While awaiting the fevered outcomes of today’s midterm elections, another story has played out for some maybe unsuspecting someone here in California — quick wealth thrust upon them maybe literally overnight.
A twisting raffle on a Tuesday:

$2.04 billion jackpot winning Powerball ticket sold in California https://t.co/avdGLrGtyW pic.twitter.com/FEjza14lIM

— CBS Sacramento CBS13 (@CBSSacramento) November 8, 2022

Via The Washington Post this afternoon:

After 40 drawings without a jackpot winner, there was one winner of the estimated $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot — the largest grand prize in the game’s quarter-century.

The winning numbers (56-41-33-47-10 and the red Powerball 10) were drawn Tuesday after an unusual delay of several hours due to a technical problem.

The winning ticket was sold in California, at Joe’s Service Center in Altadena, the state lottery said.

…

The winner will choose between receiving the $2.04 billion in 30 payments over the next three decades or taking a lump sum of $997.6 million all at once.

Under California law, the state lottery is required to disclose the winner’s full name, the name and location of the retailer that sold the ticket and the prize total, according to the California Lottery website.

Some people’s lives are about to explode. We can all feel that shit.

And while on the subject of the lottery, which I hate with an unmeasurable passion,  and view this as a horror of American life right now. I managed a liquor store in northern California for a few years before I retired and witnessed the shit firsthand — we as a business don’t make much off ticket sales vs the actual work we had to perform to sell those same freaking-ass tickets. Of course, if a huge win takes place, like with Joe’s Service Center in Altadena, we make the pile — but WTF chance is that on an ordinary work day.
Next to zilch.

I posted about the shit a few times  — like this one from August 2013, titled ‘Ludicrous Lottery Lunacy,’ which included a mini-rant:

In all my years, I’ve never, ever come across anything, and I do mean anything at all, so utterly foolish, so utterly depressing as the lottery — and I’ve been married, TWICE!
It is unethical and immoral and plies upon the rubes with more money than sense. There is no redeeming social undercurrent to the lottery — it is a near-invisible horror. If you don’t play, the whole scheme is outside of your sight, unless the dollar amounts reach asshole proportions and make the news, and the only ones aware are asshole morons.
You are a fucking nit-twit to drop any money on the scam.

With a conclusion to this particular blog post:

Written during that crazed Mega Millions blowout when the jackpot was $540 million-plus.
Today will be another blowout, but no real money in the cash register. And when you go into a liquor store, convenience store, or where ever you frequent that handles the lottery, just remember that clerk behind the counter fucking hates — fucking hates! — having to deal with this horrible, ugly shit.

WTF! This is the era of delusion — dumb-asses.

Of course, I could have been writing about our current political state — as we continue to wait, anxiously eyeing our ticket

Numbers spinning around, yet here we are once again…

(Illustration out front found here.)