[humorix] Email Virus Meets American Lottery Craziness

[James Baughn <jbaughn@ldd.net>]

Email Virus Meets American Lottery Craziness
Dave Finton, surazal@nerp.net
May 13, 2000

In a bizarre twist of events yesterday, millions of
Americans who are really bad at math stampeded to their
nearest gas station to buy dozens of lottery tickets each. 
The reason?  No, they weren't trying to win hundreds of
millions of dollars.  Rather, the FBI, lacking any real
credible leads, has decided to hold a national lottery to
determine who will be the next lucky ILOVEYOU computer
virus suspect.

First, it was some guy in the Phillipines.  Then it was an
American high-school drop-out that seemed to fit the "lone
crazed computer hacker" stereotype so well some of us here
at Humorix openly wondered whether or not the guy was a
computer-generated program himself (well all of us except
for James Baughn, whom we all know for sure is a computer
generated program).  No one knows who will be next in the
race to nab the ticket to become the next lucky suspect. 
Will it be you?

"Nothing categorizes the herd-instinct mentality of the
American people quite like the national lottery," said
Billy Bob Smith, a well-respected instructor and researcher
at the University of Minnesota's science labs and chicken
race farms.  As Billy Bob munched on Dorrito's and guzzled
down an entire two-liter of Coke while updating his
portfolio using Microsoft Word, he continued "This is why
we are at the mercy of the major corporate powers.  We must
stop our consuming ways before our rights are vanquished
and our economy as well as our entire planet collapses
under its own weight!  Now if you will excuse me I have to
run because I left the engine running in the second Sport
Utility Vehicle I just bought for  my wife.  The three that
I own seem to run out of gas awfully quick."

Indeed, some people are going nuts over puchasing the
tickets en mass.  Joan Frisbee, a local woman who teaches
English at a rural elementary school, told Humorix
reporters, "I bought 2,000 of these tickets.  You know what
they say about luck; you can't win if you don't try."  When
we informed her that she probably wouldn't win anyways if
she did try she merely covered her ears and sang the "La la
la I can't hear you" song over and over again until we had
no choice but to do the same.

FBI agents were quick to point out that just because they
had to resort to picking suspects at random didn't mean
their investigative abilities were out of date.  "We have a
computer that does the random name-picking.  See?  We're
just as tech-savvy as those darned virus authors," said FBI
agent What's-his-name.  "I fact, the agency has just
authorized the purchace of a new computer for next year. 
We're all realy excited about it because this new computer
will have a 'hard disk' *and* a 'monitor'!  What *will*
they think of next?"

Will the lottery craziness ever end?  Maybe, says
government researcher Jerry Ryan.  "But I think the odds of
that are only slightly higher than getting struck by 200
lightning bolts while getting hit by a bus and finding a
five-leaf clover simultaneously."

But as he pulled out his 40,000 lottery tickets from his
pocket, he exclaimed gleefully, "But hey, that's never
stopped anyone before!"

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