In which I have sold my soul to the devil on credit

Tahmi got a call a while back from someone telling her she'd won a "home entertainment system," which includes a DVD player and speakers, and some enormous plasma TV, along with a whole mess of other things. We refer to the entire collection as the Orplasmatron, for simplicity's sake.

She entered the contest on-line a year or so ago, and had forgotten about it, but the Orplasmatron is a great reward for an investment of two minutes, I think. Her rate of return inspired me for a day or two to enter every sweepstakes I could find that sounded appealing. I avoided the ones that involved writing essays or submitting photos of myself in my new La-Z-Boy chair, or real effort of any kind, but I happily clicked the buttons on their surveys, beefing up my answers to feign loyalty to whatever company sponsored the contest. Colgate? Love it! Crest? I'm devoted! Aqua-Fresh? It is my heart's own blood.

Naturally, all the companies I petitioned for prizes started sending me e-mail daily. "Dear Discerning Collector of Baccarat crystal," they say, or "Good morning, golf pro!" They're easy enough to delete, and anyway, I'm not going to object to a little junk mail if it'll win me a vacation in Normandie, or something.

So far, I have seen zero return on my investment, which is OK. I bide my time deleting the newsletters I've started receiving daily from a religious singing group called the Crabb Family. They e-mail me all the time to invite me to their "revivals," and although I can't remember entering any religious singing group sweepstakes, I don't want to unsubscribe from their mailing list and miss the chance to win a great trip to Nashville, or whatever. I don't even remember what the prize is. Mildly curious, I did look at their web site today, and found a list of their recordings, which includes the good-time gospel show-stoppers "God's Hand of Wrath," "Hard Knocks" and "Homesick to Go," a wistful lament about how badly the singer wants to get to Heaven. Apparently, life just isn't brief enough for the Crabbs, so they spend their time asking the musical question, "Are we there yet?" You know, maybe this isn't worth it. What is the prize, again? I'm going to look.

OK, I can't believe I entered this contest. The grand prize is a mini Cooper, a hideous yellow one, which I thoroughly do not want, and would be embarrassed to drive. Apparently, I was bowled over by sweepstakes fever--this may be the "slippery slope to Hell" the Baptists talk about--and now my name is in a drawing for a deeply stupid-looking car, and my e-mail in-box is filling up with invitations to Crabbfest 2005. It's time to break the cycle. Get thee behind me, Crabbfest.



Star of the day. . .Stoo Hample
posted @ 3:31 p.m. on November 1, 2004 before | after

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She lay awake all night,

zzzzzzzzzzz......