It’s Almost as if the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation Wants Us to Lose

Posted on 30 January 2021 by Larry Russwurm

For the purposes of this article, I am going to assume when picking numbers for a lottery ticket, those possible values are between 1 and 49 because that’s how it was for Lotto 649.

In its latest ads, OLG has ideas for us on how to pick your numbers. One is that if you have triplets, then pick the number 3. The most live babies a human can have at one time is 8. That’s why Octomom was such a big deal a number of years ago. No human female successfully had eight babies in one go before this. So if we pick numbers based on how many babies someone had in one batch, the numbers just range from 1 to 8. The numbers 9 to 49 just don’t occur when you are picking like this. This makes it about a 1 in 6 chance of of picking a possible lottery number that came up.

The incredibly enlightening ad from the OLG gives more suggestions for picking numbers. The next one offered was for a milestone birthday like 40. How many of those are there between 1 and 49? If we just use the 10s, there are only 4 milestone birthdays between 1 and 49. Perhaps we could add 18, 19, 21 and 25 to the mix. This results in 8 milestone birthdays between 1 and 49. Again we have about a 1 in 6 chance of picking a possible lottery number that came up.

Another suggestion for picking numbers comes from sports jerseys. How about picking your favourite player’s number? Don’t jerseys go from 1 to 99, so this covers all the numbers in a 1 to 49 lottery? Well there are about 25 players on a sports team (I am going by hockey but I think soccer and football and baseball are similar with fewer being on a basketball team.) 25 numbers out of 49 numbers gives odds of about 1 in 2 that you have picked a possible number that came up in the lottery.

So don’t pick like the losers in the television ad did. Pick numbers that have a full chance of coming up. A 1 in 1 chance. These numbers would actually range from 1 to 49. Good luck choosing.

A second ad that the OLG runs is the Mr. Encore ad. A friend of his called the rube “Mr. Encore” because he won the $100 000 prize in the Encore lottery twice in a few months. Which means he won big then kept playing.

This is what the OLG wants you to do. The more you play after a big win, the more the luck evens out. Yes, you could win twice. But there are much better odds that you will never win again. Even if you play all your winnings, chances are you will lose it all before getting that second big win.

I’ve known a blackjack dealer from a casino and know how he used to think of the game as going. To entertain himself he would pretend he was playing against all the customers. And this is how OLG likely works. The more money they gain, the better they can justify their salaries.

And what is with the Price is Right gimmicks? We now have the big wheel and the plinko board. I bet the OLG is paying rights to the Price is Right because they even use that television show’s theme song during the ads. So in short, if you want to win with OLG, be the Price is Right.

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Red, White and Chartreuse

Posted on 23 January 2021 by Larry Russwurm

I hear Americans saying the red, white and blue all the time as if it is obvious to what they are referring to. They are referring to their flag but to non Americans it is not obvious what they mean. To non Americans it is just as likely they are referring to the Union Jack, France’s flag, the Australian or New Zealand flag etc.

Why are these flags all the same colours? Well you might think stars and stripes is the same colour as Britain’s Union Jack, because the people of the US are descended from the British. This also makes sense for Australia and New Zealand. But what about France? And Canada whose two ‘founding’ nations were Britain and France should definitely have the same colours. But it doesn’t, instead opting for the red and white of Japan.

With so many, many colours available for flags, why do so many countries have the same colours? As my title suggests, red white and chartreuse make quite possibly a unique colour scheme for somebody’s flag. Why don’t countries use chartreuse on their flags?

One possibility is that exotic colours go in and out of fashion. What if a flag had dusty rose, teal or peach on it. Well right now those colours would be out of fashion. And wouldn’t that mean that the poor country with that colour on their flag would be out of fashion, too? Would we say, “Sorry, Pacifica, although you’ve got the best resume to be on the security council, your flag is out of style so you can’t take that position. But don’t worry, fashion is cyclical”?

Even the LGBTQ+ flag doesn’t include exotic colours. Just the primary and secondary colours. One could say that it isn’t even a rainbow. That’s right. Rainbows aren’t just the primary and secondary colours. They are the full spectrum. And that’s where you will find chartreuse. It’s in the full spectrum.

