Investigating Reports

While I was in the big city this week I had the opportunity to watch big city news with their investigating reports. You are not going to believe what I was able to find out. They were investigating the lottery system, particularly the scratch off instant tickets. Now these tickets advertise prizes ranging up to millions of dollars. But did you know that this may be misleading. Oh, sure they do have to have at least one ticket printed with the maximum advertised prize as a winner, but they may have already sold that ticket. Oh and sure they have to tell you if the ticket is already sold, and they maintain a website listing all of the available games and what denominations of winners have not been claimed. But they only update this on a weekly basis, and the winning ticket may have been sold just minutes before some poor unsuspecting sucker purchases what he believes could be a million dollar winner. Which in reality is not. At least it wasn’t my tax dollars that were spent doing months of investigation when they could have just called me and I could have told them: No that’s not a million dollar ticket.

Hopefully when they get around to investigating the big scandal - Pepsi - they will just call me because I think I have figured it out. Pepsi came in 8 packs of 20 ounce bottles or 12 packs of 12 oz cans. Because I prefer bottles and because Math and I are well acquainted I usually purchased the bottles. 160 ounces versus 144. About a year ago, for my convenience, Pepsi introduced 6 packs with 24 ounce bottles. Both options were available so Math and I got together and decided to stick with the 160 ounce option. Slowly this option disappeared and we were left with just the 6 packs. A few months ago, for my convenience, Pepsi re-introduced the 8 pack now with more convenient 16.9 ounce bottles. I wasn’t happy with the 6 pack 144 ounce solution, but Math was even less happy with the 8 pack 135 ounce solution. Slowly the 6 pack is disappearing from the shelves and we will be left with just the smaller bottles in an 8 pack. I foresee a 6 pack of 20 ounce bottles in my Pepsi future, for my convenience of course. Now, had Pepsi just gone from 8 20 ounce bottles to 6 the general public would have felt raped, but they didn’t, they gently massaged their way in, making the general public feel cared about – loved. End result the same, we just got screwed.