Day 95--- "It Could Happen to You"...

How is everyone feeling today? Good? Awesome? Fantastic. Me too! Why you ask, oh well that's easy. I feel great because I spent the day doing nothing but watching countless hours of reality TV. This stuff is a great way to make you feel like you have the most normal, least complicated life on the planet. I've found a new show that I am going to be obsessed with called Tabatha's Salon Takeover, if you have never seen this, it is a must watch. For no other reason than because I say so. One of the first shows I watched today became my inspiration for today's blog. It was called "The Curse of the Lottery", and the people I am going to write about are the idiots that win large sums of money in the lottery and lose it within years...

I don't know if this is always true, but from what this show portrayed I think that it is a requirement to have a mullet, at least 3 missing teeth, a southern accent, and a police record to even be eligible to play the lottery in the U.S.A.. I did not see one winner on the show with more than a 6Th grade reading level, and probably a 3rd grade math level. Some of them spoke such poor English in fact that at times they provided subtitles... Giving these people millions of dollars is like having Stevie Wonder give you a haircut, the results are not going to be pretty. There is a reason that most of them are poor in the first place, and I imagine it starts with the inability to handle/control their finances. This is the type of person that finds it wise to spend $20-40 a week on lottery tickets while they are eating Top Ramen and rabbit meat for every meal, (and I assure you that comment was not supposed to be condescending to the Ramen)... After watching this show I was seriously starting to wonder if the whole Lotto system was some sort of set up where they find the least fit/capable/smart people and somehow allow them to win. Then once they have won they make bets to how fast their lives will fall apart, how fast they can spend it, or how fast they can exile people from their lives.

Some of the people started off seeming like they had a brains, for instance this one guy who won 16 million. He chose not to get the lump sum, he was gonna take something like $550k a year for 25 years after taxes, I thought to myself ah, finally a smart one. Not! The guy managed to spend $400,000.00 within the first 2 weeks, he bought a jet, a house, and something like 35 cars (this was in 88' so I guess that stuff was a bit cheaper then)... There are these groups that will re'offer the winners a smaller lump sum in exchange for their extended payout. They pretty much exist to bail out these idiots when they end up in debt after a month... There was more to this guys story, but basically he ended up selling his 25 years, his 16 million, for 2.1 million after 2 years just to pay off debt. SO essentially he went from broke, to 16 million, back to MC Hammer broke within 3 years and some change... Now that is impressive... The stories don't stop their but I wont go too much into detail. I will tell you there is a lot of drug abuse, a few robberies, even more deaths, John Deer Tractors, stuffed deer heads and certainly not enough veneers, investing, books, educational advances, or mullet trims. Don't be fooled by the rocks that they got, they're still, they're still Jethro from the block. Each and everyone just like the Clampetts, except for the Clampetts managed to keep their money.

I realize this may be one of those programs or situations that you had to see or experience to get the full effect. But I tell you right now these stories really did something to me... I'm thinking about setting up a business where I just hunt down hick lotto winners and become somewhat of an agent or financial advisor. I wont use big words like that to them though, or they would never understand, but I tell you right now I will be the Jerry Maguire of the mullet lottery world. Save them from themselves. At the very least I am going to write some sort of book or movie based on a fictional one of these characters, its too exciting not to be written. I could even have my own reality show that just follows these people around as they buy giant stuffed bears and Dale Earnhardt (Nascar) paintings.... All this stuff is now Copyrighted and Trademarked so don't even try stealing my ideas :)...

I'm just upset that I'm going to go to bed and dream that I have millions of dollars and then wake up poor again tomorrow, those dreams are the worst. Even worse than waking up in the middle of $3x dreams... But hey, at least I have my teeth ;D...