Crazy Lotto News: Lotto fever burns in Italy for C131.5 million jackpot; lucky Germans flown in to buy tickets!!

Oh, God, why wasn't I born in Italy...?

ROME - Germans, Austrians and other foreigners are heading into Italy to play the lottery ahead of a record C131.5 ($186 million) jackpot, including some who flew into Milan for a few hours just for a chance to win Thursday night.

Germany's top-selling Bild newspaper said 140 passengers aboard a chartered Air Berlin jet won a phone-in contest for free airline tickets aboard an early afternoon flight from Berlin to Milan's Malpensa airport.

Besides the free seats, the winners were being treated to a heaping plateful of pasta, a cup of espresso and the opportunity to buy Superenalotto tickets at a smoke shop at the Milan airport.

Later in the afternoon, without ever leaving the airport, the passengers were flying back to Berlin, "just in time for dinner and to find out if they've won," said Italy private Canale 5 TV.

The six-number combination will be announced by about 8:30 p.m. No one has picked the winning numbers since January, and now the Superenalotto jackpot is Italy's biggest ever - and, according to Italian news reports, the biggest in Europe, as well. Drawings are held three times a week.

Austrians, Croats and Slovenes living close to Italy were "storming" across the border to try their luck, the Austria Press Agency reported on Thursday.

Many of them were packing restaurants and hotels in Italy's German-speaking Alto Adige, or South Tyrol, region, which borders Austria.

French visitors have also been driving into neighbouring northwest Italy for a chance to play the numbers lotto, many Germans have been sighted in resort towns of Lake Maggiore buying tickets, and Superenalotto tickets appeared to be as popular as postcards in many Venice souvenir shops.

Other foreigners catching lotto fever were enjoying already planned vacations in Italy. Nicola and Peter Minchella came from Edinburgh, Scotland.

"I never thought to play in another country before, but since it's making headlines, we'll probably buy a ticket," said Nicola Minchella, as the pair dipped into gelato and sipped coffee at Castellino's, an outside cafe at Piazza Venezia in the heart of Rome.

At a counter inside the cafe, customers waited in line to buy lotto tickets. What if Peter Minchella picked the winning numbers?

"I'd travel the world and keep buying lottery tickets," he said, smiling.

The cost is C1 ($1.42) for the chance to choose two combinations of six winning numbers.

In places like Naples, where a favourite pastime is interpreting dreams in terms of numbers, many people prefer to choose their own. But players can also purchase tickets with two random sets of numbers already printed on them.

With many smoke shops closed in Italy for vacations, those open bustled with players. At Castellino, one customer spent C2,000 (some $2,800), a drop in the bucket against the 1 in 622 million odds, said manager Stefano Menchetti.

Not all have dreams of riches only for themselves.

The mayor and some of his employees in one small town in northeast Italy have chipped in to buy tickets, pledging to use any winnings to build a theatre for Ceneselli's 1,900 citizens.

"We've played our ages, our birth dates" as the lucky numbers, said Mayor Marco Trombini in a telephone interview. "There's no logic in luck anyway."

I know that the chance to win this is actually, really, really small, and with so many people going crazy over buying a ticket, it's probably going to make the odds even smaller, but still, people are flocking to Italy from ALL OVER EUROPE just for this.

I don't know whether to find it sad or exciting.

Find the original article here.

Dane Cook VS Vanessa Hudgens: LOL!

I don't really care enough about the Teen Choice Awards to watch them, but stuff like this makes me wish that I did...



Now, I don't really think Dane Cook is that funny, but I have to aplaud him for doing this. That was AWESOME! LOL! I seriously laughed hard when I saw the video on YouTube. That was really, really funny, in a really, really cruel way.

That being said, though, I have to look at it from the other side, which is Vanessa Hudgens. Seriously, even though I think it is ONE-HUNDRED PERCENT her fault for, you know, taking nude pictures of herself, AGAIN, I still can't help but feel a bit sorry for her, because, even though at this point it is more of a slut alert rather than a pitiful mistake, it's still not something you want to bring about on national television, in front of millions of teenagers.

And yes, I know this didn't really air, but dude, it's on YouTube, and the media's talking about it, so naturally EVERYONE KNOWS BY NOW.

All I can say is, Dane Cook, nice going, even if it is a little douchey of you, and Vanessa Hudgens, I feel sorry for you, but hey, next time you ought to think twice before taking nude pictures of yourself with your BlackBerry, especially since this is the SECOND TIME this kind of think has happened to you. It's already bad enough that you're playing Zac Efron's beard.

