Did you win?
Tell me, did you win the Powerball jackpot of more than $1.6 billion?
No. You didn’t. Not if you’re up today reading the internet instead of shopping for private islands to buy, you didn’t. And not if you aren’t one of the lucky sonsabitches who purchased a winning ticket in California, Tennessee or Florida.
BREAKING: California lottery official says winning Powerball tickets also sold in Tennessee, Florida
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 14, 2016
Per reports, “at least” three winning tickets for the huge mega jackpot were sold, and they damn well weren’t sold to me. Or to you. This, from the Washington Post, takes us to Chino Hills, California.
This 7-Eleven, owned by Balbir Atwal, sold one of the winning tickets in Wednesday’s world-record $1.6 billion jackpot drawing. Atwal discovered his store sold the ticket from news reports; his customers found out from the news, Facebook and Instagram. Not long after, a crush of people, and a cavalcade of hulking television news vans, showed up at his store, and many didn’t leave until close to 11 p.m.
Atwal was so excited—the winning store gets $1 million to share with, in this case, 7-Eleven—that he gave all the people who showed up to celebrate free Slurpees.
The winning numbers, for what it’s worth—and for most of us, that’s NOTHING—were 8-27-34-4-19 with the Powerball number of 10.
Can I has Powurball monies?
— Sean Keeley (@SeanKeeleyIsMe) January 14, 2016
Did you win? Check again.
Nope. You didn’t. Well, I mean, sure, someone did. Three someones, by the sound of it, but for the rest of us we go back to our mundane lives of not being billionaires or even for most of us hundred-millionaires. How lame.
All we can hope for now is that whoever did win the $1.6 billion—split three ways that’s $533 million, then cut that in half for taxes and it’s somewhere north of $265 million—is that they put it to good use. No, you can’t buy an NFL team, or with $265 million even most American professional sports franchises, but you can do a lot of good with that money. So do good.
Or, you know what, your two dollars earned that money, so do whatever you want with it.
Just don’t buy houses for all your friends and relatives. They can’t sustain the cost of annual maintenance and property taxes, so you’ll be paying for that place for YEARS and it will bleed you dry and then you’ll end up like Allen Iverson playing basketball in Turkey one day just to cover the cost of all the lifestyles you unnecessarily upgraded. And that’s IF you can play basketball.
Congratulations, then, three people who are not me and probably not you. You just became super rich and for one day crazy famous. Now go buy Slurpees for everyone you know, and enjoy the rest of your lives while we all go back to work, two bucks (or ten bucks if you’re me) the poorer.
