2004-01-03

I hate getting stuck in line at the corner store behind doddering old codgers buying lottery tickets. It always means that I�ll have to wait ages, money in hand, to make my five-second purchase while they engage the clerk in bizarre ticket-selecting rituals to appease the gods of gambling (�No, not that one�the one third from the left. No, not that one. There, that one.�) and then insist on scratching the ticket right at the counter, because who can wait ten minutes for a lucky windfall? and besides, they�re old, and therefore have the god-given right to spread irritation as far as their rickety hips will carry them. I want to kill them all with a cudgel. Mostly because I like saying �cudgel,� and my killing spree would be a �cudgel codger killing spree,� and that�s just too cool for school, mateys.

Meanwhile, back in the land of coherence: Gambling is a phenomenon I�ve never properly understood. Especially when it is performed outside of the �bright lights, free-flowing bar� atmosphere of a casino, although even the act of going to a casino seems to me like a pretty spurious backup to the oft-touted �gambling is fun!� argument. The �fun� part, presumably, comes from the supposition that you might win a lot of money. In reality, however, the very fact of �gambling� implies that, statistically speaking, you most definitely will not win. I guess there�s fun to be had somewhere in the act of hoping for something improbable to happen, but I can do that for free, saving my hard-earned cash for actual goods and services; for example, drinking myself stupid whilst hoping that George Stromboulopoulos will magically show up in the bar and take me to back to his place for an intensive lesson in pronouncing his last name. Gambling, on the other hand, is just stupid.