Johnny America

 

Lot­tery Tick­ets Re­viewed: Powerball

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When you think about it, cal­cu­late it, you’ll re­al­ize that los­ing Power­Ball tick­ets are re­spon­si­ble for more col­lec­tive joy than the world’s great­est cat memes, side-boob ex­posés, and Net­flix orig­i­nals com­bined. Scrooges will tell you that two bucks for a one-in-292,201,338 chance to win — $66 mil­lion, $213 mil­lion, $590 mil­lion — is mon­ey poor­ly spent, but these my­opic mi­sers are cal­cu­lat­ing nick­els and pen­nies while the more el­e­vat­ed among us dream of lives of louche celebrity.

I run a small com­mer­cial sign com­pa­ny, in­her­it­ed since I’m the old­est son and be­cause my more-ca­pa­ble sis­ter pre­ferred the life of a me­chan­i­cal en­gi­neer. It’s not glam­ourous work, but it’s paid a mort­gage and al­lows me to dab­ble in con­cep­tu­al art. You might’ve seen my work dis­played out­side pub­lic bath­rooms in six­teen of the bet­ter states and four of the less­er ones — cod­ed mes­sages in the braille let­ter­ing be­neath re­stroom sig­nage al­tered for an au­di­ence who can on­ly feel, not see, my work: in­stead of “mens re­stroom” the braille might read, “mens room. you are per­fect­ly en­dowed and gen­er­ous in spir­it.” In lieu of “wom­ens lounge,” the dots might spell, “wom­ens room. you are love­ly and amaz­ing.” Those look­ing don’t see my in­ter­ven­tions, those who know them keep the secret.

I did not win $66 mil­lion in Wednesday’s draw, but my two dol­lars bought an hour of day­dream­ing on the In­ter­state, nom­i­nal­ly lis­ten­ing to the ra­dio and mind­ing traf­fic but most­ly think­ing about VantaBlack, a black­er-than-black paint laden with car­bon nan­otubes that ab­sorb so much light it’s like look­ing in­to a black hole. Three-di­men­sion­al ob­jects dipped in VantaBlack lose all sem­blance of di­men­sion, as if pro­files of ob­jects cut out of a pic­ture — the object’s there, you just can’t see it. I would start small, covert­ly black­ing out side­walk man­holes and park bench­es. Passers-by would won­der if they could fall in the still-cov­ered man­hole, or fall through the park bench cropped out of space-time. My am­bi­tions would grow and in the dark of night, I would send a flock of drones over the White House and drop wa­ter-bal­loons brim­ming with black, the build­ing re­ced­ing in­to pure pro­file against the Wash­ing­ton sky. Po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary, per­haps, or just an artis­tic pun on the building’s name? Chris­to would be asked to of­fer an opin­ion, of course, and Banksy would be sus­pect­ed but exonerated.

If ap­pre­hend­ed, they’d ar­rest me in my sauna, or my Jaguar, or din­ing on the finest seafood while wear­ing an im­pec­ca­ble suit and look­ing at a dou­ble-rain­bow form­ing over the Pa­cif­ic. But I would be for­giv­en be­cause of my mil­lions of dol­lars, rak­ish good looks, in­ter­est­ing hair, and mil­lions of dol­lars. I would skip down the steps of the cour­t­house in­to a wait­ing lim­ou­sine, slide in­to the cool leather in­te­ri­or, and kiss my wife be­fore she hands me a glass of cham­pagne. A few weeks lat­er, af­ter col­lect­ing my first No­bel and a Na­tion­al Book Award, when Oprah asks if the two dol­lars I spent on the lot­tery was worth it I would tell her yes, of course it was, and I would ask for her rec­om­men­da­tions on the finest bed linens a hu­man can buy.

Filed under Lottery Tickets, Reviewed on June 14th, 2019

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