Guest writer

What are the odds?

Casino? Unknot those knickers!

Here we go again. What's this big kerfuffle about some sort of casino coming to Little Rock? It sure has a lot of folks all worked up. Can you recall the last time something like this got the local gentry's hackles up? Or was it their knickers in a knot? No matter--hackles or knickers--as Ronald Reagan once quipped to the assailable Jimmy Carter, "There you go again ..."

Having trouble recalling? It was all the rage a few years ago and has already been shuffled off to the anachronistic attic of public debate. Give up? Uncle? OK ... I'll tell you: It was the big kerfuffle over that dang ol' lottery coming to Little Rock. And not just Little Rock, but the whole dang state (we have to be one of the few states in the nation where you can walk into any Mom 'n' Pop convenience store in any city or county and throw away your paycheck on the lottery, but you can't throw away your paycheck on beer).

The kerfufflers had themselves a heyday extolling the moral malfeasance that would undoubtedly be right on the lottery's heels like a pit bull chasing a mailman. Whoops! There I go again ... now I'll probably be in the dog house with the pit bull crowd. But ask yourself, when is the last time you switched on the 6 o'clock news and watched paramedics gurney off a mailman after some Shih Tzu went postal?

Our esteemed legislators struggled with the lottery for months and months. It wasn't that they had issues with the lottery's business model, the supporting infrastructure, or the algorithms used to calculate the remuneration that would be doled out to the suckers ... err ... the players. No, they had that pretty much nailed down during the first few hours of debate.

Ostensibly our esteemed legislators struggled for months and months because those sly dogs (you gotta love this) were gaming the gaming industry. They were loitering with the lottery lobbyists at their gratuitous three-martini lunches (the more conservative legislators asked to have their three martinis put in a doggie bag so they could take them to their apartments and consume them unobserved), and partying like it was 1999 at elaborate after-hours happy hours, complete with little weenies on a toothpick, little cubes of cheese on a toothpick, and little envelopes of money on a toothpick.

Finally, after a fitful start, the lottery got up and running. It took a few months before any meaningful payouts were made. Oh, there were token efforts made to pay the scratch-off aficionados some token amount. Did you know that legislators actually considered putting the lottery under the rules of the Chuck E. Cheese law and pay winners with tokens? But the Chuck E. Cheese lobby just wasn't strong enough to convince them. Their three-pizza lunches didn't have the allure (or effects) of a three-martini lunch.

As the lottery gained traction, thousands were scratching for millions. Pick-Six paid out thousands. Pick-One (for the more risk-averse players) paid out a free Pepsi. And Pick-Anything, sort of like your kid's soccer league, awarded everyone. And finally we got Powerball. In spite of all their kerfuffling, the players proved the detractors wrong.

Well, almost.

Alas, lately the lottery, well wait, let's use its official title--The Arkansas Scholarship Lottery (wink, wink), isn't exactly raking it in. Scholarships have been curtailed due to a lack of suckers, err ... my bad again ... players. My nephew, a straight A student ... I mean a straight-A student (I don't want to get caught up in that LGBT thingy) majoring in Home Ec and Art Appreciation (well, looks like I stepped right back into it anyway), applied this semester. He barely received enough lunch money to buy McMystery McNuggets on McDonald's economy McMenu.

Yes indeed, the payouts are shrinking. Buy a scratch-off ticket and all you'll get is that funky gray stuff under your fingernails. And Powerball? You have better odds at convincing Tom Cotton to vote for Obamacare than winning Powerball. With its dwindling revenue, I predict that the days of the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery are numbered.

So, someone please tell the local gentry to get their hackles down and unknot their knickers. This casino talk, should it come to fruition, will end up like our little lottery.

Initially, all of those "players" still blowing their paychecks on lottery tickets like a bunch of drunken sailors on shore leave will abandon the Mom 'n' Pops and stagger (not from the beer they couldn't buy) into the glittery palace of pleasure when it gets built here in Little Rock. The cacophonous slot-machine symphony will lure them in like sirens sweetly singing. Beckoning them onto the rocky shores of financial catastrophe.

After they forfeit enough paychecks for a few fruitless hours of button-pushing, interrupted by a token payout from time to time, they will eventually come to their senses and abandon the casinos for the next "Big Thing."

Rumor has it that the put-your-hand-on-the-top-of-the-TV televangelist lobby has been buying a lot of prayer breakfasts lately. However, some are having trouble getting in several restaurants. Seems some owners are exercising their newly codified rights to express their personal convictions about serving Bible-thumpers wearing cheap suits and pompadours. But they are a persistent lot and eventually, when their influence-peddling bears fruit, players will be faced with a new paycheck-devouring dilemma: slots or love offerings.

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Bill Rausch is a freelance humor writer from Little Rock. Email him at williamrausch25@yahoo.com.

Editorial on 04/25/2015

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