Windfall

Up until now, this blog has mostly just been an outlet for trying my hand at comedy writing, but I think I’m mostly going to be serious today. I don’t really promote this blog at all, I keep the link buried at the bottom of my info page on facebook. That’s the extent to which I publicize it. I don’t presume to think that anyone is interested in my occasional rambling that I need to broadcast it loudly. But if someone is interested enough to be digging around on my info page, they might be interested in glancing at this. I guess it’s a small step above having a private journal, it’s a little more cathartic to think that whatever I wanted to rant about at least got tossed out into the world. Sort of like talking to the cat.

Anyway, this week the powerball jackpot reached $550 million. I’ve kind of always kind of subscribed to a certain belief on the lottery, and gambling in general. It’s summed up well by something I’ve heard a few times, that the lottery is a tax on people who don’t understand probability. I’ve been told, “Well, you can’t win if you don’t play!” Right, but I can’t lose either. Given that winning is highly unlikely, the choice that I have to make is between losing or not losing. I think I’d rather not lose, at least I keep my two dollars.

This line of thinking has mostly been solidified since I decided a little over a year ago that I wasn’t going to settle for working my desk job for 30 years, retiring, and dying. I’ve been working towards doing something more interesting and significant, so the idea of having everything settled by chance seems really unattractive now. I saw a good quote from Joe Rogan that resonates with me:

“Everybody wants to win the lottery, but the lottery will fucking ruin you. You have to earn the whole thing. In order to be a real man, or a real woman, you have to earn the whole thing”

Despite believing this, I did find myself wondering this week if I should just suck it up and buy a ticket. It’s really tempting when you’re looking at a number that’s so high. But then I thought, if that’s the case, if I’m going to give in this time, then I might as well just buy a ticket every week. The impact of half a billion dollars is mind boggling. I’d instantly be lifted to the position of buying the giant yachts and mega-mansions I was just admiring in Florida. But then again, the impact of $5 million dollars would be life changing too. I’d probably be able to coast on the interest, maintaining my current lifestyle without having to work, if I wanted. Hell, even half a million would be incredible. I’d pay off my house and all my car and student loans, and have plenty left over for toys, travel, and investing. So if I was going to cave on this one, really, I might as well just start playing every week. In the end, I stood my ground and didn’t give in.

Then today I saw something interesting on facebook.  A guy posted a picture of himself with a ticket containing the winning numbers, and said he’d pick a person from everyone who shared his picture, and give that person a million dollars. It turned out to be a hoax, but I observed a couple interesting things. The first thing I noticed was that a sizeable chunk of my friends had already shared it. Even more interesting, a couple of them were ones who I have heard denounce the excesses of wealth on more than one occasion. I don’t think I’ll dig too much into that, but it did make me chuckle.

The second thing I noticed was my own reaction. I was repulsed by the idea. I didn’t want to share the picture, even for a second. I think part of it was that, having already considered a similar question with buying a ticket, my resolve had been strengthened a little bit. But another part was that I found the idea of a single person gifting me a large sum to be even more unattractive than winning it completely by chance. I’ve developed an aversion to enjoying things I didn’t work for. I have a friend from high school who landed every job he ever had because he had an in with a family member or a friend – I don’t think he’s ever had a real job interview. In high school I was jealous, but as I grew older, I became glad that I had never gotten a job this way. Every time I’ve gotten a new job, it’s been a step up over where I was before. Every time, I’ve been able to fully celebrate the achievement, because I did it on my own.

I think another large part of this is that I really do want to do something significant with my life. I would love to have half a billion dollars, but I want it to be the result of having contributed and left a mark on the world in some way. If the money just landed in my lap for no reason, I’m afraid it’d take a lot of the fight out of me. Theoretically, I like to think that I’d just use the money to help me do something important, but I can’t help but think that reality would be different. I think the draw of an easy lifestyle would be very strong.

I don’t want the money by chance, because I still think I can get it on my own, and I want to fight for it. I remember in 2003, I read in the newspaper that the Motion Picture Academy wanted to give Peter O’Toole an honorary academy award. Peter declined, saying “I’m still in the game and might win the lovely bugger outright!” The academy told him they were going to award it to him either way, so Peter graciously accepted. But the sentiment always stuck with me. As a side note, Peter was also offered knighthood, and declined that as well. I’m not so sure I could be as principled on that one – it would be a lot of fun to be “Sir Donny!”

