my odds of winning the jackpot would come in somewhere between that of my spontaneously sprouting a donkey dong from my left nostril and being savaged by a group of swimsuit models after trying on a new brand of body spray. Since I take great pains to trim any nascent equestrian genitalia from my nose, this is essentially nil.

Notice my use of big words, it makes me sound smart! I are a genus.

Given all that, the chance -- however infinitesimal -- remains that I might suddenly be catapulted into the social stratum of people who, having stripped to the buff in a public restaurant and beaten a startled dinner companion senseless with their pendulous scrotum, would be referred to as "charmingly eccentric" rather than "batshit crazy."

I think many people -- namely, those I see at the gas station buying a stack of lottery tickets three feet high -- fail to put this particular enterprise in proper perspective. I have heard the lottery fairly characterized as a "stupid tax," but I still buy a ticket once in a while.

Given, I am pretty stupid. However, I also fully understand that the true value of a lottery ticket is not the possibility of winning an obscene amount of stripper candy, but the entertainment value. That is, for the few days between your purchase of a ticket and your discovering you didn't win anything, you get to imagine what you might do with the money you won't win. I have a lot of fun with this every time I buy a ticket, and now that I am closing in on finishing a glass of rather sketchy cabernet, I am uninhibited enough to be willing to share a few of my ideas with you.

I) This is probably my most oft-recounted financial daydream. I'd like to take my Japanese economy car, and put in a gigantic engine. I wouldn't do anything like add a spoiler, bigger exhaust pipe, nice rims, or leather seats. I'd just make my ugly, slow car into an ugly, very fast car. That way, I could do things like drive very slowly in the left hand lane with my turn signal on, with the full knowledge that I could be going very fast. And in truth, isn't that the essence of privilege?

II) I would spend a few million buying votes in the Senate and House, in order to pass a bill dictating the following:

1. Christmas music on the radio and in retail locations will be forbidden, on pain of extreme pain, any time of the year before December 10th. 2 weeks of "Jingle Bells" is ample, and anyone who disagrees is free to lodge a formal protest with the Director of Internal Christmas Music Affairs, whose badge of office will be a very large baseball bat with a rusty nail in it.
2. Anyone who causes my telephone or e-mail notifier to ring with the intention of selling me something I haven't personally and specifically requested will be strapped to a gurney and will have their genitals Tasered repeatedly until they can sing the national anthem of Botswana backwards.
3. Anyone who can sing the national anthem of Botswana backwards will be shot.
4. Anyone appearing on the dating show "Next" will be forcibly sterilized.
1. Ditto Elimidate.
   
5. The people responsible for cancelling Arrested Development will be gently educated as to their mild lapse in judgement with the judicious use of sandpaper and concentrated habanero extract.
6. Anyone who shrieks and cries tears of joy at the sight of a celebrity will be slapped around until they get a clue, preferably by the celebrity in question.

III) Daylight savings would be adjusted so that we always get an extra hour to sleep, and it never gets dark by four o'fucking clock in the afternoon.