My cable modem's been fritzing all weekend, so I've been using dial-up for the first time in years. Weird to hear that modem-connecting thrash rock as my computer struggles to connect at slow speeds again. Someone from Time Warner is supposed to drop by on Monday to give things a look, but until then, I'm a dinosaur.

Last Friday, I stopped at one of those scratch-off lotto card vending machines to pick up a pile of birthday gifts for my grandmother, who is a lady of few passions outside of gambling and eggplant caponata. Never one to resist temptation of any kind, I picked up two extras for myself. One was a dud, but the one above netted me a cool $100. It was one of those poker-themed scratch-offs that give you several "hands" to scratch off, and I landed everything from a straight to a three-of-a-kind, and even won on the $25 bonus game.

When I was on the cusp of going freelance but still unsure of whether it would work out or not, I got in the habit of playing like $50 worth of scratch-off cards a night. I'd hit that desperation point of really needing a major windfall to bring confidence to my burgeoning decision to not be a paid 9-5'er. This might sound like a cracked out thing to do, but honestly, I never seemed to lose that much. When you buy scratch-offs in bulk, there's usually a good amount of return. I'm not saying that I won big or even arguing that it isn't a huge waste of money, but when you're looking for hope in all the wrong places, it's nice to see three lined-up cherries hiding under the wax.

After the big $100 win, I dug up my old pile of winning scratch-offs, which has sat untouched on top of our microwave for several months now. We just never got around to cashing 'em in, but now that I total everything up, there's $259 bucks worth of winners in that pile. I'm tempted to cash them in and blow it all on something frivolous, but considering that I most definitely spent more than $259 total on scratch-offs from then to now, I guess I should put it in the bank. Or maybe I should go down to the roulette wheel at Bally's and throw it all on black. Hmmm.

One thing's for sure: Scratch-off cards are getting more and more entertaining with each passing year. If you're not a player, you wouldn't believe the variety. I've always been a fan of the "Win For Life" cards, merely because the jackpots entail payments of $1K, $2K or even $5K each week for a full 20 years. Winning that is the equivalent of getting a second job that requires you to do absolutely nothing, but for sheer entertainment purposes, there are far better scratch-off cards.

I really like the ones based on card games, as they trick me into believing I have any more of a chance to win than I do on any other shitty card. Then there's the extravagant $20 games. I can't believe I played those; they're the quickest possible method of burning money outside of literally burning money.

For people who want to stretch the "enjoyment" out for a few extra minutes, there's crossword-style games, which take forever to finish and rarely provide a return. Plus, all of the scratch-off games have a little code somewhere under the wax that lets you know the exact amount you've won (or tells you that you didn't win), and it's obnoxious to spend 10 minutes slowly scratching letters and numbers away when you know you can settle things with two swipes of a penny over the code area. I don't know why I'm writing about this.

After my most recent trip to Atlantic City, I decided to give the gambling a rest. I'm no addict or even a frequent player, but even just a few trips to the casino each year can seriously impact your savings. It got to the point where I was looking at my losses and realizing that it was enough to take a week-long vacation for two to pretty much anywhere, and that's just plum dumb.

Course, I did just win $100 off of a $5 scratch-off. Maybe Lady Luck's trying to tell me something. Maybe this is my time to shine. Maybe I should get in the car and drive down to the Monopoly streets right now.

Thank God I'm too lazy to really do that.

Posted by Matt on 07/15/2007. E-mail me!