I don’t begrudge anyone who does play the lottery, or was excited about the prospect of getting a large sum from this facebook guy. I know that most, if not all, of them are thinking from a place of how they could improve their lives with that money, and improve the lives of those they care about. If someone I knew won it, I wouldn’t shun them or anything ridiculous like that (and not just because they might buy me a speedboat). I understand the appeal, it just doesn’t appeal to me. I’ve already been very fortunate in life and I have a lifestyle that really enjoy. If it gets better, I don’t want it to be by chance. I want to be the responsible for making it better.

The Greatest Evil of All Mankind

Friends, there is a force on this earth more unholy than any other: the customer service form letter.

Now, let me say that as someone who has experience working in customer service, I understand the appeal. When you work with customers, you find yourself answering the same three questions 90% of the time. For that reason, it’s a lot easier to click a button and send an automated response explaining why, say, the natural history museum does not admit helper monkeys, than it is to type a brand new email explaining this policy every time someone asks.

I fully support this use of a form letter: it’s just good business sense. But like anything else meant to drive down costs, it’s been abused. A few months ago I was pricing out a trip to Vegas on the Southwest Airlines website. I noticed that when I priced the trip through their “Packaged Deal” tool, which was supposed to provide a discount for booking flight and hotel simultaneously, the price was actually higher than when I priced the two pieces separately. In fact, the packaged deal was way more than the same trip booked separately through any airline, even when factoring in that Southwest does not charge for luggage (my reason for choosing them in the first place). So I sent an email explaining the problem. A few days later, I get a response, explaining that Southwest is deeply sorry they could not meet my expectations, but that travel prices are very fluid and that I should book as soon as possible to get the best deal. What?! It’s like they saw the word “price” in my message, assumed I was bitching about not getting a better deal, and sent the form letter for that complaint. Actually, I’m sure that’s exactly what happened. I really wanted to get this resolved, so I responded, clarifying that I was not complaining about the sticker price of the trip, but rather that I believed they had a technical glitch on their site that was displaying an incorrect price for packaged deals. I decided to double down and harness the power of social media, so I took to the Southwest Facebook page with my problem as well. Within minutes, other people had commented, agreeing that they had seen the same problem on the site. I received an email response from Southwest within an hour, saying that they were forwarding my concern to a team of specialists, and would respond as quickly as possible.

That was the last I ever heard from them, on Facebook or through email. I ended up booking through my old standby, Expedia, because even with bag fees, the trip was still way cheaper as a packaged deal through Southwest. I know a big company like Southwest doesn’t care much that it lost my business (though it did end up being quite a bit of business; flight and hotel for six, plus shows and tours). But how many other people noticed the same thing as me and also decided to go somewhere else? Worse yet, how many people booked the packaged deal through Southwest and were essentially ripped off because they were calculating the price incorrectly?

This experience, and dozens of others lately, has given me insight into the first two steps in the customer service handbook of Southwest and most other companies:

1. Send a long, wordy form letter response as a sort of hail mary in hopes that the customer will be paralyzed by a wall of confusing and irrelevant verbiage and decide to drop the issue altogether.

2. If the customer persists, try ignoring them completely and hope they drop the issue altogether.

I can understand the appeal of this tactic when you’re dealing with an irate customer who just wants to complain. But in my case, I was actually trying to help Southwest fix a mistake, with no real benefit to me. Like I said, there were cheaper deals elsewhere, so I easily could have seen the mistake and decided to head elsewhere. I have had good experiences flying on Southwest in the past, so I decided to try and help. My mistake!

Steven Spielberg is an enabler

Steven Spielberg said this about Indiana Jones 4 in Empire Magazine:

“I’m very happy with the movie. I always have been … I sympathise with people who didn’t like the MacGuffin because I never liked the MacGuffin. George and I had big arguments about the MacGuffin. I didn’t want these things to be either aliens or inter-dimensional beings. But I am loyal to my best friend. When he writes a story he believes in–even if I don’t believe in it–I’m going to shoot the movie the way George envisaged it. I’ll add my own touches, I’ll bring my own cast in, I’ll shoot the way I want to shoot it, but I will always defer to George as the storyteller of the Indy series. I will never fight him on that.”

Here’s the problem: for the last 20 years or so, you’ve seen your “best friend” make several attempts at revisiting his old creative properties and screw the pooch pretty much every time. “Man, I just throw the parties and buy the booze, if George gets tanked, slaps around a couple chicks and wrecks his El Camino, that’s his business, man.”