Just saying...

Boredom and life...

God, I'm spending more time online than I wish I did. It's probably because the summer is winding down and most of my friends have gone back to full-work, or are getting ready to go back to school, so... Gah...

Sometimes I wish I was going to school. Sometimes I wish I was working on my education, but then I have to wonder, what the hell am I going to prepare for, when I can't yet decide what the hell I wanna do with my life? When I graduated high school, everyone around me seemed to have a plan. Everyone was either going to be a doctor or a lawyer, or some kind of engineer, or a business manager, or an architect, or even something as boring and depressing as an accountant, and I remember being one of those people.

I wanted to become a lawyer when I graduated high school. The idea of it made me feel rather enthused, and thinking about it rationally, it was really something that made sense, and I never thought it would be difficult to me, something that I was able to confirm a few months later, when I actually went to college and started working towards my law degree. Rationally speaking, it was a good choice. But then I realized that reason and emotion don't go hand-in-hand. I realized that I didn't really wanna a be a lawyer, and I dropped out.

And ever since then, this is what I've been doing. Working, wasting time online, living a life that I don't really want to live, but what else am I to do? If I could decide what I want to do with my life and say "hey, this is what I'm going to work on and I'll like it", then that's what I'd be doing, but my mind doesn't really work like that. I can't decide on anything. I like a lot of stuff, but I can't say I feel especially passionate about something, and I don't wanna waste more college tuition fees on aimlessly testing the waters, so to speak.

So instead, I'm sitting here on a late summer night, typing this blog. And it sucks, because I feel like I should be doing something. I should be working towards something instead of having a half-assed job that I don't care about. Maybe I should travel to see if that clears my head.

What do you think?

One month later: Michael Jackson is still news!

So today I was reading the news online and I must've found like two thousand different articles on Michael Jackson. If it wasn't some freaking audience to determine the fate of some movie deal, or some random paternity claim from some dude, it was some recycled biographic story that most likely everyone has read at least ten or twenty times already. It was weird, because, you know, the dude has been dead for like, what, more than a month now?

I understand that he was the king of pop and all that shit, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I was exposed to his music when I was little, but seriously. My first reaction was to blame it on the money-hungry media, because this is exactly the kind of thing they'd milk for all it's worth, but then I have to remind myself that, well, it is the media... this is what they do. And if they're doing it, there's a reason for it, and it all became clear when I checked iTunes and other music sites and saw that MJ's record sales are going through the roof!

So, clearly, it's not that the media is obsessed with Michael Jackson. It's that WE are obsessed with Michael Jackson and the media is just being the good provider/crack dealer that it's always been, and spoon-feeding us these news because they know we'll take it with a grin. So it's clearly not their fault. It's ours.

Seriously, world. Sometimes I wonder how we've survived so long and invented stuff like cars and the internet when our attention span is oh! so limited! If this is all that matters to us right now, then what does that say about us as a whole? Is humanity really this shallow? Because if we are, then we're really, really lucky that we've made it this far.

Now, I don't hate Michael Jackson. I think he was a great artist, and as far as the allegations go, to me it's innocent until proven guilty, which he never was, so I have no reason to judge him on that. But it's a damn shame that he had to DIE for people to remember again how incredible he really was. It's just sad. But I guess that's the way it goes, right? You never know how great something really is until you no longer have it.

Greek woman sets man's penis on fire!

A 26-year-old woman is being hailed as a national hero after belying the conventional wisdom that revenge is a dish best served cold.

The unidentified female from the Mediterranean island of Crete set fire to a drunk 23-year-old Briton's genitals after he allegedly tried to sexually assault her in a crowded bar, London's Daily Telegraph reports. She earned further accolades from her countrymen for turning herself over to the police following the incident.

According to a police report, the intoxicated party-goer had taken down his pants and was waving his genitals at women in the bar. He then "forcefully fondled" the 26-year-old woman and asked her to take hold of his genitals.

She responded by soaking his genitals in a liquor. When this failed to cool off his advances, she reportedly grabbed a lighter and set his nether-region on fire.

The alleged sex assailant is hospitalized with what the Telegraph describes as "considerable damage" to his penis and testicles.

