Whiskey River, take my mind...

There's a lot to be jaded about in the world of country music, but if you can't go and enjoy a Willie Nelson show, then it's time to hang it up...

Warming up that veto stamp...

Why do I have Foreigner's Feels Like The First Time running though my head? Maybe because, should November's elections turn out the way many hope they will, we'll see more of these kinds of events popping up on the schedule...

Here's The Daily Show's take...

Grating my nerves...

I'm regularly amazed at the variety of packaging concepts you find in American grocery stores...not that I have a ton of experience browsing the aisles of grocery stores not on this continent, but I know of the struggles just to fulfill basic needs in other parts of the world, and we have an entire aisle dedicated to bathroom tissue. Makes you wonder.

As did this discovery from last night...grate your own parmesan cheese, right in the package. Yeah, as anybody with an interest in food knows, freshly grated parmesan is far superior to the dried-out stuff you get in the can...however, would it kill you to get your own perfectly good microplane and use it, rather than have Kraft provide you with another piece of plastic you'll eventually throw away? (Last month's Wired magazine has a great article on how researchers are trying to crack the code on cream chese production that Kraft clearly perfected years ago...they are the gold standard and prime mover innovator of processed cheese food product, clearly.)

It's odd and wrong and lazy and wasteful (and probably a bunch other adjectives I could come up with) all at the same time. And so relentlessly "American."

Day 18: Fast Cash

Aaaaaand, we're right back where we started. Winning-wise that is.

Although, I remain impressed with my own optimism whilst in the midst of the scratching-off process. I still hold out hope, when I see those numbers start to be revealed, that they'll match one of my vaunted digits. Alas, they hardly ever do...

Game Play: Match a number.
Did I win? No.
What could I have won? $200. Really...would it have killed 'em to give me two bills?

Total Spent: $27
Total Won: 2 Free Tickets, $5 cash

Day 17: Fast $50s

So in honor of last week's racing adventure, I thought I'd try some SOG's that had a speed theme to them...

Ah, who'm I kidding? I was at the checkout stand, I needed some cards, I saw two that I hadn't done before, I bought 'em. Much like the rest of my life's pursuits, there's not as much planning involved as I claim there to be. It kinda just happens...

At least I got off my epic losing streak...sorta...

Game Play: Match one of two winning numbers.
Did I win? Finally...a free ticket.
What could I have won? $20,000

Total Spent: $26
Total Won: 2 Free Tickets, $5 cash

Day 16: Lucky Dog

Say it with me..."Awwwww."

Here's what I really said..."Awwwww. Crap."

Cute dog, dumb game...but it's meant to catch your eye when you're standing there in front of the plexiglass cubes picking out your SOGs. And so it did, and so went another buck out of my pocket.

Game Play: Match three amounts, win that amount.
Did I win? As if.
What could I have won? $3,000. $50 woulda been nice. Shoot, at this point, $4 woulda been fine.

Total Spent: $24
Total Won: 1 Free Ticket, $5 cash

More than just driving fast and turning left...

I like to consider myself a full-blown, red-blooded American male, though my political leanings might cause some to scoff at that notion. To which I'd reply, "Come say that to my face, and you might think differently."

Anyhoo, despite that notion, I'd never been to any sort of automobile race until Saturday night, when Dw/M and I, along with our friends Craig and his lovely wife Taylor, and The Perfesser and his lovely wife Ann, trekked out to the Nashville Superspeedway for the Firestone Indy 200 IRL race.

More scoffing will probably come my way, first from the NASCAR purists who think the only real racing is done with fenders and trading paint, and from other neanderthals who think, "IRL? Isn't that the league where that chick drives?"

To which I'd reply to the first, "No," and to the second, "Yeah, and she finished fourth, so zip it."

It would have been hard to order up a more perfect day for a race...OK, the humidity levels could've been a few dozen percentage points lower, but that's neither here nor there. We eschewed the 100-lap race beforehand to get to the Speedway parking lot (OK, parking pasture is more like it) at around 5:30pm, and even though the half-dozen of us were pretty much tailgating neophytes (hey, if I'm at a sporting event, I'm usually working), up went the ten-buck portable grill, aflame went the "set the whole thing on fire" bag of charcoal, and we had brats in about 25 minutes.

