booze

How the lottery can help build a kickass bar…or not

Okay, it seemed like a reasonable gambit. Ordinarily I’d suggest my parents blow the entire paycheque on booze. I thought the idea of leveraging the money via the lottery was really quite clever.

But my parents ignored me!

I thought they were being dickheads again, campaigning against my happiness.

Like most people, they buy the occasional lottery ticket. Why shouldn’t they buy more lottery tickets, then? Imagine: we could multiply our Lotto 6/49 chances by 10 or even a hundred, and then we’d be awash in booze. The booze of winners!

The Lotto Max jackpot is currently at $20 million—enough for the kickass bar of our dreams…the sort of bar the kids could brag about to their friends at elementary.

When I asked my mum about it, she said she feels like an idiot when she buys a lottery ticket. The only thing that allows her to do it is the knowledge that millions of other Canadians are doing the exact same thing without feeling like idiots. Just for a moment that $5 or even $10 seems like small change beside the chance at new cars, new clothes, new furniture, massive televisions, killer sound systems, whiter teeth, Botox, vacations, cruises—you name it.

Oh yeah, and all the philanthropy they could engage in! We mustn’t forget that, because wasting your money on a lottery ticket involves digging for justifications, the biggest of which is that you deserve to win.

But can you win? I decided to school myself a bit.

Winners who beat 14,000,000:1 odds!

The average North American spends $1000 per year on lottery tickets and recoups a thirtieth, at best, of that with minor wins. Wow! That’s over $900 in spilt money. That’s ten very nice whiskies, 50 decent bottles of wine, or 40 cases of beer. OMG!

So maybe lottery tickets aren’t such a hot idea. Why do people buy them?

If you went to an investment advisor with $1000, you wouldn’t sink that money in a fund that promised to swallow your capital and give you $30-$40 back. Duh. But despite the statistical fact of abysmal returns, we continue to do this very thing at the lottery stand.

Canada’s most popular lottery, the 6/49, carries odds of almost 14 million to one. A toonie doesn’t seem like a big risk. One toonie twice a week=$208 per year, which is fine for anyone who doesn’t mind sacrificing five bottles of Belvedere and getting a mickey of Alberta Pure in return.

If only we were that restrained, though. And actually Canadians are a little more restrained than US citizens—we spend about $600 a year. Which still isn’t restrained—we’re not just spending a toonie on the 6/49; we’re also getting sucked in by scratch’n’wins and the astronomically long odds (28 million to one) of the Lotto Max.

Who’s doing all this buying? It isn’t everyone. Plenty of people walk past the stand without being tempted. Their $0 purchases contribute to the national average—which puts in perspective the lottery addict who spends ten minutes a time at the stand hand-selecting scratch tickets and boring the shit out of the clerk. The Lottery People are closely related to the People of Walmart; they have specific characteristics, not necessarily including visible ass crack but often involving body odor and decrepitude. They like to have rambling one-way conversations with captive listeners such as lottery stand attendants, and they are singularly oblivious of people in line behind them.

The Lottery People actually save us money sometimes. My mother, who already feels like an idiot whenever she buys a ticket, is too embarrassed to stand for more than a minute in the line-up and will bolt rather than be exposed for longer in the queue. While there, she looks furtively around. If someone chit-chats with her, she makes a point of snickering about her own silly purchase and calling it the Idiot Tax. If the kids are with her, she tells them lotteries are stupid and that we don’t do this very often. Yes, my mother has some inner conflict to work out, but she won’t be able to afford a psychologist if she continues buying lottery tickets.

Considerably better odds than government lotteries 😉

Sadly, having less money often translates into buying more tickets. Statistically, lower-income earners hand over more cash for tickets, perhaps because lotteries seem like their only chance to attain wealth.

This represents a striking dichotomy between realism (slim chances of mobility) and utter unrealism (the odds of winning are substantially smaller than the odds of dying from necrotizing fasciitis).

Plenty of things are more likely than winning the lottery:

  • Dying in a plane crash: one in 400,000
  • Drowning: one in 88,000
  • Being struck by lightning: one in 500,000
  • Contracting herpes: one in 950
  • Getting attacked by a bear in Yellowstone Park: one in 2 million

Wow, all those things suck!

So what should my parents buy instead of lottery tickets? Ahhh!