Maybe flags started as colours you could easily dye. That might explain why purple is so rare on flags despite being a secondary colour. For centuries it was considered to be the colour of royalty because the only purple dye was rare and very expensive.

But more exotic colours have been around for a long time. I assume burgundy was around at the times of the earliest mention of the place called Burgundy in Europe. Just look at their history! Burgundy goes in and out of style just like the country, duchy or county of Burgundy did. Maybe other countries see this example and shun exotic colours for that very reason.

Whatever it is, if you want a uniquely coloured flag it is quite easy to come up with one. If we ever get a chance to colonize the stars, maybe we’ll finally start to use other parts of the spectrum for those interstellar flags.

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It’s Soccer Club!

Posted on 16 January 2021 by Larry Russwurm

Soccer has made a comeback in North America. But you wouldn’t know that by the names. Toronto F. C. is the local team here in my part of North America. F. C. stands for football club.

This Eurotrash attempt to rename the sports of North America, had better stop. We already have a sport named football. The next time someone says Toronto F. C., I am going to say, “Oh, you mean the Argos?”

Excuse me, I said Eurotrash. But I’m not sure all Europeans are complicit. Most of them speak different languages and might have respect for our word “soccer”. So let me change that to “Brexiting Eurotrash”!

Brexiting Eurotrash should not get a say in how sports are named in North America. How would Brexiting Eurotrash like it if North Americans bought some soccer club over in Britain, say Manchester United, and change it’s name to Manchester S. C. where S. C. stood for soccer club?

Dallas and New York can join me in my rebellion so whenever you hear F. C. Dallas you can say , “Oh the Cowboys” and when you hear New York City F. C., you can say ,”Oh the Giants” or “Oh the Jets”.

Then I would like to take it one step further. The Argos, Cowboys, Giants and Jets should take it to court as a trademark violation. In North America these teams are in sports that are called football. The overreach by Toronto F. C. and F. C. Dallas and New York City F. C., using the name football while in North America, shows unmitigated gall. My only problem with such a lawsuit is that the Giants and Jets will have to split any winnings. Really I think that New York City F. C. ought to pay double!

Since people aren’t yet standing up for the purity of North American English, I feel I must. If we have to sue soccer teams into the dust I say bring it on!

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Yellow Teeth

Posted on 9 January 2021 by Larry Russwurm

It’s really hard to avoid getting yellowish teeth. Many things can turn your teeth yellow. There are the obvious culprits like drinking coffee and tea. Even herbal teas can turn your teeth yellow. Smoking cigarettes or marijuana can play this nasty game too. White and red wines can do this as well. Wear on your teeth can cause that yellow. And quite simply aging, itself, can cause your teeth to yellow.

So what are we supposed to do about this? Many rely on whitening toothpastes or bleaching routines to turn back the clock and make their teeth whiter again. So much so that it is a billion dollar industry. All because we want to turn the clock back.

I say let’s turn the clock forward.

Let’s start prizing yellow teeth. I’m not being some kind of nut here. I don’t advocate turning our teeth into some unhealthy brown or black here. If yellow is the colour of aging or normal usage, I say let’s embrace it. Yellow can be a sort of badge of honour that we flash with our smiles. Now doesn’t that sound healthy?

But wait. Isn’t our culture the one that idolizes youth? And aren’t youths the ones in society that have the whitest teeth?

We can work on that. Most youth can’t wait to become adults. They want all the rights and privileges that come with age. So basically they want to be the age of 25 and no more. That’s the age past which you have nothing left to gain.

So if we can start my little conspiracy here….

Remember, if turning the little liars down while checking age at a drinking establishment, to say “You can’t possibly be drinking age because your teeth are too white.”

If selling lottery tickets or scratch and wins, if anyone comes in with really white teeth, comment on that and then ask for ID. You might think your insulting the older players but they will be flattered that you think they are younger looking.

If renting a car out, ask to see their smile first. If their smile is too bright white ask for ID every time.

If we follow through with this all the time, young people will want their teeth to be more yellow. We can follow this up by making sure young stars have yellow teeth. Then these young stars can sell tooth yellowing agents at a healthy profit.