We strolled into the Speedway proper (with our allowed six-pack coolers full of beverage...nice concession to the masses, there), took our seats on the 24th row about 30 yards behind the start/finish line, politely applauded through the driver intros, checked out the starting grid and awaited The Command.

Even though I'd never been to a race before, I knew enough to get hold of some great little earplugs (rated a 26 out of a 30 scale) and prompted Dw/M to insert hers as well, just before The Command. When the weasely Firestone kid from "The Bachelor" said, "Gentlemen...(dramatic pause) and lady...start your engines!" that's when it all changed.

As the pace laps rolled out, and they revved those rockets up for real to start the race, Dw/M turned to me and said, "OK, I get it now."

Me too.

As these kinds of races go, it seemed (and was later confirmed to me by press reports) that it was fairly uneventful. They went a staggering 65 laps under green to start it, a minor caution sending most of the field to the pits for the first time, but from then on out it was fairly routine...if you can call whipping around a 1.3 mile track at 200mph routine. A couple of minor wall scrapes took two cars out, and mechanical problems forced another four off, but 12 cars finished the race, with Scott Dixon (say it with me...WHO'S HE?) taking home the coveted Gibson guitar trophy.

Dixon said later he had a bet with someone that if he won, he'd smash the guitar in the ultimate fusion of rock star/race car driver diva fit, but when he finally did win (his first on an oval track in more than three years) he pussed out. I don't blame him, really...it's a nice guitar.

One more note: it was the loudest thing I've ever witnessed in my life. After one of the restarts, when most of the field was on the back stretch, I slipped one of the earplugs out and was just punished by the sound. Craig and The Perfesser, audio experts both, talked about the Doppler effect, the near-constant high-pitched whine, the phase shifting, all that soundgeek stuff. To me, it was just damn loud. It was so loud it just made you laugh...until you turned around and saw a kid no more than seven years old sitting there with no ear protection at all. Then it just made you mad. It makes you wonder if some people even want to be parents at all.

Afterwards, we retraced our steps back to our makeshift two-vehicle compound, recapped and relaxed as the bulk of the crowd filtered out. Craig had been to this race before, taking off on a whim last year by himself, and while Taylor had grown up around stock car races as a kid, for the rest of us, it was our first experience with the cathedral of speed. Don't know how much I'd like a full-blown NEXTEL Cup race (not too fond of crowds, and a quarter million folks in one place would definitely bend my brain), but the next time someone suggests heading out to our local Superspeedway, I'm all over it.

Especially if free tickets are involved...can't give up my Overdeveloped Sense of Entitlement (tm pending) after all.

Day 15: Diamonds & 7's

No one ever said the Tennessee Lottery designers and copywriters were subtle...hence the title of this particular SOG.

Probably just as well, considering the target audience for such endeavors...and with the run of luck I've been having over the past week or so (ask me about my alternator...or better still, don't), I'm close to turning this little lark of an experiment into a general plea for cash.

Come on, 7...come on, diamond...d'oh.

Game Play: Find a "7" or a diamond symbol.
Did I win? Ha.
What could I have won? $27,777

Total Spent: $23
Total Won: 1 Free Ticket, $5 cash

My longtime business partner...

He tends to keep his opinions to himself, but if you rub him the wrong way, look out...

Day 14: Double 21

I promise...I didn't engineer this so I'd spend my 21st dollar of the experiment on an SOG called Double 21. It was just the luck of the draw...much like my current losing skid.

The challenge now comes in finding new games, especially on the $1 and $2 level. I might have to start duplicating the lower amounts, but I'm always surprised when I find a new SOG I haven't seen before.