  • Instead of playing 6/49 for a year: two bottles of Glenfarclas 17
  • Instead of Lotto Max for a year: one bottle of Ardbeg 18

Between Glenfarclas for sure and wealth maybe, I’ll take the Glenfarclas.

After another nudge, my parents finally responded.

OMG! They really are opposed to my happiness.

HERMANN’S DARK LAGER—Don’t dye it green, weirdos

My Fellow Inebriates,

The strike action this week at the kids’ elementary school amped up my daily terrors. Even though the girls prefer ponies to bears, I was often included in their games. Looking back on the week, I’m astonished that I don’t have a new orifice. But, like any good Stockholm Syndrome sufferer, I like the kiddies. They are only the third most terrifying thing of immediate concern, the others being:

  • Fluffy. Whether he’s luring away my girlfriend with his overwhelming fabric-softened fluffiness, radiating a disturbing sense of mental vacancy, or making objects go bump in the night (with his mind!), Fluffy is an eerie reminder that my Granny might still be with us.
  • Leprechauns. Is it just me, or are leprechauns not totally creepy? I’m freaking scared of leprechauns, people; they’re right up there with clowns in the horror hierarchy. And with St. Patrick’s Day looming, these little shoemaking freaks are starting to amass.

Don’t get me wrong. I was crazy about Granny, Ireland is wonderful, and I salivate thinking about drinking Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day. But Fluffy is all wrong on any continent (he made a picture fall down last night with his mind—OMG!), and leprechauns—yikes!

What the hell is a leprechaun anyway?

  • They are Irish Faerie folk—miniature, smart, and mischievous.
  • They like to play tricks.
  • They have wild music and dancing sessions in the woods at night.
  • Each leprechaun has a pot of gold, which it protects with magical powers.
  • They love moonshine (Poitín), but not as much as their sheep- and dog-riding cousins, the cluricauns, who are total drunks.
  • You can’t catch them, their gold, or their moonshine.

Like my fear of clowns, my fear of leprechauns is totally irrational and even less likely to get tested (unlike clowns, who will inevitably appear one day for a birthday party—shudder). But still they give me the willies. Could it be that I’m conflating the idea of leprechauns with…Fluffy?

Wanting a distraction, I started wondering what beer to dye green on March 17. As much as my dad and I like Guinness, it takes a lot of dye to turn it noticeably green—much like the filthy Chicago River—and, not knowing what’s exactly in green dye, I thought a lager would turn green more effectively while involving less chemical roulette.

But the only lager in the house was HERMANN’S DARK LAGER. This certainly wouldn’t do for St. Patrick’s Day, it being a red-tinged cola-black, so I reckoned I’d better finish it pronto lest on March 17 I forget its unsuitability, toss half a cup of dye into it, and need to be hospitalized with tartrazine-related conniptions.

HERMANN’S is perhaps the most acclaimed beer in the Vancouver Island Brewery Pod Pack, with at least ten medals to its credit, including three Silvers in the World Beer Championships. Crafted according to Bavarian tradition, HERMANN’S captures the old-world style yet offers mainstream characteristics. Countless Vancouver Island pubs pour HERMANN’S on tap because of this artful balance.

As mentioned, it would take a considerable amount of green dye to effect a noticeable change in HERMANN’S. It has a lovely ruby cola appearance that hints at its Bavarian heft. The predominant scent is malt—generous and inviting, with toffee, cocoa, and espresso slightly offstage. The taste doesn’t disappoint: toasty malt with some nuts and that oh-so-subtle coffee undernote. The finish is pleasantly drawn-out with just enough bitterness. This is something Vancouver Island Brewery products excel at—producing a wonderfully smooth arc from sweetness to bitterness with some very well harmonized flavors.

As comfortingly heavy as HERMANN’S is, it doesn’t lack refreshment. I could picture myself pounding a six-pack now or in the summer, although it would be a shame to drink it too fast.

But it’s not a candidate for St. Paddy’s Day; turning it green would be a hopeless task. And that’s okay. Perhaps dyeing beer green is on a par with dyeing the Chicago River green—a dipshit idea for nitwits (myself included) who don’t give a crap about consuming extra chemicals.

And, strangely enough, in Ireland they don’t dye beer green for St. Patrick’s Day; it’s a North American practice. (Surprised?) The Irish don’t do half the shit we do for St. Patrick’s Day. They usually just make some cabbage soup or something.

