15 Megs of Fame




Diaryland is da bomb I just *have* to tell you how much this all sucks. Who're these other people he's writing about? Who's the freak writing this, anyway? What's gone before. What's going on right now? Where do *you* visit on the web? What're you building right now?


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Another smart-assed remark from Mike
Gameshows are signs of The Apocalypse
10:45:00 on 2000-02-12

Celexa ® Day 9 (on Celexa), 37 (on antidepressants) Celexa ®

Feeling:

Harried. I have to work for ten hours, go pay my ISP (even as much as I hate them), and try to actually get things accomplished today. Sigh. Life needs to settle down a bit.

I really want my Remeron back. I feel like I'm coming down off it, or the Celexa is becoming the driving influence, and it's not nearly as effective. Then again, they never gave me directions on dosage, so I am just taking one every night before bed. Maybe I'm supposed to take two a day? The nurse said if I was running out to come back and get some... hmmm.

"B-C-A-D. How many seconds?" "The Californian." "Ninety-three million miles." "Redrum. Gawd, who doesn't know that?"

I like to pop out the answers to "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?" as I walk through the living room. The show is ridiculously easy, it's fun, and it's multiple choice, so it's a Hell of a lot easier than trying to show off when "Jeopardy!" is on.

Thus, everybody in my family thinks that I need to try out for the show. Uh, yeah. Just because I'm really good at playing "Trivial Pursuit" and tend to know lots of fairly useless information you think I ought to get on national TV and make a fool out of myself? "Better to be thought an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt," and all that.

I think what I love most, though is how they look at me like I'm smoking crack when I say, "a million dollars wouldn't go very far." Think about it - you win a million dollars. The IRS gets their chunk, and then maybe you have $600,000 left. Then everybody in the world you ever met starts hitting you up for money, so you make more friends than you ever knew you had, you lose a lot of really good friends... I don't think so. (This summons up visions of something I read in Levy's Hackers, about the now-defunct Sierra On-Line and it's old president, who said that friendship counts, up to about $10,000 or so.)


They said the same thing when "The Wheel of Fortune" came to town. "Try out!" I can pop those out pretty readily, too. It's simple, it requires some basic heuristics and you're on the ball. No biggie.

When Wheel came to town, though, I stood in the conference room where I worked and watched the throngs of people at the tryout since it was about a third of a block away down I-10. They were parking in our lot, and I was also watching tow trucks making a killing dragging their cars away.

I really thought about taking the day off, but then I thought about the picture of me being on Wheel, where they want me to jump up and down and squeal and act out for the camera, and I'd probably end up being the stodgy one that wouldn't, which nobody likes and then never ends up winning because I suspect that the game is rigged, anyway. (No, cynicism doesn't really enter the picture anywhere...)


There's this "lotto mentality" that the only way to make money is to win it. I don't like it.

The odds are, you'll never win the lottery. You have more chance being abducted by little grey dudes from Zeta Reticula B than winning, but people don't look at it that way. They think they lead good lives, they need the money, so their number will come up.

I swear, it's a tax on people who don't understand statistics.

At one point I worked out when it was worth putting in a dollar; I think I figured up that it was when the payout was $43 million or higher, you had an equal-or-better chance of getting a dollar on average back out. I'll play then, so I end up playing once or twice a year, tops.

But even then I'm apt to put a five down, rather than just a dollar. My irrational side takes over, because "it's just a few dollars, what will it hurt?" Lotto mentality. Thinking about what I could do with that kind of money takes hold, rather than telling myself, "you're throwing four of those bucks down a rathole."

This is the time when I know that we're doomed as a species.


I have an interesting new idea for a lottery, or actually, it's more like shares in a lottery, that is an elaboration on an idea someone I was talking to the other day had. Let's call it the Restless Lotto.

Say I divide the Restless Lotto up into ten million shares, but I'm reserving five million and one shares for myself. You can buy a share for a dollar (in lots of a thousand, of course), and a share entitles you to one ten-millionth of what the Restless Lotto (namely, my life) produces after a period of time (say, ten years).

If I don't make anything, you just lost the lotto. If I can take the compiled cash and build it into a career or business or something, then everybody wins. I maintain control of my life, though, because I have five million and one shares, of course, but if you have faith in my good sense and ability then you could come out a winner, too.

Somehow, though, if individuals do something like this, they go to jail. If states do it, it's a lottery. Weird, huh? Why's it okay for governments to bilk you? (But that's another entry for another time.)

restlessmind


Ancient history:
2013-03-01"You'll be stone dead in a moment!"
2007-08-07I covet fuck you money
2007-07-16My own long, dark tea-time of the soul
2007-07-11My internet experience is lacking
2007-07-10Coincidence



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