When all the youngsters have yellowed their teeth deliberately, culture will catch up and admire yellow teeth on their own.

Now, instead of us adults paying for bleaching, young people will pay for yellowing. Let’s make this a world wide phenomenon. Yellow teeth might be an aspect of aging that can be admired.

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Red Liquid

Posted on 2 January 2021 by Larry Russwurm

Recently I saw something so shocking, so surprising, so mortifying that I’m not even sure if I have healed to this very day. But I will try to get this out to the rest of the public to see what they think. A tampon commercial featured a red liquid to show just how much it absorbed.

I know that half of you are right now passed out on the floor. I will wait as you slowly come back to your senses and off the floor and back to your seats. Yes the colour barrier has finally been broken in tampon commercials. It used to be that tampon commercials exclusively used blue liquids. But that simpler time is looking to become a distant memory.

Some prepubescent girls are going to figure that the red liquid is a stand in for blood. To save polite society we are going to have to do some mental gymnastics.

Mothers can tell their prepubescent daughters that, “The red liquid is actually a stand in for red wine. You see, tampons are for soaking up all that spilled wine that inebriated people slosh around so willy nilly everywhere. And it stains. Oh my does it stain. So it’s a good thing that tampons absorb liquid so well.”

Sure there might be those awkward moments like when the mother starts drinking red wine. “Oh Mommy,” the prepubescent daughter will say, “Shouldn’t you have your tampon at the ready. It’s not called sloshed for no reason.”

“Yes. Fetch me two tampons, one for me and one for my boyfriend.”

“I’m a man! I don’t need tampons.”

“Which is why women always have to buy them. Men are just in denial.”

Girls in puberty will abuse the lies and use tampons as an excuse for underage drinking. “I need tampons, Mom, so pick up some nice red wine to go with them.”

The lies will get so bad that there will be a “Make Canada Great Again” movement to get things back to where they were. “Take the red out of Canada” will be the slogan. Someone will take the red out of the Canadian flag and will end up with a surrender white flag.

Someone else will replace the red with blue and we will end up with a barred, Toronto Maple Leaf flag. The Toronto Maple Leafs are such a crime against nature that they have the unnatural blue maple leaf as their symbol.

There will be so much chaos that I bet we will go back to blue liquid in tampon commercials.

Then we could say if the blue represents blood it will be for blue blooded royalty. So the women who use tampons are princesses and queens. If they don’t feel like princesses and queens for using tampons, that is just their humility shining through.

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Best Posts of 2020

Posted on 26 December 2020 by Larry Russwurm

For the larger part of the year I did comic book posts mixed with my ordinary posts. If I had to do it again I would. Not because they got more views. Indeed they got less views. It’s because I was thinking of comic book posts not my usual fare. I had to get them out of my system. I like the creative part of the comic book posts. But after I ended up creating my superhero team, I slowly ran out of steam. Perhaps I will work on them at a later date. Perhaps not.

Due to the statistics I will stick with my normal posts when declaring them best of the year.

In January it was fun to take the adult’s side in the movie E.T.

In March I came to the unsettling realization that The Apocalypse is Boring.

For June I chose to see bridges between the usually antagonistic DJs and the band Yes.

August had Our Favourite Comedians Have No Sense of Humour. Is one of your favourites trashed? Read the post to find out.

Everything Bagels is one of my favourites from September. I want you to give it another chance. When I posted it I didn’t realize it had a serious logic flaw in it. It is now fixed and I think it is a much better story.

In November, My – er – Someone’s Utah Monolith shows Utah’s general intolerance for monoliths. You might as well say, Utah – absolutely no aliens allowed! Good luck in getting a spaceport!

To everyone, have a happier new year even though the next 6 months are going to look an awful lot like the last 9 months. Still, that might be three bonus months. Happy 2021!

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Squirrelly

Posted on 19 December 2020 by Larry Russwurm

The definition of squirrelly has long been odd, eccentric, crazed or jumpy. This of course is due to the squirrel’s behaviour. They jump at every slight movement of something else. Yet, still they keep up all the things they do, continuing to get close to things that could kill them. That seems crazed. But there is method to these odd, eccentric creatures’ madness.

