by Mark BROWN

Cost: $1

Max­i­mum prize: $3,000

Ap­peal: There are a dozen ways to grade a person’s achieve­ment rel­a­tive to their po­ten­tial — he’s not liv­ing up to his po­ten­tial, she’s meet­ing hers, and so on, and so forth. There’s the sur­face-lev­el com­men­tary stat­ed in the ex­pres­sion, but there’s al­so a deep gloom in­her­ent in the phras­ing that of­ten goes un­rec­og­nized. When a well-mean­ing ob­serv­er re­marks, Sally’s liv­ing up to, or worse yet ex­ceed­ing her po­ten­tial, there’s the un­writ­ten im­pli­ca­tion hov­er­ing in the va­por like a car­toon thought-bal­loon: Sally’s po­ten­tial was con­sid­ered and quan­ti­fied, and ex­pec­ta­tions were set low. Years on, rest­ing at last in a large oak box, may I be so lucky as to have a friend eu­lo­gize, he achieved one thou­sandth of his po­ten­tial. The Sham­rock Tripler is a dumb tick­et. But the con­cept — the po­ten­tial it fails to achieve — is gar­gan­tu­an. Look at the word TRIPLER, metal­lic like the gold coins stum­bling to earth from heav­en. Con­sid­er the lep­rechaun, hid­den per­haps be­hind the yel­low game-box, and imag­ine if the Sham­rock Tripler evolved in­to a quadru­pler, and the lep­rechaun en­tered stage-left. Do not buy the Sham­rock Tripler, as a tick­et it dis­ap­points, but say en­cour­ag­ing words to it should you see it at the store. Its po­ten­tial is limitless.

Fun: ¹⁄₁₀

Graph­ic De­sign: ²⁄₁₀

Eroti­cism: ¹⁄₁₀

Over­all val­ue: ²⁄₁₀

 

Filed under Lottery Tickets, Reviewed on March 31st, 2007

—

Care to Share?

—§—

Previous Post

« Na­tiv­i­ty

—

Next Post

The Sur­vivors Cat­a­log Their Col­lec­tive Knowledge »

Join our Irregular Mailing List