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What's Your Jinx/What's Your Luck?

escargot1 said:
Yeah, compulsive - sorry, serious - gamblers will tell you that. They believe it themselves. They don't mention the scores of losses or the huge debts or the marriage at breaking point after yet another visit from the bailiffs.
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Have to say, in his case he's on top of it. He has very strict rules: he only gambles at weekends, nothing online so it's all at physical bookies and casinos, and has a rigid limit. He's done this for years, has a nice house and car and his family seem fine - they have good holidays etc every year. I think he's just one of the fortunate gamblers who can control it properly. He's quite disciplined in himself - keeps fit, never smoked, etc.
 
It's been at least 15 years. Honestly, I think he's one of the exceptions - I have known lots of compulsives (gambling, booze, drugs..) and he does lack the haunted/driven thing. Gambling is his hobby, basically. Oh and he does stick to only betting what he can lose. Lucky sod.
 
Ulalume said:
Meanwhile, I'd try to bet based on studying the odds, or by how the horses looked...sensible kinds of things...and pfft, nothing
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Don't have a clue about studying form. I only go for horses with the coolest names.

(I gave up trying years ago, but I once knew someone who's horse won the National two years on the trot. What are the odds?)
 
At work I have to approach the public and sometimes they'll be ready for me, so I'll say 'Aha, you saw me coming! Like the bookie.'
 
I walk past a bookie on my way to work. 8AM, it's the same lot in there every day. None of them look particularly well-off.
But I mentioned somewhere about hardcore gamblers and OCD. I once saw one of these chaps come outside the bookies, do a couple of star-jumps, turn around and go back in again. I wonder if it worked?
 
rynner2 said:
Yes, welcome back from me too, Mike! Where have you been?
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Wow, it's good to be remembered! Thanks. I guess you could say that life just kind of happened. Yesterday I found myself searching the web for interesting/unexplained phenomena and wound up right back here at FTMB. It's just like I remembered it :)

It's funny about the gambling because I don't remember my friend ever having much interest in gambling or making money. He was always just generally lucky. When we were in college there was some special event at the café where they baked a small figurine into a cake and if you got that piece of cake you won something. We were in a group of about 8, with hundreds of people eating at the café. I joked about his luck how he was going to win the prize and sure enough I was right. He also won a car in a national trivia contest in Australia, but I'll chalk that one up to smarts. I've never known anyone else with that kind of fortune.

I stay away from gambling because I invariably fall within the odds of any game of chance, which aren't in my favor.
 
You couldn't make it up. Re my original post about windfalls and large expenses exactly cancelling each other out, its happened again.

I reported on another thread how on Xmas day I found an unknown/misplaced £300 in the back of a cupboard.

Today the boiler died. I've been told the cost of the parts which will need replacing will set me back...go on, take a wild and crazy guess.


What's interesting of course is that in this sequence its seems like bad luck...a small bit of good fortune being snatched away from my grasp within days. Yet if the order of events were reversed and I found the cash AFTER the emergency I'd be considered the luckiest bugger in the world and the money a gift from the angels. Yet the only difference between the two scenarios is their sequential order. There's got to be an inspiring point in there somewhere.
 
Someone up there likes you.
Or:
Someone down there hates you.
 
rynner2 said:
I thought I'd got lucky yesterday when I bought a new office chair from Argos. Only to waste hours finding I couldn't assemble it because two screws are missing... :(
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As recounted later, the Argos ladies sorted that out pretty well.

But yesterday, after weeks of use, the chair developed another fault - the back had swivelled round. I straightened it, but only later did I discover a machine screw had fallen out of it and onto the carpet! At first I thought it was the wrong size screw, but after nearly an hour of wrestling with it this morning, and much cursing, I got it back together again.

I have to go out now, and only time will tell whether I got lucky, or the chair is jinxed...
 
rynner2 said:
As recounted later, the Argos ladies sorted that out pretty well.

But yesterday, after weeks of use, the chair developed another fault - the back had swivelled round. I straightened it, but only later did I discover a machine screw had fallen out of it and onto the carpet! At first I thought it was the wrong size screw, but after nearly an hour of wrestling with it this morning, and much cursing, I got it back together again.

I have to go out now, and only time will tell whether I got lucky, or the chair is jinxed...
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My faith in Argos was destroyed years ago but good luck, I'm amazed they even tried to help you.
 
rynner2 said:
As recounted later, the Argos ladies sorted that out pretty well.

But yesterday, after weeks of use, the chair developed another fault - the back had swivelled round. I straightened it, but only later did I discover a machine screw had fallen out of it and onto the carpet! At first I thought it was the wrong size screw, but after nearly an hour of wrestling with it this morning, and much cursing, I got it back together again.

I have to go out now, and only time will tell whether I got lucky, or the chair is jinxed...
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My experience of these office chairs over the years has been similar. The screws eventually work loose and you have to keep tightening them up.
 
