Tag: Lottery

launching a toilet into space

Speaking of the lottery, I was recently involved in a lunch conversation where some people were talking about being super-extravagant if they won the lottery.  At some point, the conversation somehow gravitated toward toilets.  (I have some friends that get really random!)  I don’t know how the topics merged together, but someone said they’d have toilets that get launched into space when they get stopped up, or maybe even just when they’re flushed.  I don’t think toilets were meant to be disposable.  Also, I’m not sure what they cost, but given how many times a flush is needed for a normal household per day, that might burn through the lottery winnings fairly quickly.

Besides, can you imagine Earth being surrounded by toilets in orbit?  There would be toilets (full of poop) crashing into satellites and burning up on re-entry in the atmosphere.  The more I think about it, the more reasons I come up with for why that’s a crappy idea.

But I do admit that seeing toilets launched from someone’s house repeatedly might be kinda cool… that is, as long as they achieve orbit and don’t come back down.  There’s many obvious flaws in the scenario of them returning to the ground.  As cool as it would be to see a toilet shatter*, it would cause some serious damage if it hit something.

* Mango-Man says he’s seen a toilet fall off a truck and shatter into a million pieces and that it was indeed cool.  Too bad he wasn’t prepared to capture video of it.  It’s not everyday you get to see toilets break.  (Actually, I know someone who says he breaks his toilet on a regular basis, but more in a figurative sense.)

I’ve probably said more about toilets in this post than you care to hear about, so I’ll stop now.  But for the few who want more, there is a popular post here about toilet facts, and there are other posts about toilets (such as the motorcycle that runs on poop and has a built-in toilet).  You can use the search function in the sidebar to find even more toilet-related nuggets.  Hmm, that might not be the best choice of words, but this conversation is already in the toilet, so what does it matter?  🙂

You’ve won the lottery… oh, oops…

What would you do first if you won the mega jackpot in the lottery?  300 Danish people were recently told they had won between 1 billion and 280 billion crowns ($49.7 billion), but it turns out they had won only between $35 to $70.  It took an hour and a half to find and correct the mistake.  How would you like to be the lottery director who gets to inform these people of the mistake?

Three hundred Danes believed a dream lifestyle of champagne and caviar awaited them this week after they were announced billionaire lottery winners — until they discovered it was a mistake. …

“Three hundred of our lottery players who won the lottery, the Keno, received a message saying they had won a sum in the billions.  And they never won that amount … We are of course very sorry.  We have now written to them to inform them of the sum that they really won,” Roersig said. …

Roersig said some of the gamers “were disappointed, others were furious and I can fully understand that, but most of them took it well.”

I have a feeling that after all the excitement and jubilation, the words “very sorry” just aren’t much consolation.  I wouldn’t be surprised if there will be some lawsuits in this scenario.  I figure some of the “winners” already quit their job and starting buying expensive stuff.  The lottery director said he’s considering increasing their winnings to help compensate for their disappointment.  I’m curious how much that would be.

I wonder if any of the “winners” sent an e-mail to their boss saying something along the lines of “take this job and shove it”.  If you know the song by that title, are you singing it yet?  It’s one of those that can get stuck in your head.  If you aren’t familiar with it, it was a #1 hit in 1978, written by David Allan Coe and covered by Johnny Paycheck.

Anyway, I also wonder how many of those people later sent an e-mail to their boss saying “I’ve always appreciated your ability to take a joke” or “My computer got a virus and sent these crazy e-mails to everyone”.  🙂

If you aren’t familiar with that song or haven’t heard it in a while, it’s (of course) all over the YouTube.  But here’s one version I remember seeing from the Dukes of Hazzard, where Johnny Paycheck got caught in one of Boss Hogg’s infamous celebrity speed traps and thus had to sing at The Boar’s Nest.  Classic stuff here…

Boss’ reactions to the main hook are awesome.  That’s one of the best TV shows of all time.

I wonder how many people have written about the lottery and the Dukes of Hazzard at the same time…  🙂