The woman will face a magistrate this week to determine if her case will go to court. She asserts she acted in her "right to self-defense." A magistrate and prosecutor both agreed to let her free remain free pending a trial, a possible sign they agree with her self-defense claim.

The incident, the police report says, took place in Mallia, a spot notorious for attracting young Britons eager to turn the seaside resort into their own 24-7 Bachanal.

First of all, let me start by saying that the guy totally deserves it. It doesn't matter how drunk you are; if you harass a woman by flaunting your junk around, you most likely deserve whatever you're getting.

That being said, I can't help but feel sorry for the guy. I mean, Damn! Talk about karmic punishment!

Now the girl is facing charges and whatnot, but honestly, she shouldn't go to jail for this. That girl is a fucking hero as far as I'm concerned, and this should serve as lesson to all drunken fratboys all over the world. Next time you might wanna think it over before deciding to act like a douchey rapist at a bar, because you might just get your schlong burned off.

Read the original article here.

I watched G.I. Joe and my brain didn't die!

My friends are really judgmental about a lot of stuff, and I can't really blame them because I'm kind of like that too about some things, so when we decided to go watch G.I. Joe today, I knew we weren't going to do it for the entertainment value of the picture, but rather, for the laugh-inducing experience that usually comes from going to the cinema together and completely eviscerating a movie as it progresses through a plethora of snarky remarks and small jokes.

This time it wasn't quite as easy to to do due to the theater being packed, but as usual my friends don't really care if they're alone or surrounded by a crowd. When they feel like ranting they'll rant, and so will I, to be honest. And we did. Boy did we?

The most striking thing to me was the parade of cheesy lines that takes place throughout the ENTIRETY OF THE MOVIE! "That redhead is really starting to annoy me" or "This is just the start" made me laugh really hard. It was all recycled from almost every action movie since the 90's.

Next came the CGI's. This movie was riddled with them. I can understand a movie like Transformers being riddled with CGI's because, well, it's giant transforming robots from outer space. But G.I Joe is glorified Black Ops at best, so really, it's not that imperative.

It was also very unrealistic, with the suits that turn you into superman and the nanites that eat through metal and destroy cities, and massive industrial plants and secret bases beneath Paris and the Arctic Ocean and the Egyptian Desert, and the submarines and the planes and the helicopters and the crazy japanese ninja kids that kill their own masters and the western kids that drove them to that who are now black-clad, silent killer-types, and mind-contro,l and explosions, and blah blah blah blah!

I think It shouldn't be hard for anyone to conclude that I found this movie terrible, but actually, that wouldn't be entirely true, because the same could be said of almost any movie that has come out every summer for the past three years or so, and even though it is most certainly true, there is something that you have to accept about this kind of movie and that kind of justifies the way it is: it is a popcorn movie!

It doesn't need to be deep, or plot-driven, or even coherent, or even have good acting. It just needs to be entertaining, and this movie... well, it does have its entertainment value, but it's not really mind-blowing. It is a good movie in those terms, but let me tell you, it's no Transformers, it's no Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, and it's definitely no Iron Man. It's just a typical, rather forgettable popcorn movie, that will most likely do well, and we'll likely see a sequel of in a year or two, but that's about it.

If you can deal with that, go ahead and waste your ten dollars. And if you can't, then hold on to them a little longer and maybe something better will come out next week.

G.I Joe is "the BEST movie ever!!"

... According to Heidi Montag. LOL!



Yes, now that SHE'S saying it, I'm definitely making a run for the theater!

I suppose you can argue that this sheds some light on the reasons why Paramount has been so coy about allowing any critics to review the movie prior to the opening, because when you have people like Heidi "I found Jesus in the Jungle!" Montag saying it's "the BEST movie ever!!" it can't be a good sign.

Twitter got DOS'd!! OH NOES!!!

Why, oh why?! LOL! I know this sounds pathetic, but I really want to check my Twitter and it makes me really frustrated that I can't. It's stupid, but I guess it has become a big necessity to me. I use my twitter mostly to stay in touch with my friends and my family, just like everyone else, really, but still, even though I don't check it all that often, just knowing that it's not working is making me feel really pissed off.

Mind you, this happens to me with everything, not just Twitter or internet sites. Whenever my internet connection decides to die on me, or my cell phone, or my TV, or anything, really, I get angry and frustrated. I just like to know that the things that I have are working, and it gets to me when they don't, even if I'm not really using them. I know, it's kind of sad, but that's just the way I am.