I've recently been stomping away from the bus stop.
It's a ten minute walk to the town centre. I have a bus pass and a bus stop near me so why not?
It's a twenty minute frequency and it seems to me that every time I check the display it's 15 to 20 minutes. Every time, every sodding time.
Magical thinking of course, there must have been times it was a few minutes.
Can't remember any at the moment. Must have been though.
I insist however that walking down the path I will remember something I have left behind, only takes what? 30 seconds, a minute?
That is the precise amount of time I will miss the bus by.
Every time.
So buses, swines that they are.
 
Thanks, I'll check it out.
They've changed it, another bus company has started operating the same route so it's more frequent.
Before then, there were only wild rumours, whispers from mad eyed loners and sad souls inured to disbelief that a bus actually came along from tme to time.
One kid told me, 250,000 times actually that he had been waiting for 45 minutes.
I feared he would take it out on the driver but when it finally arrived he got on and was so wound up all he could say was "Pfffftt!"
 
If I was late to work because I dawdled, and made something up to explain it (like the engine wouldn't start) - it would happen, exactly as I fibbed it.

What's my luck is, when I get off my arse and do something - it nearly always turns out well.
 
I also subscribe to Murphy's Law Subsection C Paragraph 3 that the failure of an expensive, out of guarantee appliance is directly related to me splurging all my money on a luxury item.
 
Got to the bus stop this morning. 16 minutes.
I seriously considered going back home because of an icy wind and still suffering pain from a tooth extraction last week.
Steeled my resolve and got on with it, now back home and cosy and mother of mercy the pain has stopped.
Sort of odd because I felt this morning it was the worst so far.
So my luck is....... inconsistent.
 
smokehead said:
I learned after many, many humiliations to always tell the truth.
If I told my mates I met the Queen last week she would astonishingly turn up and deny it. It's that kind of instant karma.
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Very wise. Like when you blag a day off sick and then a week later it really happens...

I was genuinely off sick a only a few weeks ago, a vicious cold-bug thing, got over it, went back to work, and last week went down with another. Worst cough I've ever had. (Started in Wolvo, of all places!) Had to go home early from work & get Techy to collect me in the car instead of cycling.

So now I'm worried that my boss will think I've been swinging the lead. Hadn't had a day off sick in nearly 2 years, unlike colleagues who're known for duvet-days and hangovers, but it's still the sort of thing that gets noticed.
 
Sorry, that was probably me going to Dingle City a few weeks back.
I await the Christmas flu with a sad and weary inevitability.
Mine was early, bad cough and things turnng green and falling off.
My daughter came home for Christmas in perfect health and got it bad right over Christmas itself.
I'm undoubtedly still febrile with the virus. Hope you feel better soon.
You are right about others cunning use of duvet days. My boss, curious, added up the days off in a year of our four stores lads. Within a day or so either side all four had taken two weeks off in one dayers.
Strangely, I've noticed if you watch a bit of the telly when flu'd up, Channel 5 afternoon films seem like the greatest ever made.
All the best.
 
Nothing happened to the skivers btw. It would be nice to report the boss called them in and implied heads would roll, but none such.
Instead, muggins like me worked longer hours and got more stressed out.
My body thus did that strange thing of postponing illness whilst busy, perhaps exemplified by Jesse Ventura in the classic Predator. "Ain't got tam to bleed!"
Obviously at Christmas it caught up with me, so turkey, pud and mulled wine were replaced by Vics, Lem Sip and Covonia.
It delighted me no end when I got back to work to hear one of them say "I got completely rat arsed at Christmas hur hur hur"
Whenever I read this or that should be cut because it's unfair on the 'ard workin' taxpayer' I piss myself laughing.
 
smokehead said:
If I told my mates I met the Queen last week she would astonishingly turn up and deny it. It's that kind of instant karma.
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Love it. I'm much the same. My karma seems a little quicker, sharper and more impressive than other people's!
 
smokehead said:
Sorry, that was probably me going to Dingle City a few weeks back.
I await the Christmas flu with a sad and weary inevitability.
Mine was early, bad cough and things turnng green and falling off.
My daughter came home for Christmas in perfect health and got it bad right over Christmas itself.
I'm undoubtedly still febrile with the virus. Hope you feel better soon.
You are right about others cunning use of duvet days. My boss, curious, added up the days off in a year of our four stores lads. Within a day or so either side all four had taken two weeks off in one dayers.
Strangely, I've noticed if you watch a bit of the telly when flu'd up, Channel 5 afternoon films seem like the greatest ever made.
All the best.
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Thank you for your good wishes! I'm due back in tomorrow but will be putting it off. Friday is my rest day and I'm in over the weekend so I'll roll in on Saturday. Not paid enough to put myself back in hospital.
 
smokehead said:
I learned after many, many humiliations to always tell the truth.
If I told my mates I met the Queen last week she would astonishingly turn up and deny it. It's that kind of instant karma.
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Been there. It's when you think you're getting away with it that some tiny little detail you haven't considered comes back to bite you and lands you in the cack.
 
Testify brother, you are preaching to the converted.
Not only do I cringe at some of the things I said, I find it completely incomprehensible why I lied in the first place.
I do wonder sometimes why the Monty Python 16 ton weight had to come crashing down on me the instant, the very instant I told a lie and others seem to get away with BSing all the time. But on the whole I'd rather be honest.
 
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