Ontario Sucks

If you live in Canada, you're figuratively $20,000 richer simply by not making the province of Ontario your home. 

I'm someone who never gambles with money. I probably shouldn't say never. If someone were to invite me to a Casino, I wouldn't be a total stick-in-the-mud, but I couldn't stomach losing more than $60 / year playing blackjack or roulette. I'm the sort of player who cashes-out if I ever find myself up more than 50%. In my own estimation, the only thing worse than instantly losing disposable income, is losing easy gains out of greed. I used to buy the odd $1.00 scratch ticket, but after the 100th "Thanks for playing!" consolation, I just thought, "Man... I could've treated myself to a nice bottle of Scotch!" 

Never will I scratch again. Provincial lotteries really are a tax on fools. You're better off putting your money into silver bullion, art, stamps, or almost anything else... a frivolous fancy meal or a custom seat cover for your car. Even if you were to win millions, such a windfall can be almost as much of a curse as it is good fortune. You know that the family will start hitting you up, and charitable organizations will seek-out your number. You're forced to play favorites. Unless you're extremely prudent and calculating, there's a high likelihood you'll be financially worse off  ten years down the road than you were before hitting the jackpot. Not only that, there's no ingenuity in the way you achieved the wealth - even if you happen to be a genius of a jackpot winner, the reality is that any dimwit can pick random numbers. Even if you win big money, it almost seems as though you inadvertently win a great deal of ostentatious resentment from people who struggle to get by.  Winning several thousand bucks through cleverness on a game show is a far more appealing notion to someone like me who insists on telling the world how God Damn smart I am.

Maybe you're just an inexplicably lucky sort who always find themselves ahead of the game through no fault of their own. I hesitate to say I don't believe in personal luck, because some people seem to fare better in matters of pure chance. Even so, I've never met anyone who's amassed a respectable fortune from routinely hanging out in casinos. It's a fact the house always wins, which tells me it's not unwise to simply not get in the habit of gambling in the first place. There's too many sordid tales of people losing everything they struggled for. I think of the poor old pensioner with a heart of gold spending hour after hour stuffing twenty dollar bills into a VLT at some dim and lonely venue with irritating music streaming over a crappy sound system. 

Of course, I would never dream of advocating against our God-given freedom to shoot ourselves in the foot if we want. I'm a heavy smoker after all. I might even be extremely wealthy today had I carefully invested all that money I've so carelessly burned away on tobacco tax over the past two decades. Fortunately, I don't mind being a starving artist. You can't waste money when you don't make any, and I'm still patting myself on the back for never getting into any consumer debt. Depending on your priorities in life, I can see how a bad credit rating might be preferable to a non-existent one. Whatever. I happen to like the way people react to a thirty-something man with a neutral credit rating. It's somewhat of a rarity these days. 

At the end of the day, I gamble with my time, and I've essentially banked my whole future on writing a few hit songs, or possibly penning an award winning screenplay. I don't think I could even keep my composure through a job interview anymore. I'd probably go into a fit of laughter after trying to deliver the enthusiastic rhetoric with a straight face.

Sometimes I get on a techie tangent, and fancy myself as being the next big star of Silicon Valley. Such fantasies tend to be short-lived when the reality of trying to encode my novel ideas into a list of precise 'computerese' instructions sets-in. It makes more sense for me to focus on music and words since I'm already a competent writer and musician. If you've ever attempted to compose a computer program, you'll realize a new found respect for the cyber-pioneers behind our information age and the exceedingly complex things they're capable of designing.

Fortunately, so much spade work has already been done for us end-users. With minimal direction and a good computer, any goofball can start making a digital painting, or attach an image to an email. Modern intuitive operating systems allow even the most reluctant computer newbie to get online and start fights on Twitter. On that note, so many people seem so high-strung these days - impulsive accusations of racism flying around everywhere comes to mind. I say: lighten-up you pantie-waists! Learn to articulate your position instead of hiding behind the "me too" group-think society and calling someone a "disgusting human being" before learning all the facts!   

Of course there's a downside to user-friendliness, and it's when something less than obvious goes wrong. Hobbyist hackers exploiting the unwitting and such. It never hurts to take a bit of time to gain at least a modicum of understanding about how the web works - especially if you're using it for financial purposes. Sometimes I worry about sticking my neck out just by sharing so many of my thoughts on this web log, but I'm also a firm believer in freedom of expression, and here I am, balls deep in Lady Liberty, and it feels so good! 

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