Squirrels are of course gathering and storing food. That’s what gets them so close to predators. They try to gather and store enough food for the winter months. They do an amazing job of this and that’s how they survive the winter without hibernating.

But if they stored their food in one giant cache, that might spark battles between squirrels for the each others’ cache. So squirrels scatter cache their food. That is, some species of them have 3 000 caches around their territory. It’s estimated that 25% of these caches are pilfered by other squirrels and birds but with 75 % of their caches okay, squirrels are more than capable of surviving the winter.

3 000 caches? What a feat of memory by the squirrel! I am in awe of these little guys. I am also reminded about memory palaces. That is the memory trick of mental “athletes” to memorize a set of things by using a memory palace to aid in the memorization.

The idea is simple enough. First you think of a place that is big enough to have easily remembered spots to place the items of your list. Then you mentally place that item there, or a mnemonic of that item. Say your list is the items in order on the periodic table. Hydrogen could be represented by the burning Hindenburg at your front door. Helium could be represented by the non flammable, lighter than air balloon that is tied to your doorknob. Lithium could be a battery that is in your front door camera. Beryllium could be your favourite kind of berry just inside your open door on a ledge where you keep your keys. Etc.

That is the introduction idea for the memory palace. If they could only talk, squirrels would be the masters of the memory palace. Their mental feats would be the stuff of legend. They would be banned from most casinos with their memory tricks.

I now think that squirrelly should mean something different. It should mean a mental “athlete”. It should mean someone schooled in the ins and outs of the memory palace. It should mean someone able to beat the odds at the casino.

I aspire to be squirrelly.

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IRE Land

Posted on 12 December 2020 by Larry Russwurm

While on my way to Ireland from the mainland, I stopped in at Britain. While there, I got into a conversation with an Englishman who asked where I was traveling. I told him and he immediately said, “It’s called Ireland because Irishmen are usually angry.”

Now I didn’t want to go to a place where everyone is angry. However I knew that Ireland functioned as a country in most ways and I doubted that everyone could be angry all their waking hours and still get everything done.

I realized that I was getting angry at this Englishman for telling me this. Imagine the astounding amount of racism it took to paint a whole nation as angry. This slow boil of anger was with me and it felt like it would be there for a long time.

Then I realized I was angry so if Ireland was angry, I would fit right in. So I continued on my trek.

When I landed on Ireland I was first greeted by a smiling face. That lifted my angry fog for a moment when I realized the Englishman was full of it. I said “I’m so happy to see your smiling face! I was practically told in Britain that this was Angry Land.”

Her smile fell and she said, “I hope that was an Irish national that told you this.”

“No. A racist Englishman.” My anger fog began to settle in again. I told her what I had been told.

My Englishman encounter preceded me as I traveled through Ireland. Everywhere I went there were angry Irishmen insulting the British. “How dare they name us as a bad stereotype! Down with England!” was a common refrain I heard.

Finally I asked to meet someone who wasn’t angry and finally I was taken to the serene Patrick O’ Mulligee. I talked to him for a few minutes and was suitably impressed by his serenity.

“It’s nice to see proof that this isn’t angry land,” I told him.

“I find the story that Englishman told you almost comical.”

“How do you keep your serenity about the situation?”

“I just think of what I am going to tell the first Englishman I see.”

“And what’s that?”

“I’ll just say that the name of England in Gaelic is Shit Land.”

“Shetland? That’s hardly an insult. Shetland islanders are supposed to be a proud breed.”

“No! Shitland, shitland!”

“There’s nothing wrong with Shetland.”

O’Mulligee got louder and his face turned red and purplish. He screamed, “SHITLAND!” a few more times but with his accent all I heard was “SHETLAND!”

I was sorry that I had come to Ireland. Patrick O’Mulligee and that girl had only lasted a couple minutes before getting angry. As much as I hated to admit it, that Englishman had been right. I suspect I will never visit Ireland again. Even though it is green.

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Monoliths Forever

Posted on 5 December 2020 by Larry Russwurm

Imagine you’re an alien that visits Earth. Your species keeps a low profile because you know just how violent and destructive humans are. You secretly watch Earthlings so they don’t know, and you come to the conclusion that they are not all violent and destructive.