Why I’d Rather Lose with Tebow than with Orton

Kyle Orton is a bad stripper

In so many words, Kyle Orton told the Bronco Nation that he doesn’t care what we think. It felt like deja vu from 2006, when a similarly halfway-decent Jake Plummer said the same thing and, by the end of the season, was also replaced with a similarly untested newbie after similarly disillusioned fans began calling for his head. Look, we’re not stupid. We know that most of these guys are playing for their own benefit and not ours. But when you’re getting a lap dance, the last thing you want is for the girl to lean in and whisper “I would never be interested in you, but my Mercedes payments are outrageous.”

Look, I started rooting for Orton when everyone was still sore about the Cutler trade, and I didn’t convert until two weeks ago. I wanted to believe in the logic: great stats, best in practice, best chance to win. But it wasn’t playing out that way on the field. He was choking. I watched him in person at the San Diego game, and he looked lethargic, like he didn’t care, the polar opposite of the quarterback that won five in a row back in ’09. I can’t say I blame him, it’s hard to do your job while people are comparing your performance to acts of bestiality, but when you’re at a certain pay grade you need to shutup, put on the glittery lip gloss, and shake your ass for the nice people. Otherwise you’re just feeding the flames.

Tim Tebow is made of powdered sugar and magic

My conversion to Team Tebow is relatively new. And really, I’m not even “Team Tebow” as much as I’m just “Team Seems Like a Decent Idea.” He brings an energy to the team and the crowd that Orton wasn’t able to provide. In the post-game interviews, he comes off like a boy scout. But not the pretentious, preachy boy scout who wants to show you his badges and tell you about how he just helped an old lady across the street. He actually seems geniune. I’m not religious, and usually when somebody starts every sentence with “Well, I have to give the credit to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,” I have a reflexive eyeroll, but when Tebow says it I just think “Well, good for him for being so wholehearted.” (So much so that I even go out of my way to capitalize the appropriate words in that quote when I normally would not.) I want Tebow to marry the daughter I don’t have. He’s the kind of guy that makes you want to root for him, even if he’s nailing people in the crowd with errant passes and tripping over his own shoelaces.

Because screw it, that’s why

When I was a kid, I was really bad at video games. So usually when I’d rent a game, I’d really try and win for the first day or two. But once it became obvious that I wasn’t going to beat it before it was due back at the video store, I’d just start messing around. That’s kind of where the Broncos are at. Even an actual Tebow miracle probably isn’t going to get us to the Super Bowl or even the Wild Card at this point. Kyle Orton is a free agent at the end of the season and would be nuts to stick around at a party where everyone thinks he pissed in the punch. So why not find out whether our first round draft pick is decent? You could say that’s what practice is for, but we were told that Kyle Orton was a superb player in practice and it hasn’t translated to the field. Sure, we lost to San Diego and barely inched past Miami, but both games were infinitely more exciting than any of the recent Orton losses have been. We’ve already seen what Orton has to offer, and it’s been downhill for two years. Why shouldn’t we open the other presents under the tree before we start asking Santa for more?

Douche’s Dictionary: Poignant

 

poign·ant

 

Term used to describe a concept or plot that is needlessly elaborate, yet transparent enough to be understood by used bookstore employees pretending to be Buddhist: a poignant student film.

 

-Synonyms

 1. pretentious, highfaluting.

-Antonyms

 1. entertaining, excitative.

 

 

The problem with the word poignant, as is the case with most other words that become part of the douchebag lexicon, is that it was abused and misused to such a degree that it lost it’s power. Rather than using the word to describe things that are thought-provoking and complex, it seems like douches will tack this word onto anything they think people might not be taking seriously enough.

 

The last straw for me was seeing an ex-classmate post on Facebook, “Just saw District 9, such a poignant movie.” This translates to, “Hey, this movie is more involved than ‘Predator’, don’t write it off as another sci-fi piece of garbage.”  But saying that would 1. require her to admit to having seen “Predator” and 2. not sound as eloquent. So let’s just toss in a word that is probably too strong for what we’re really trying to describe. As a result, anyone who would ever run into a situation where using the word “poignant” might actually be an appropriate adjective is now abandoning it for fear of being grouped with the abusers. The same thing happens in old shopping malls; once the place becomes a magnet for a few stripper clothing stores and pleather outlets, everyone else flies the coop. The two cannot occupy the same space.

