(Illustration: Vincent van Gogh’s ‘The State Lottery‘ found here).

In a deep-ugly vacuum, devoid of sense and sensibility, can anyone hear me scream, even using the most-vile, nasty and most-inappropriate words imaginable — can’t happen when absolutely no one is listening.
In this really, really screwed nowadays, people have lost all regard for intelligence and have given-way to a form of pure, cold-hearted dumb-ass. Some folks don’t think, as Mr. Jack proclaimed: “You can’t handle the truth.”
Or maybe some words from Morpheus to Neo on the cattle/sheep quality of dumbass: “You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”
And so it goes for dip-shitted lottery players.

These crazed individuals shit their drawers if you try and point-out how fucking foolish the scheme. They want the delusion instead of the reality. As manager of a liquor store, I see dumb-ass up close, way-too close.
During a lottery stampede period last year, I wrote thusly:

Just about every crook of the curveball come through our doors every day, drinkers, smokers, tokers, and shitload of asshole jokers, but nothing, however, carries an unnatural feel to it, an oily, moisture-appeal to it, like the lottery.
And it’s way-way-really creepy — the kind of shit-thing Stephen King would cook up in a short story.
The process reminds me of an old Twilight Zone episode, “To Serve Man,” in which humanity gets eaten — “It’s a cookbook!”
People involved in the lottery are strange and creepy, very thin-skinned and easily provoked into displays of emotional outrage.
If you (or anyone you know) play the lottery on any kind of regular basis, you, or that person should go to a quiet place and think hard about how you think about stuff.
The lottery is probably the exact mirror of crime in plain sight.

Tonight’s the same. The multi-state Power Ball is up to more than $440 million, and lottery officials estimate the jackpot should top $500 million by this early evening. This brings out the unicorn dumb-asses.

And the reality of it all — from Daily Finance:

According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, seven U.S. states don’t run lotteries at all: Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, Utah, Wyoming, and (shocker!) Nevada.
Of the 43 states that do run lotteries, the average payout is just under 60 percent of the revenue dollars collected.
That’s an important number.
You see, rankings aside, whenever you’re talking lotteries, true “winners” are few and far between.
According to Bloomberg’s study, state-run lotteries “have the worst odds of any form of legal gambling” in America. They’re so bad that when you play the lottery in Louisiana, over time you’re going to average $0.51 in “winnings” for every dollar you pay to play.
The best odds in the nation can be found in Massachusetts, but even up there you’re looking at a $0.72 payback on each $1 lottery ticket. And the average payout is just $0.60.
…
If you buy $1,000 worth of $1 lottery tickets on Day 1, then statistically speaking, the average lottery payout of 60 percent means you’ll have $600 left to spend on Day 2.
Spend that $600 on Day 2, and by Day 3, you’re down to $360.
Keep going, and by Day 14, you will have (on average) just $0.78 left jingling in your pocket.
In other words, two weeks of playing the lottery has left you too broke to afford a single lottery ticket. Y
You’ve gambled away nearly every cent you started with.
It’s no wonder Bloomberg calls it the “Sucker Index.”

Stupid, hard-headed dumb-asses — and I’ve got to put up with their dream shit all day. And the true horror for us is that we get so little back, it’s ridiculous to even have the thing.
Delusions are like bubbles, popping, popping, popping…