Luck of the Jewish

[please note: this post is in somewhat poor taste. And by "somewhat," I mean "extremely," and by "poor," I mean my "mother would slap me if she read this"]

Well, it happened again. Like so many times before, I came so close to winning money in some sort of pool or gambling league, and ended up in4th place, right out of the money. Had Illinois beaten N.C. this evening in the NCAA Championship Game, I would've come in 3rd place, and would be $72 the richer. Instead, I end up in 4th, which is just as bad as last place as far as I'm concerned, because I win just as much ($0) as the person in last place. To tell you the truth, last place is probably better. At least there's no hope at all of winning when your in last, so you can't be disappointed when you lose, because you knew what was coming.

Granted, the money I would've won is by no means a fortune, but it's not "chump change" either. In fact, I could've put that money to good use, such as towards that piece of cheese I've been saving up for. 1 Anyway, because I refuse to actually take responsibility for myself, and find it easier to concoct cosmic conspiracies to explain the events of my life, I've decided that the general bad luck I've experienced in my time here on this molten mound (2) is a result of genetics and religion.

My grandfather was a very unlucky man. Every time he ever invested in anything, he lost his money. In his later years, he quite literally lost his shirt (which was red, with black stripes), and died alone, a hairy, smelly old man who couldn't understand what he did to deserve his lot in life (the answer--marrying my insane grandmother). I believe that I've inherited my grandfather's bad luck. I've never won anything in my life--save for that Ghostbusters mug full of taffy I won in 5th grade for guessing how many pieces of taffy were in the mug. Of course, I don't eat taffy or drink anything you drink out of a mug, so the damn thing was pretty useless to me. But otherwise, in terms of betting, or contests, or anything of the like, I've never been a winner.

I believe that my grandfather's bad luck was a direct function of his religion, and specifically, his ancient hebrew tribe, the Levites (3). Yes, my family actually knows what tribe we came from. Weird, I know. Now, everyone knows that the jews, as a whole, haven't been the luckiest of people (4). But believe it or not, the jewish Tribe of Levi has been even more unlucky throughout the course of human history (note: to the best of my knowledge, there is no truth to this last statement). If you don't understand what I'm talking about, take a look at the following timeline, and see for yourself:

1234 B.C.--An older male Levite haggles with a street merchant over the price of a bronze lute. The Levites, and by association, the jews in general, become known as not willing to pay retail for their musical instruments.

546 B.C.--A male Levite gets violently ill during a production of Homer's "The Iliad." Roman emperor Caeser IIV burns an entire jewish settlement because he couldn't hear over the man's whooping cough fit. Italians start to wonder about the jews.

33 A.D.--A Levite man convinces Jesus Christ, a struggling comedian, that he'll get loads of laughs if he tells the world he "is the son of god." By some weird coincidence, it turns out that Christ is actually the son of god (which, by the way, in retrospect, made the joke completely UNfunny), and is ordered to die on the cross by Pontius Pilate, allegedly with the blessing of Jewish High Priests, for preaching against the Roman empire. In the years to follow, the world decides to hate the jewish people, and to persecute them forever, for killing their king, because apparently the wine that he made from water was an irreplaceable vintage, with very low overhead to boot.

1543 A.D.--After Levite settlers in Spain fail to answer numerous questions posed by their inquisitive Spanish hosts, the Spanish begin the "inquisition," during which they begin to ask even more questions of all the Jews, and EVEN MORE jews die. Note: it is around this time that the world begins to hate the blacks too, making the Jews feel a little bit better about themselves.

1743--A jewish immigrant and Levite named David Cohn invents the lightbulb. Teddy Edison, his next door neighbor, kills him with a hacksaw and steals the bulb, keeping it under wraps for years, ultimately bequething it to his son, Thomas Alva. Years later, Ben Franklin invents electricity, and not long after that, Tom Edison introduces the bulb to the public. Nighttime outhouse users everywhere rejoice. 125 years later, an electricity utility company in New York names itself after Tom Edison, but because of typo's in their corporate filings, Tom gets morphed into "Con," and "Con Edison," the electricity giant who continues to put advertisement leaflets in with their bills, and still haven't stopped even though I put the advertisements leaflets right back in the envelope that I send back to them with my check every month, is born.

1981--Jon Palmer, a Levite alcoholic/long island goombah, chokes on a maraschino cherry that was in his Tom Collins. He is hospitalized, realizes he has a problem, and swears off Alcohol forever. He never touches a drink again, for the rest of his short, insignificant life.

1984--My grandfather, a Levite, invests his life savings in a carpentry shop. They hire a full staff of Danish shopworkers, and build an entire inventory of wooden knick-knacks. The night before the big grand opening, a small candle burning under a chaffing dish filled with pigs in blankets is accidentally tipped over, igniting first a wooden rocking horse, then a small armwar, then my grandfather's red shirt with black stripes, and eventually, the entire store (also made of wood). The Danish workers, who are not made of wood, escape with only cuts and bruises, and sue for emotional distress. Apparently they weren't used to such high temperatures. Because insurance coverage hadn't been fully bound yet, the insurers from the Lloyds market disclaim based on various technical exclusions. After years of coverage litigation, grandfather collects $230,000.00, $300,000 of which goes directly to the lawyers. Grandfather is forced to sell the Pontiac. One week later, he finds out that his youngest child is gay.

2005--His oldest grandson comes in 4th place in an NCAA pool, just missing the $72 payoff by a hair, and lying awake in bed that night, convinces himself that he has testicular cancer from chronic masturbation.

In life, for some, the cards just fall the right way. For others, it just doesn't happen. There's really no rhyme or reason for it. Except for us Levites. For us, there is a both a rhyme and a reason as to why the cards never fall the right way. I'm not sure of the reason (though it might have something to do with killing the "son of man"), but the Rhyme is as follows:

Dredel, Dredel, Dredel, I made it out of clay.
And when it's dry and ready, oh Dredel I shall play,
Except if you're a Levi, you'll never have your day.


1. There it is, I'm finally using numbers instead of asterix's. And as you can see, unless you are color blind, the numbers are in color so they stand out a bit from the text. Of course, it is a royal pain in the ass to change the color of just the numbers, so henceforth, the numbers will appear in regular old black, with parenthesis around them. Work with me here, people, I'm experimenting to see what works best. That said, you may be wondering why I have been so obsessed with cheese lately. Well, I think it's a combination of 2 things: (1) I am lactose intolerant, and can't really eat all that much too, and (b) cheese is fungus, for christ's sake! I heard the other day that a certain type of cheese is something like a single molecule different than athletes foot. And we consider this stuff a delicacy. Don't get me wrong, I like cheese. I just think it is weird.

(2) Bad luck is a relative thing. Obviously I'm quite lucky that I wasn't born a starving orphan, or without a neck, or something like that. But generally, things just don't seem to go my way.

(3) For those of you who don't know, long ago, the jews were separated into 12 tribes. Over the course of thousands of years, most jews have lost track of what tribe they originate from, for the most part due to poor bookkeeping. Ironically, had they hired jews rather than puerto ricans who couldnt' read hebrew to keep the books, we'd probably all be living it up right now in the Tigris-Euphrates valley somewhere. Instead, I'm sitting with one hand down my pants and the other in a bag of frito's, in a small, ratty studio apartment that, for some reason, smells like burnt rubber.

(4) Save for the occassional unbelievably lucky jew such as Colediggy.