 

By the way, I haven’t actually seen District 9, but what I have seen are a couple dozen reviews and 445,000 google search results that link it to Apartheid. Here’s a tip: if a story draws a historical parallel so obvious that anyone with an associate’s degree makes the connection just by reading the synopsis on IMDB, that’s what we call thinly veiled. You might think twice before patting yourself on the back for having figured out that “The Butter Battle Book” is about the Cold War.

Sex, Drugs, and Full Body Scans

I was heading home to Denver from New Orleans on Saturday, when I suddenly found myself stuck in the line for the dreaded full-body scanner. Up until that point I never had a problem with the idea, but it’s a different game when you’re faced with the prospect of entering one yourself. There’s a lot of talk about the alternative pat down you’ll receive if you refuse the scanner-what isn’t mentioned as often is that if you have ANYTHING in your pockets that shows up on the scanner-chapstick, receipts, a gum wrapper-you get the scanner AND the pat down, and there’s a friendly neighborhood TSA agent just past the scanner, gloves on tight, hunched like a linebacker waiting for the snap as you get scanned.

When I approached the scanner, a middle-aged man had just passed through and was waiting to learn his fate. HANDS IN THE AIR, SCUMBAG! Looks like someone forgot about that paperclip in his shirt pocket! Luckily, he was on his way after a quick pat and a stern warning about checking his pockets more thoroughly from the imposing, muscled TSA agent. Whoops, typo. That should say “pudgy, unshaven, bookish TSA agent.” Al Qaeda beware! He probably can’t catch you if you run, but he can totally pwn you in Warcraft!

Ahead of me in line and next up to bat was a fit, attractive college age girl in a tight spaghetti strap top. The look on Pat-Down Pete’s face was that of a gambler watching a spinning roulette wheel. COME ON, LIP GLOSS IN THE BACK POCKET! BIG MONEY! I’m not trying to imply that he’s a perv who likes feeling up strangers, obviously I don’t know this guy. Everyone is always worried about the crazed groping fiend working for TSA, but imagine having that job as a normal person, like this guy and most of the agents probably are. The vast majority of the general populace do not possess a physique that I am even remotely interested in putting my hands on. Even the most atheist TSA patter-downer is praying to God that the scanner doesn’t pick up anything on this guy:

I have to imagine that during the course of a day in this job, there’s got to be a subconscious tally of attractive and unattractive pat-downs going on in one’s head, and the quality of a day is based on coming out ahead, or at very least, breaking even. That probably explains why I saw a little bit of light leave the agent’s eyes when my lady line predecessor got a clean bill of threat from the guy on the other end of the walkie talkie.

And then it was me. I would say my palms got sweaty, but I was in New Orleans where even the dead sweat. I get nervous enough going through the metal detector, especially with the Soup-Nazi-like nature of the Denver TSA agents, who once literally shouted at me to return to the security area so they could loudly and angrily inform me that it was unnecessary for me to have placed my wedding ring in the x-ray bin. I always stare straight ahead, unsmiling, trying to seem as un-Jihad as possible. I’ve found that this is not needed in most airports, like Minneapolis, where the folksy TSA actually laughed and made fun of me for how stoic I was, then asked if I brought them any Thanksgiving leftovers as a bribe. But I always default to a police-lineup level of rigidness until I determine I can do otherwise.

I was only nervous about the pat-down for a fraction of a second when another thought entered my mind; maybe I ought to chub up a little? I mean, I myself had made the argument for the privacy factor of these machines to others; the security personnel who review the images are in a separate location with no visual link that can match the scan to a real person, the images are immediately deleted by an automated program, and the gray blob that they do see looks more like a creature the Ghostbusters would try and capture than anything anyone would find arousing. So who cares what my junk looks like? But that rationale didn’t stop my ego from not wanting the clay-looking, computerized version of me to look like he had just taken the Polar Bear Plunge.

TSA: Sir, please enter the scanner.

Me: Just a sec, making sure my pockets are empty…still not quite sure, checking a little more…little more..ah..ah…AH. OK, they’re empty.

Luckily, I had been in a humid airport for 30 minutes, so I felt “presentable” enough that this exchange didn’t occur. But you can imagine. Don’t you want to imagine? Oh yeah. Turns out my pockets were perfectly empty, and I was sent on my way, no hope of having my privacy violated for at least another two hours until they stuffed me into an airbus. I wonder, would old TSA Tom have chalked me up as a point in the attractive column? The world may never know.