The 50-50 Raffle is a Scam

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I love charity as much as the next guy.  I also love gambling as much as the next guy.  Especially when the next guy is Jimmy the Greek or Pete Rose.  So I could hardly contain my excitement when I was invited to an annual charity golf event with loads of competition and raffles for valuable prizes.  

After paying my exorbitant entry fee, which went towards charity, I also shelled out a decent amount of additional cash for raffle tickets, which also went towards charity.*  The most exciting raffle, of course, is the 50-50, which promises riches to one lucky winner.  If you’re not familiar with the 50-50 raffle, the two numbers (50 and 50) represent the amount of the pot (50%) that will be allocated to the house (the charity) and to the raffle winner (never me).   Also, if you’re not familiar with the 50-50, you should probably attend an event at some point in your life.  Basically any event.

*”Decent amount” actually means the same thing as “exorbitant,” but I have never been fully forthcoming to my family about the excessive amount I spend on raffle tickets and charity golf events each year.

I realize that what I am about to say will have me shunned from society and labeled a grinch.  But as a blogger, my sole duty is to complain about everything and propose no solutions.  By now, you’re surely asking yourself, “what can anyone have against the 50-50 raffle?  It’s a perfect system in which a respectable charity reaps half the pot and a lucky winner walks away with the other half.  Who can hate that?”  Oh, hi.  Have we met?

The only issue I have is that the raffle is a complete scam.  When the lucky ticket is drawn and the winner runs up to the podium to collect his wad of cash, a small subset in the room starts to murmur.  If the winner starts to walk back to his seat, you may even hear some boos.  On more than one occasion, the charitable crowd will slowly start to chant:  “Give it back.  Give it back.  GIVE IT BACK!”  Elevating in volume until the lucky winner has been gently prodded, i.e., forced, to donate back his winnings.  

That’s right.  The charity, which has already taken almost all of my discretionary income in the form of entry fees and raffle tickets, and has claimed half of the pot just for hosting the raffle, now demands the other half of the pot for itself as well.  The 50-50 raffle has become a 100-0 raffle where the house gets everything and one lucky winner gets nothing.  Actually, the winner gets worse than nothing.  The winner gets to hold a satchel of money in his hands for 45 seconds while being taunted by a crowd of people.  What a prize!  

Charities should be fully forthcoming with this information before the event begins.  “Hello, sir.  We are hosting a raffle.  You can buy 1 ticket for $5, 10 tickets for $10, or 1000 tickets for $50.  The prize is that we get to keep everything.  How many should I put you down for?”

So, in order to raise money for myself, I will be hosting my own raffle.  Don’t worry.  I’ll be fully upfront with the details.  It’s much better than a 50-50 because it’s a 10-90.  I’ll keep 10% and the winner gets 90% of the pot.  90%!  Unheard of, right? In fact, screw it.  I’m going to double your prize pool from my own savings.  It’s now the first annual 10-180 raffle! 

Please note, all societal pressures still apply. 

The New Facebook

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I know a lot of people are freaking about the new Facebook Timeline feature.  Count me among them.  But my freakout is more personal.  I’m terrified that the world is going to learn everything about me going back to my birth.  As my golf coach used to say, “the best defense is a good offense.”  So, before you get to see my profile, I thought I’d get out ahead of the curve and tell you some things that you’ll find out soon enough:

  • I was on the golf team.  It was the coolest thing I did in high school.
  • When I was a baby, I had 33 chins. 
  • I dropped those chins in  high school.  Mostly because my sophomore year I only ate Snapple.
  • I once posted a status update that read: “Wow, this new Emeril sitcom is great.  Everyone should watch it!  BAM!”
  • The chins returned in college.  
  • I drove a blue jetta that everyone thought was purple:
  • (not my actual ride)
  • That with all of the changes, the thing I am most worried about is that people will see how disgusting some of my Seamless orders are.
  • In 10th grade, I accidentally locked myself in my room and was rescued by a team of firefighters.  During the rescue, my biggest concern was whether I would be on time to marching band practice.