Anyway, if you want to know more about Twitter's current status, you can go to http://status.twitter.com/

P.S: Also, apparently Facebook isn't working all too well either. Superb...

EDIT: Okay, now it's kind of working again. But it's not fully functional yet.

76-year-old man tased by policemen for recklessly driving a tractor...?

GLENROCK, Wyoming - A 76-year-old U.S. man shot with a Taser by police while driving an antique tractor in a small-town parade says it hurt but he's OK.

Retired truck driver Bud Grose of Glenrock told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Wednesday that he has a heart condition but didn't require any medical attention.

Investigators say police in Glenrock used a Taser on the man after he disobeyed orders. They say the tractor may have hit a car.

Two officers were placed on paid leave and state agents are investigating, but the police chief says it doesn't appear any policies were violated.

Grose wouldn't discuss specifics of the incident until he speaks to his attorney.

I'm kind of torn on this one. It's kind of hard to tell who's to blame for what happened here because, on the one hand you have these officers trying to prevent a potential accident from occurring at this parade thing; but then, on the other hand you have a 76-year-old man! I think anyone with a bit of sanity will agree that tasing old people is not a good idea since, you know, there's a good chance they might just die on you.

But then again, that also begs the question of why a 76-year-old man was allowed to drive this tractor in the first place. Old people and vehicles don't really go hand in hand, even if it's an experienced truck driver like this guy. It's just logical to assume that their reflexes and their attention span won't be the same as they were when they were younger. Furthermore, most people know that operating any kind of motor vehicle is regarded as an activity that entails a certain amount of perilousness, so one could argue that it's almost like carrying a gun.

So I don't know. Personally, I wouldn't trust someone so old with a gun, or a vehicle, but then, I wouldn't go as far as tasing them over it.

Link to the article here.

Work Rant!

So today I got pretty close to turning unemployed. I mentioned this in a previous entry, but I feel like it should be said once more: at the moment I don't perceive my job as anything other than a means for me to pay my bills and you know, afford my life in general on my own, without having to resort to other sources of money like, oh say, my parents. And that's fine to me. I don't really feel any kind of compromise or attachment to my work. And I'm not stupid, I know that my employers expect me to be all "Yay! I love my job!", and I do put up a pretty good front, but today was just one of those days that almost had be go "Fuck this shit!" and walk out.

Luckily, I have enough self-restraint not to let my impulses get the best of me; but still, the fact remains that today I felt really exploited at my job. They basically had me working 'till just about an hour ago, because there was this big thing that needed to be done and I had to be there in order for it to be carried about, and to me that sounds totally bullshitty because, c'mon, am I really that indispensable?

There isn't much responsibility involved in my position. There are some things that I have to do and that I'm good at that are the reason why I have the job that I have, but they're all stuff that can be done, and that is done within the regular nine-to-five schedule. What they had me do today not only forced me to stay overtime, but it is also not at all one of my responsibilities. It is not something that I have to take care of! It isn't even something that I know much of, for crying out loud! That being said, it was a pretty simple thing, but it was repetitive and tiresome, and it's something that anyone else could have done, so right now I feel like this got dumped on me because whoever got this assignment didn't really want to do it.

Now, I'm not going to quit my job over this, even though I did get pretty close to just walking out, but no. I'm just going to take a deep breath, shake this feeling of annoyance off and go back to work tomorrow, because, again, I'm just doing this right now because I need the money; this isn't my career choice, it's just a source of income. And I'll do it hoping that what happened today will just be an isolated occurrence that isn't bound to repeat itself.

If it does, however, I'll quit. It's not even that they're not paying me enough to do that shit. It's simply that they're not paying me to do that shit!

Unemployed Graduate Sues College

NEW YORK (AFP) - A US student who recently graduated from New York's Monroe College said Monday she had filed a complaint with the school accusing it of being responsible for her inability to find work.

Trina Thompson, 27, who graduated with a degree in information technology in April at the school in northern Manhattan's Bronx district, asked the state supreme court to award her 70,000 dollars to reimburse the tuition costs.

The former student said she had been unable to find employment to support herself since graduation.

"I need full-time job placement and that's what they said they were going to help me with and they didn't," Thompson told NY1 television.

"The IT career counselor sent me about three emails saying 'Oh, I have this job opening, you should apply for it.' That's it."

A Monroe College spokesman said the lawsuit was "completely without merit."