You start taking their side when your fellow aliens say things like, “It’s only a matter of time before we’re forced to wipe them out.”

“There’s good in them, too,” you say.

“Prove it!” they say back.

Finally you come up with a way that just might show the rest of the aliens your opinions have some weight. You decide to plant a monolith in the deserts of Utah.

“See,” you say, “It’s been up for a couple years and no one has taken it down.”

But the other aliens know the tricks of humanity. “That’s because they don’t know it’s there. Watch what happens when we bring humans to it.”

With the help of some bighorn sheep the other aliens bring some humans to the monolith. All the humans do is take pictures and admire the monolith.

“See,” you say. “They didn’t even break off a piece as a keepsake!”

“Wait,” say the others. “Soon the rest of the Earthlings will know.”

Once let in on this wonder it only takes a few days for the Earthlings to tear down the monolith.

So a monolith is also put up in Romania and California. These monoliths only last a few days, too. “Luckily we just gave them a monolith to destroy. Imagine if we let one of us loose to be found by the humans. It would probably be war in a few days.”

So all the aliens become jaded and bitter because of the actions of the Earthlings.

That, said, you really can’t deny that the monolith has become the visual symbol of 2020. I propose to keep that link. Inevitably we will wish to make a monument to the people who were taken early by Covid 19. What other shape and size than than a prism monolith that is 3.5 meters tall and made of stainless steel.

With this shape we can honour our dead with words or if the area the monolith represents has a low enough population, we can inscribe the names of the dead on it.

I think we would need to put this monolith up in a city center with cameras watching 24/7, and make it public that anyone hauling it down would be fined and jailed. Then and only then might we have a monolith last forever.

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My -er- Someone’s Utah Monolith

Posted on 28 November 2020 by Larry Russwurm

In a very remote part of Utah, people using a helicopter found a 3.5 meter tall, triangular metal monolith. I am hoping they go back so we can find better observations about this mysterious artifact.

Firstly I would like to know how much of it is buried in order to keep it standing. That would allow us to know how expensive and heavy this massive mystery is.

Is it hollow? That would also tell how difficult a feat it would be to put this together.

What metal is it composed of? How dare the finders not carry a magnet with them to at least tell if it is iron, nickel, steel or the few other magnetic metals. Maybe next trip they can bring a cutting torch to cut out a very small piece to find out exactly what metal we’re dealing with.

But here is what I would do if I were going to put up such a monolith to tickle the world’s fancy and to be the king of impractical jokes.

Firstly, I would put it up after 1968. Two things were released that year: 2001 A Space Odyssey and Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Daniken. The discoverers of the Utah monolith made the connection to 2001 themselves which is why it has been called a monolith in the press. Von Daniken said that a millenniums old Indian iron pillar was of alien manufacture. This has since been debunked but it brought fame to this old world wonder. Although iron, it is rusting very, very slowly from effective ancient treatments. But actually I would put this “new” monolith up sometime after 1980 because I was just too young to do this prank at an earlier age.

Secondly, I would make it out of stainless steel. That after all is what the exterior of the giant nickel in Sudbury is made out of. I remember being disappointed by this factoid when I first heard it. I’ve always thought the giant nickel ought to be made out of pure nickel. Yes, stainless steel has some nickel in it. This way it would be cost efficient and wouldn’t rust. Theoretically it would last many millennia. It would be the impractical joke that keeps on giving (and lasting).

If this area of Utah is so remote, taking such a monolith overland in a car or by hiking might prove impossible. Thus I would use a helicopter to get it where it needs to be.

Then I could dig a hole at the approved site. To get the monolith in the hole I would drop it in with the helicopter. I would then burn the harness I had used to hopefully leave no traces. Then I would fill the rest of the hole so that thing would not budge for many millennia. Tadah! We now have a mysterious monolith.

While the authorities in Utah are expecting some fame driven artist to claim this installation, I know -er- think that this will never happen. Fame will only be for one news cycle. Then everyone will forget and the authorities will remove this from the almost pristine area of Utah.

Besides, the authorities have already said that this whole thing is illegal and they will likely throw me -er- the culprit in jail.

So let’s have an impractical joke that lasts a lifetime.

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