(This may only make sense to people dumb enough to gamble)
Guilty of many items, I’ll start with a few. I am guilty of stealing whisky from a brother. I am guilty of stealing lines and being influenced by wonderful movies such as Paint Your Wagon, The Cowboys, and Jaws. I’ve counted the ways to cheat at cards. I’ve been guilty of surviving Saturday drunkenness and Sunday sloth. Forgive me.
Those are my confessions for this morning, but as I read the Bible Dictionary of Sinning, I see that gambling is indeed on the list of mistakes leading us into a place so fondly known as Hell. Hell is sitting at a Blackjack table waiting for the devil to give you a twenty, only to witness Satan deliver himself five small cards adding up to twenty one. Lucifer also has four younger brothers sitting at the table taking all the face cards, thus keeping your chances of winning at a minimum. It’s a lose lose deal, much like betting on the Super Bowl.
The Patriots are favored over the New York Giants by a few points and a kicker this year. That’s precisely why I won’t bet on either team. It’s that half point, known as “the hook”, or a half player, known as the “kicker” always screwing up your gamble. This is one of many reasons I no longer gamble. The “hook” is how Vegas always steals your dough. If one million drunks bet on the Giants, and one million vagrants bet on the Patriots, Vegas collects ten percent either way. A person named Vegas wins, and an earthling eventually loses.
Gambling is very similar to writing. If only fifty percent of the reading population enjoys someone’s writing style, the writer still wins, because the writer collects the juice, even after being demoralized for ten seconds receiving horrible reviews. Let’s look at this from a baseball stance. If you are successful five out of ten times, you are not only in the Hall of Fame, you will be Hall of Famous for ever, even if you strike out those other five at bats.
The immoral to this ridiculous banter is as follows: Be the Bookie, or the Writer…..not the Gambler or the Editor.
If you do gamble, bet on yourself, not a team or a dealer you have no control over. Unless, of course, you are betting a friend or brother a steak dinner over a football game. In that case, you all win.