The Soapbox Archives:

• January 3, 2016
  With the Powerball jackpot up at $1.3 billion dollars (or a mere $700 million in a lump sum), I saw someone's blog that was trying to convince us that we didn't want to hit the lottery when it's that high.
  • If you win, a large portion of the winnings is taken by the government right away. Sure, that's a given. Allegedly, the IRS will withhold another portion as withholding. Well, there's nothing wrong with that. I'd rather have overpaid on my taxes at the end of the season than find out I owe a ton of money. Bottom line: if you win, you have more money than you did before those winning numbers were drawn. No matter how you look at it, it's a win. You just have to be smart about what you do with it.
  • A lot of family and friends (and new friends) will be calling you, people who wouldn't have given you the time of day in the past. You may have had famiily and "friends" who weren't very nice to you. If you're a nice person, you probably let it go and didn't do anything back; you have no interest in being as mean as other people, like the person who maliciously told us the end of the new Star Wars movie. If you win the lottery, you'll have a perfect way to get back at a bad person: you can let these jerks in your life watch you spend all the money they'll never get. Bonus twist of the knife: donate their "share" of the money to charity and let them know about it.
  • "You can't buy happiness". Probably not, but winning the lottery can improve the conditions that can help make you happy. Wouldn't zeroing out all your debts make you feel better? It sure would. Buying a new house for your parents? Taking care of your nephews'/neices' education? Not having to worry about splitting your parents' estate after they pass away? Imagine how much less stress you'll have.
  • I've already put money into the previous drawings. Have you ever played a slot machine for a couple of hours and put tons of money into it, walked away, and then heard someone win on that machine right after you left it? How did you feel? Are you going to just walk away from any chance at the Powerball jackpot after you put a lot of money into it?
  I think the only purpose of that article was to discourage more people from playing so the writer of that article would have a better chance of winning with fewer co-winners to share the jackpot. I can't believe this author was trying to get people to work against their own best interest, against something that gives them hope, even for a little while. Sure, the odds against winning the Powerball jackpot are really high, really, ridiculously high, but someone has to win it. If someone talks you out of playing it, that means you can't win it.

  A final note: I don't gamble much. I certainly don't play to *win*; if I did, I'd spend a lot of my life being disappointed. I don't like playing instant tickets because once you've scratched all the numbers, you're done with that ticket. As soon as you've picked up the ticket, your destiny has already been decided. Not knowing the hidden numbers will not change the result. Someone else may have already bought the few tickets with the maximum payout on that series. What about the MegaMillions or Powerball lottery? Each ticket is a potential jackpot winner because the winning numbers haven't been picked yet. Every ticket has an even and fair (though microscopic) chance of winning. I get to "enjoy" the ticket for a few days. I also limit my spending by allocating $1 for every 40 or 80 million dollars of jackpot. I'll never just throw a lot of money at the lottery; this puts a limit on what I'll spend.

• January 10, 2016:
  

• why you should not wear your street shoes in the house, I'll never wear my street shoes in the house *ever* again.

  From the macro level, shoes will pick up germs and dirt when you walk around outside (not to mention, any lawn chemicals and even less savory "stuff"). It doesn't just magically fall off your shoes when you enter a house. Even if it did, what about the water and bacteria on your shoes? Do you really want to tramp that stuff all over your friend's (or your own) house? I remember when I kept smelling dog crap near my front door. I finally figured out that someone had stepped on dog crap and then came into my house. I saw that it was grounded into the rug just inside my front door; I was lucky and just had to replace the rug; imagine if someone had walked through my house with that stuff on their shoes? (and let's face it: no one deliberate walks on dog crap).

  From a personal level, though (and now I know I've already written about this), if you prefer to keep your shoes on when going into someone else's house, you're actually telling them that their floors are dirtier than the outside. You might as well slap them in the face because that'll be more open and honest about your feelings.

  And if you go to someone's house and you see a lot of shoes arranged by the door, you shouldn't need to ask "Should I take my shoes off?". Asking that question just tells your host that you're not very perceptive. If you see all those shoes and keep your shoes on anyway, that means you don't care about other people's feelings. The hosts might not say anything but they're not going to forget it.

• January 24, 2016
  I was thinking about how color affects our world. It affects moods and affects the attitude of the viewer. It can radiate energy and excitement; it can also suck it in like a black hole. A particular color can look awesome on one person and look incredibly horrible on another person. (I still recommend the previously-mentioned 1987 "Color for Men".)

  It's interesting how a little bit of color can turn a white undershirt into streetwear or the lack of color (i.e., "white") can turn street clothes into underwear. (Well, technically, "White" is the presence of all colors in projected light, but you know what I mean).

• January 31, 2016
  I posted this on my Facebook page and even submitted it to the Boston Globe's Letters to the Editor, but i wanted to preserve it. I'm posting it here so it'll go into the archives.

  We know that Donald "The Donald" Trump refused to show up at the last Republican debate because of his on-going feud with newscaster Megyn Kelly of Fox News. If he can't get along with someone from Fox News, his relationship with any other reporter has got to be very sad.

  I'm sure that most people will have drawn the obvious conclusion:

  If Donald Trump can't handle Megyn Kelly, a news reporter, then how can he handle Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping (China head of state)?

  However, I think most people will not think of the better conclusion:

  If Donald Trump can't handle Megyn Kelly, then maybe Megyn Kelly is bad-ass and should be the one running for President, not Trump.

  Just sayin'.