An exercise in narrative inference

Tonight, for the first time in our lives, Brian and I bought a lottery ticket. It's sort of a joke for us - we figure it's an application for the "Act of God" financing, where the application process is easy (and you can't beat the APR) but getting approved is a right pain in the arse.

Anyway, that's not what I wanted to write about. I was examining the ticket itself earlier; not being a gambling type, I'd actually never seen one up close before. And on the back, amongst the fine print, were a series of pictograms talking about "care of your ticket" - including, and I am not making this up, a picture of a clothes iron with "Do Not Iron" printed beneath it.

At first, this just seemed amusing because of its randomness. But after a moment it made me laugh all the more, because it made so much sense. Can't you just see it? Some random person buys a lottery ticket on a whim, and then sticks it in their pocket or purse or what have you and forgets about it. Sometime later, they remember it, pull it out and check the numbers - and their jaw hits the floor when they realize that they've won the jackpot. So they pull out a nice set of clothes to go and claim their prize, and pull out the iron because they probably haven't worn their nice clothes in a while and want to look well-groomed for the cameras. And, since the ticket's looking a little worse for the wear after a week at the bottom of their purse or in their pants pocket, they go to iron it out too.

Except the ticket's printed on heat-sensitive paper.

I have a feeling that that was likely the "NOOOOOOOOOOO!" heard 'round the world...

An exercise in narrative inference

Tonight, for the first time in our lives, Brian and I bought a lottery ticket. It's sort of a joke for us - we figure it's an application for the "Act of God" financing, where the application process is easy (and you can't beat the APR) but getting approved is a right pain in the arse.

Anyway, that's not what I wanted to write about. I was examining the ticket itself earlier; not being a gambling type, I'd actually never seen one up close before. And on the back, amongst the fine print, were a series of pictograms talking about "care of your ticket" - including, and I am not making this up, a picture of a clothes iron with "Do Not Iron" printed beneath it.

At first, this just seemed amusing because of its randomness. But after a moment it made me laugh all the more, because it made so much sense. Can't you just see it? Some random person buys a lottery ticket on a whim, and then sticks it in their pocket or purse or what have you and forgets about it. Sometime later, they remember it, pull it out and check the numbers - and their jaw hits the floor when they realize that they've won the jackpot. So they pull out a nice set of clothes to go and claim their prize, and pull out the iron because they probably haven't worn their nice clothes in a while and want to look well-groomed for the cameras. And, since the ticket's looking a little worse for the wear after a week at the bottom of their purse or in their pants pocket, they go to iron it out too.

Except the ticket's printed on heat-sensitive paper.

I have a feeling that that was likely the "NOOOOOOOOOOO!" heard 'round the world...

A bit of a paradox

I am an agnostic, or whatever you would call someone close to an atheist but without an atheist's faith in the negative.

And yet one of the few places I've ever been able to find real peace is in an empty church.

A bit of a paradox

I am an agnostic, or whatever you would call someone close to an atheist but without an atheist's faith in the negative.

And yet one of the few places I've ever been able to find real peace is in an empty church.