Game Play: Beat the dealer's hand
Did I win? What do you think?
What could I have won? $2100

Total Spent: $21
Total Won: 1 Free Ticket, $5 cash

Day 13: Double Blackjack

Another one of these "win up to 10 times" cards. I wonder if anybody's ever gotten a max card...all of the hands you get roll out blackjacks and $35,000 amounts. A smidge over a third of a million bucks off one card? Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

Game Play: Beat the "dealers" hand with your own.
Did I win? Nope.
What could I have won? $35K

Total Spent: $20
Total Won: 1 Free Ticket, $5 cash

Day 12: Super C-Note

One of the interesting things about this little experiment has been seeing the technological advancements made in the world of SOGs, namely the kinds of images you can print on the scratch-off stuff.

Like this one, for example, which had a lovely portrait of Benjamin Franklin (never a U.S. president, despite what most of the populace of this country probably believes).

Used to be, it'd just be a great big grey blob you scratch off to uncover your potential winnings...now you can obliterate classical portraits whilst cursing your bad luck.

Game Play: Match the prize amount in the middle with one of the four corners.
Did I win? Nay.
What could I have won? $4...come on, you can't part with $4?

Total Spent: $18
Total Won: 1 Free Ticket, $5 cash

Day 11: 5 Times The Money

So Dw/M and I are heading out to Starwood Amphitheater to see the Steely Dan/Michael McDonald tour, not so much because we're relentlessly rabid fans of either artist (though MMcD is currently employing a friend of mine as his B3 player, so he takes the lead), but more because we've been following the Yacht Rock chronicles online, and this is pretty much Yacht Rock World Tour 2006.

(If you don't know what Yacht Rock is, and you like your parodies served up in five minute doses, head to Channel101.com and/or read more about YR here.)

Anyhoo, we duck into Kroger on the way...you know, your friendly neighborhood grocery monopoly (tm pending)? ...as Starwood now allows you to bring in some food and water...you know, basic human necessities that you shouldn't have to pay an arm and a leg for? (Thanks, Live Nation!)

As we're leaving we see this doohickey here, which for someone with (a) a love of things with buttons and (b) an occasional dislike for people in general and convenience store clerks in particular is a godsend.

Here's the kicker though...it doesn't give change. Whatever denomination(s) you put in is coming back out in the form of SOGs, and SOGs only.

Still, it does make for an interesting notion to see if I get any luckier at the hands of actual people or through the virtual machinations of Señor Vendor here.

Apparently not today, though...

Game Play: Match one of two "winning numbers"
Did I win? Negatory.
What could I have won? 25 large

Total Spent: $17
Total Won: 1 Free Ticket, $5 cash

Day 10: 9's In A Line

You ever just have those feelings where you know it's not gonna be your day? I knew that as soon as I scratched off the prize box and saw that it was something other than a single digit or the word "Ticket".

Oh, that didn't stop the card with taunting me with a couple of possible winning lines...noooooo.

Game Play: Get three 9's a la Tic Tac Toe
Did I win? Nope.
What Could I Have Won? $49

Total Spent: $15
Total Won: 1 Free Ticket, $5 cash

Day 9: Spicy Hot Cash!

In newspaper parlance, an exclamation point is frequently referred to as a "slammer," and when I was a graphics editor back in the day, we had an unofficial rule: no more than two slammers in a headline, per staffer, per year...

See, the problem with slammers is that they tend to make you think something exciting is going to happen...when often, as in the case of this particular SOG, nothing does...

Game Play: Match one of two "hot numbers"
Did I win? Nay.
What could I have won? $20K

Total Spent: $14
Total Won: 1 Free Ticket, $5 cash

Day 8: Triple 3's

OK, I'm diggin' the Triple 3 game. Yes, it's partially because I won my biggest prize to date (a whopping $3...whoo hoo!), but also because you have the chance to win a single prize, not a litany of options. They don't taunt you with what you coulda won if you were a tad closer (or luckier). No, you scratch off one prize box, and that's what you're shooting for. And pretty much as soon as I saw the $3 designation, I figured I was a winner.

