Lottery Tickets Reviewed: Powerball
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.
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