Ireland Live Blog (From America (and not live))

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Back when my live blog was still live, Anne and I had just survived a terrifying clockwise journey around the Ring of Kerry and sang classic Irish ballads (James Taylor, Oasis, etc.) in the Dingle Pub.  Although we’ve been home for ages now, I feel compelled to complete the live blog so future readers don’t get concerned that we perished from an apple pucker incident.  

Before I get to the additional details of our travel, it’s important to note a major shift that occurred somewhere around Dingle.  A small discovery led to a huge change in how we saw the country and what became important.  I discovered the “miniaturize” feature on our camera and from that point forward, my sole purpose in life became finding things that would look awesome as miniatures.  I no longer cared about beautiful scenery, sleepy pubs, or romantic hideaways.  Unless they would look good smaller, and then I cared a lot.

In case you’re not familiar with the epicness that is miniaturization (and you’re probably not), here is a picture of a group of golfers on the 18th hole of the Old Head golf course:

And here is the same picture but with the golfers “miniaturized”:

Looking at these pictures now, on a big computer screen, I realize that the difference isn’t all that substantial.  I’m not even completely certain that I correctly labeled the miniature picture.  But on that little screen on the back of the camera, I would laugh and laugh and laugh every time I found something to make miniature.  I’m putting words into her mouth here, but it’s fair to say that Anne hated me by this point of the trip.

I should also mention that those photos were taken after Anne arrived at the golf course.  It looked beautiful and pleasant when she showed up.

When I was playing golf, it looked like this:

But back to the trip.

After leaving Dingle (!), Anne and I headed to Galway via the Conor Pass. The Conor Pass is Ireland’s highest mountain pass.  In Irish, “highest” actually means “treacherous, narrow, curvy, unpassable, and with sheep-towing trucks speeding towards you.”:

Thankfully, I remained quite calm throughout:

In case you were wondering, that slick ride we were driving was a VW Golf:

Yeah, that’s right.  I miniaturized it.

We barely survived Conor Pass and arrived at the most scenic overlook in Ireland.  Everyone we talked to said that the view would be our the reward for surviving the treacherous driving conditions.

Here’s how it looked when we got there:

From there, it was on to Cliffs of Moher, one of the new seven wonders of the world (currently ranked 24 of 28 for the title).  The cliffs are one of Ireland’s top visitor attractions.  Most likely achieving this status by having a website labeling themselves as one of Ireland’s top visitor attractions.

Words cannot describe a world wonder, but if forced to try, I would say that they looked like large cliffs with tourists taking photos.  If describing them to my mom, I would probably call them “breathtaking” or exhale loudly in a show of exuberance.  That would make her happy.

If you have the Internet, you don’t really need to go to the Cliffs because they look exactly like they do in the pictures.

For comparison’s sake, here’s my photo:

Right after taking this picture, my focus shifted from miniaturizing things to making the same joke (admittedly a terrible terrible joke) ovher and ovher for the rest of the day.  Mostly, I joked about how bohering the cliffs of Moher were and how we should pick up some souvenirs at one of the stohers.  If you lowher your standards for a moment, I think you’ll appreciate the humor in it.  Anne particularly disliked the jokes with the punch line, “I hardly even moher.”  As in:

Anne:  Do you want to go to the Cliffs of Moher today?
Rob:  Mo Her?  I hardly even Moher.

Well, that one doesn’t work exactly.  But you get the gist.

A little known fact about the Cliffs – if you pay 3 Euro moher than the regular entry fee, you can head up to the O’Brien viewing center, which the guidebook said provided the best view of the Cliffs.  We knew it would be a good view because only Americans were savvy enough to pay to see it.

Once again, we were rewarded for our reliance on the guidebook:

There are some additional details about our trip that I’d like to share.  But you’ll just have to wait because I JUST discovered a new feature on the camera.