Pretty-Picture Friday: Honorificabilitudinitatibus

Some people may not agree that this merits being posted under such a heading, but those individuals are philistines; charletans. Art is, by its nature, subjective, and this is, indeed, one of the most pulchritudinous sights that I have ever beheld. It signifies that I have been honourably discharged from the educational establishment where I have spent the last eon. The only caveat I allow to this encomium is that the figures in question, being as they are, so auspicious, should be rubric, rather than cerulean.

Fortune is ever shining on my door

Barely a week has passed since I won the lottery, but chance has bestowed upon me a second windfall. This time, stochasticity has brought me the promise of wealth seemingly through inheritance from a long-dead relative who, unnamed and unknown, left a sum of 15 million dollars, unclaimed, in a safety deposit box.

This putative sum has rested there since the inception of the second world war, and though the British Government has reportedly admitted that much documentation relating to such cases has been destroyed, it seems that one piece of information has survived intact, all these decades: my...email address. how fortunate.

So the purported solicitors who contacted me about this matters are offering their services in this regard - how selfless. I imagine all I need to do is pay a nominal fee, and the box in question will be magically opened, to reveal...a post-dated I.O.U.

(What did I do to merit my university email address being added to such a spamming list?)
[Answers on a postcard, to...]

Pretty-Picture Friday: County Down

Bittersweet Orchestral Rendition

(side-stepping copyright infringement laws and obviating a court-case from the erstwhile Verve's lawyers)
But I believe you get the idea - there is a certain ambivalence to my mood, since I have finished my final exams :D...but...what would otherwise be ecstatic joy is tempered somewhat by a certain empty, lacklustre feeling, stemming from the loss of that former impetus, for studious achievement. There is also a certain element of anxiety over the actual outcome. Nevertheless, I am free, and this is by any measure a joyous occasion, meretorious of champagne and wotnot.

On a less serious note, any delight I may feel at this is outshone by the literal disbelief at having won the lottery; one million euros, to be precise. I was informed of this while still in the middle of my exam preparations, and as you can imagine, I was rather pleased. As any optimistically- inclined fellow would do, I naturally accepted it with the utmost credulity - it's no stretch of the imagination to believe that I could win a competition that I never entered; people are so fortunate all the time, right?

And of course, it should come as no surprise that the lottery has branched out from the archaic method of charging people money for tickets, into the much more philanthropic and modern approach of randomly selecting winners from all the email addresses out there in internet-land. It seems a niche market that's been under-exploited of late, and one that I most heartily applaud them for embracing. A more sceptical individual may have questioned the fact that the email, informing me of my good fortune, originated from an AOL mailbox, and that the word Euromillions lacked certain vowels that are traditionally associated with its spelling. No doubt this is a carefully-chosen approach, designed to appeal to the 'YouTube' generation, for whom the English language is infinitely malleable. Sheer genius, on behalf of the Euromillions Marketing Department.

Unconscionable as it would be for me to question the authenticity of such serendipitous munifience, I still thought it prudent to approach this with caution, for two reasons:

Firstly, I was spending my days cloistered in the library, rapt in a delirium of academic fervor, and apprehensive of the coming exams. I could not, therefore, pick up the enormous cheque, myself (the transporting of which would no doubt require a forklift truck).

Secondly, lottery millionaires are often harassed by plaintive letters, remonstrating that the winner's fortune should be shared with those not so blessed, so as to ameloriorate their present financial predicament.

With these points foremost in my mind, I responded hastily to the epistle, but not without taking the prudent measure of utilising a pseudonym:



To:euromllns@aol.co.uk
RE: Official Notification: Your email address has won One Million Euros in the EuroMillions Lottery

oh, delightful! how serendipitous. unfortunately, i'm a little too busy at present to collect it. please deposit the winnings in 5-and 10-euro denominations, in a brown paper envelope, in your nearest rubbish receptacle, and my agents will be around shortly to collect them.
many thanks for your charitable and nonsensical generosity
yours,
-The Right Honorable Charles Montgomery (Esquire), Fourteenth Earl of Rockall

Pretty-Picture Friday: view from Pico, in the Azores

[Picture taken by the eminent Professor Paul Hart]