Game Play: Get three 3's a la Tic Tac Toe
Did I win? Yup...two wins in a row on the $1 cards!
The Prize: $3

Total Spent: $12
Total Won: 1 Free Ticket, $5 cash

Day 7: Jumbo Bucks

The thrill of victory certainly didn't last long...

Jumbo Bucks seems to be the lottery version of a landed gentry legacy family. There's the $1 Junior Jumbo Bucks, this $2 Jumbo Bucks game I tried today, and the $5 Super Jumbo Bucks which the helpful counter clone told me was brand new and no one had won anything from it yet. Still didn't get me to part with the Linc to pick it up, but maybe later.

Game Play: Match one of two "serial numbers"
Did I win? Nope.
What could I have won? $50K

Total Spent: $11
Total Won: 1 Free Ticket, $2 cash

Day 6: High Card

Winnah, winnah, chicken dinnah!

Well, wait a minute...I only won $2, so really it's more like one of those nasty chicken bowl things at KFC. (Anybody try one of those? Mashed taters, chicken detritus, corn, gravy and cheese? Methinks Dr. Duvall wouldn't approve...)

Cool thing about this SOG was the change in the aspect ratio of the card. It's the first vertically oriented $1 game I've seen...maybe I'll look for more of those as the month goes on. Only seven more winners like this and I'm in the black.

Game Play: Draw a higher value card than the "dealer."
Did I win? Yup, $2.
What could I have won? $3,000

Total Spent: $9
Total Won: 1 Free Ticket, $2 cash

Day 5: Hot 50s

OK, just a word of warning...don't think I'm going to a different convenience store every day to buy these tickets. To this point, I've visited two such bodegas, usually in the process of getting gas, and picked up a handful to play at a later date.

So when I got in the car with my latest acquisitions and asked Dances with Monkeys which I should play on the 5th of July, her immediate reply was "Hot 50s, of course."

So it's her fault I didn't win today. I'm getting good at this "blame game" thing...

Game Play: Match one of two lucky numbers
Did I win? No.
What could I have won? $30,000

Total Spent: $8
Total Won: 1 Free Ticket

Day 4: $20,000 Moneybags

And, really, what could possibly be more patriotic than hauling in a big ol' bag o' cash?

Alas, 'twas not to be on this $2 card. Two numbers are allegedly your "lucky numbers" as you scratch off 10 places...so essentially you lose 20 times instead of 10!

This is starting to get depressing...just think how I'll be at the end of the month...

Game Play: Match one of two lucky numbers
Did I win? No.
What could I have won? $20,000

Total Spent: $6
Total Won: 1 Free Ticket

Day 3: Doubling Red 8's

Back to the $1 game...you know, because I'm on a roll with the $1 cards, right?

Doesn't really matter what your lucky number is, because they've got a game for every single digit numeral, seemingly.

Game Play: Get a black or red "8" in one of four game areas, win prize
Did I win? Nope, not even close.
What could I have won? $888

Total Spent: $4
Total Won: 1 Free Ticket

Day 2: Super Deuces

Now we're getting into some unfamiliar territory...the $2 card. I think this is the first time I've played a $2 card, and it's interesting how they try to draw you in with the idea of "10 chances to win!" Me being mostly a pessimist, I look at it as "10 chances to lose," and twas certainly the case today.

Game play: Get a "2" symbol, win the prize underneath, up to $22,222.
Did I win? Nope...came close, though, with a "3" underneath one. Wouldda been worth the big money, dagnabbit.

Total Spent: $3
Total Won: 1 Free Ticket

Day 1: Lucky 7's

This is the first SOG (scratch-off game...better to get the acronyms flowing early on) I remember seeing. I was at a party one night the week the Lottery got going, and somebody bought a big skein of these and was handing them out as party favors. I thought that was a pretty cool idea, and did the same thing not long after for a friend's birthday party. Granted, I think I won $15 that night, so the good-natured cries of "Rigged!" echoed throughout the event.

Game Play: Get three 7's a la Tic Tac Toe
Did I win? Yup...way to kick off the month...
The Prize: Free Ticket

Total Spent: $1
Total Won: 1 Free Ticket