And there are leprechauns there every day, people. OMG! That must be why Fluffy Bear is so freaky; he acquired magical powers living in Ireland and now he’s terrifying everybody here in Canada.

PIPER’S PALE ALE—better without bagpipes

So apparently my mum is an expert on what evil spirits do when they are haunting a house or inhabiting a teddy bear for their own mysterious purposes. She said my latest accusation against Fluffy was the “most stupid thing” she’d ever heard and that I was obviously desperate for blogging ideas. This was a low blow coming from someone who’s been stagnating over the same dead novel for six years and doesn’t even have her own blog.

I said she wasn’t even properly caught up—Fluffy has been up to much more mischief since he plugged the toilet yesterday. His latest exploit? Making a mess on the kids’ bathroom mirror. You should see it, my fellow inebriates, it looks like he used Anti-Windex on it. I don’t know why he would do that! He deliberately put soapy streaks all over the mirror, which isn’t exactly a progression in evil from stuffing the toilet with TP.

My mum asked if I had considered that the kids had decided to “wash” the mirror for fun?

I had to admit that this hadn’t occurred to me, but it does beg the question: why isn’t my mother curtailing this behavior? She claims she can’t be everywhere at once (read: isn’t Facebook compelling?) and that it must have happened during Saturday’s dinner party when the kids took their little cousins upstairs to wash their hands.

I said: “What about Fluffy? No one knows what Fluffy was doing then.”

My mother: “He was probably staring at the wall.”

!!!

As if to suggest Fluffy is inanimate. Yes, he’s semi-comatose, but inanimate? Oh no. If Fluffy were simply fluff, we wouldn’t have a Fluffy Problem.

But is Fluffy evil, or is he just trying to get out attention? “You should know,” my mother told me, “since both apply to you.”

The truth is, I don’t have much experience with demonic possession or golems or even spoon bending. But if something like a Care Bear can exist, surely evil knows no limit.

My two brain cells were having difficulty, so I made a chart:

Evil Not Evil
Causes cold spots

Moves objects; causes noise

Turns on lights

Plugs toilet with TP

Took my girlfriend

Makes kids frightened

 Is very fluffy

Is catatonic

Eyes don’t glow

But doesn’t leave No. 2 in it

Doesn’t realize she exists

Does not take our beer

I agree, it’s inconclusive. I don’t want to think he’s evil, because he was Granny’s bear, after all, and she was nice.

So is it safe to get drunk with an entity like Fluffy in the house? Although my mother says the point is moot, my inclination is to say yes. So why didn’t we, last night, once the kids were tucked in? The Vancouver Island Brewery Pod Pack beckoned, including two beers we’d never even tried yet. But my mum, who can be quite domineering, cracked just one beer: PIPER’S PALE ALE.

PIPER’S gets its name from Bagpiper James C. Richardson, who lost his life in the Battle of the Somme in the First World War. This dude used to play his pipes in the trenches, inspiring—or inducing psychosis in, for those who aren’t bagpipe fans—his fellow soldiers to give ‘er in battle. He actually died going back for his bagpipes after assisting a wounded comrade to safety, earning himself a posthumous Victoria Cross. It must have seemed fitting to name a beer after this hero who so bravely served his country yet seemingly lacked a little in the judgment department.

My mum used to live in Victoria, where she had plenty of PIPER’S PALE ALE back in the day, so last night’s single bottle was a partial blast from the past—partial because we didn’t drink to the point of blacking out.

PIPER’S is a clear golden copper with a quickly dissipating white head. The flavor is friendly: malty and caramel-touched with a satisfying hoppiness. Richer than the SPYHOPPER we tried a couple of nights ago, PIPER’S has a bigger mouthfeel—nice weight with slight breadiness. With its malty beginning and hoppy finish, it makes a lovely arc from sweet to bitter, proving its reputation as one of the better pale ales local to Vancouver Island.

One of the best things about tasting PIPER’S was that no one was playing the bagpipes while we drank it. My mum got nostalgic and remembered there was this guy who always played the pipes at the Victoria Legislature—one tune, relentlessly—and she had a coworker who was actively campaigning to remove him. Much the way, she pointed out, I seem to be campaigning to remove Fluffy.

See, if Fluffy took up the bagpipes, it would make it so easy. Then I’d know he’s evil.