Honestly? That's one giant act of desperation right there. Seriously, it's pretty pathetic. I've heard of people who blame their financial troubles on W, on Obama, on illegal immigrants, on the War on Terror, on Wallstreet, on the Banks, even on Europe and Asia. But this has got to be the first time for me that I find a person with the nerve to blame their situation on their education, and the institution that provided it for them.

To me it feels very ungrateful, because first of all, your ability to find a job depends solely on yourself, degree or no degree. And second, her school has absolutely no obligation whatsoever with her after graduation (yet, they were still trying to help her somehow, which is nice, really, and all they got was a slap in the face).

Seriously. Instead of wasting time filing lawsuits she should be filling résumés. This girl needs a reality check.

You can find the original article here.

Hilarious PSA's

I just found this on another site, and I had to put here. It's just too funny! lol! Be sure to watch it.

Obama's 'Kenyan Birth Certificate'

03118509265

So, people all over the internet are fretting over this right now, and, truth be told, if I were a complete n00b without a single shred of knowledge of photoshop I'd probably be fretting as well... well, actually, no. Because, even if I didn't know my way around image editing software like I do, I'd still be able to notice with fair ease that the image was most definitely tampered with.

I have to wonder who made this, because I just can't imagine any of the crazy right-wing nutjobs nowadays referred to as 'Birthers' making the conscious decision to open their Photoshop and alter a picture of Obama's birth certificate; then again, the work is shitty as most of anyone can tell, so yeah, I'd be willing to concede that they're just that desperate to 'prove' that they're right and that Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States.

Either way, if this did come from some crazy Birther, then this is just a whole new level of low, proving yet again that the right wing should never be allowed in power again as long as the U.S. has some sanity. But right now, I'm more inclined to believe that this may be some type of internet troll, in which case, all I can say is "Well done, sir!"

Work to live or live to work?

I know today's entry is kind of a late one, but I was busy all day doing stuff, and no, it wasn't work-related stuff, I was simply hanging out with a few acquaintances I hadn't seen or heard from in a while, as well as with my parents. In fact, the only reason why I'm home right now is to take a shower and change into something more fitting for the nightly atmosphere that I'll be diving into with the aforementioned friends in about an hour. If it wasn't for that I probably wouldn't have been able to write a blog today and my thus far perfect record of writing at least an entry a day would've been ruined, so yeah... random, much? I don't really know how I got here, as this isn't really what I want to talk about.

What I want to talk about comes from something that happened just a few minutes ago. I was driving home, just a few moments away from my doorstep, when I got a call from one of my oldest friends. I haven't seen him in a while due to our hectic schedules, so he wanted to know if I could spare some time to hang out with him sometime this week. My response, of course, was to tell him that we should hang out now, seeing as I was bound to meet all the guys tonight. I had expected him to say yes, buy as it turns out, today, Saturday, he was working, and he's still working; his shift won't be over 'till around midnight, at which time he will take an hour-long drive to get to his home, to sleep for around five to six hours, get up, shower, dress and head back out to work half a shift tomorrow morning.

When he told me that, I asked him right away if he was short of money (I know it's a bit rude, but that's the way me and my friends are with each other), but again, while expecting confirmation I was sorely disappointed. It's not an extra shift, it's just the way his work... well, works.

Obviously he gets a couple days off during the week and whatnot, but still, this got me thinking. I wouldn't take a job, no matter how good the pay may be, that precluded me from having some time to hang out with my friends and family every once in a while. Because the point of having a job, at least from my perspective, at this point in life, shouldn't be regarded as nothing more than a means to an end, a way to get by. If you want to have a career, that's fine, but you have to allow yourself some time to just live. For most people that's college, but my friend chose not to go to college, instead getting straight into working, and I feel like he's missing out on some things.

The age that we're in right now -- our early 20's -- is supposed to be a time of self-discovery. And I know it sounds a bit corny, but I really do believe that. This is the time when we learn who he are and what we want to become, and I feel that by constraining yourself with tight work schedules and routine, you risk stifling that process, and while you might not think much of it right now, ten or fifteen years down the line there's a very good chance you'll wake up one morning and realize that the life that you have is not the one you wanted, and then, it might be a bit too late to do something about it, and you're going to have to live with that.

I don't want to do that. I don't want to have that kind of regret. So instead of living to work like my friend seems to be doing, I rather see what life is like, and work is just a small part of the equation. There'll be time to chain myself to a career three or four years from now, but at the moment, I just want to work to live.