how to rule the universe in 21 days

Luck

Is anyone here any good at winning stuff? I have friends who win lucky draws and competitions on a fairly regular basis. One of my friends has recently won a hush puppies signature contest followed by the grand prize in a magazine contest.

Unfortunately, whilst I may be incredibly lucky in most aspects, in terms of lucky draw type things I'm probably as big a jinx as you can find. I can't remember ever winning anything at all. I don't win cheap door prizes at dinners, nor slogan contests... not even give away prizes... its depressing really.

Usually I dont even bother entering these things, but once in a while I'll forget and get excited and suddenly enter everything I can for a day or two, especially when I think I can tip the odds in my favour in some way. And then every time I enter, I'm almost certain that I'm going to win. And so I wait for the congratulatory notification that never comes.

Some people say that people like me are fated to have to work for their money but that money from working will come pretty easy. But I refuse to accept that and I'm going to work hard to break this curse. Except that that would be working for it. Screwed if you do, screwed if you don't.

The night before, I stayed up till 6 a.m. specifically to enter a pepsi contest to win an xbox 360 at www.pepsi.co.uk. I dont particularly want an unmodified xbox, as I dont have a tv and do not wish to spend over forty pounds per game but I thought it would be a nice thing to win, and more importantly, I thought that my weird sleeping times would give me an edge.

the contest was giving away one xbox every 90 minutes, so obviously entering at 4.30 in the morning is bound to put u in a slot with relatively few contenders (possibly none in the whole country i thought satisfiedly to myself in my most wishful moments). I even went through the recycling bins to get more entry codes to maximise my chances. So at 4.30 I started sms-ing these codes in, all 5 of them, spreading them out slowly till about 5.30. And then I waited for the victory announcement. Which of course never came. I was pretty tired by then so at 6.15 I just went to bed, only to be woken up a few minutes later by an SMS arrival. Leaping out of bed was unfortunately a waste of time.

I'm not going to give up though. I will win something one of these days. Even if I have to rig a competition of my own making.

posted by justsomeguy @ 4:47 AM