There’s one thing they say about lotteries: If you never enter, you’ll definitely never win.

I’m sure there are actually many more things that they say about lotteries, now that I reread that first sentence. Still, it sounds better that way, so I’m leaving it alone.

I need to start walking down to Avenue Q (er… 45th Street) every evening after work to enter the student rush ticket lottery. I want to see it again, and Ashleigh wants to see it for the first time. However, I keep putting it off because it’s annoying to walk down there, enter the lottery, stand around for half an hour waiting, and then lose. But really, if I never enter, I’ll never win.

This month might be a good time to try anyway, since April and May will bring spring break crowds to the city. I think it’ll be best to go on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, and preferably when it’s raining, snowing, or at least really cold. Of course, if I have to walk down there against the wind, enter the lottery, stand in the freezing rain for half an hour, and then lose… it’ll really suck to be me.

I’ve got eight winning Diet Pepsi bottle caps so far, but the cafeteria downstairs has run out of Diet Pepsi. Now I’m stuck drinking Diet Mountain Dew because a) I won’t drink regular Pepsi, and 2) Mountain Dew also has the iTunes promotion. I’m not a big fan of the Dew, though. If you’re going to have a caffeinated soda, it needs to taste like cola, and it needs to not look like extra-terrestrial urine.

This past weekend I was back in California for my grandpa’s eightieth birthday party, and I managed to visit many of the restaurants I miss. I ate at Del Taco, In-N-Out, El Torito Grill, Cafe Pascal, Claim Jumper, BJ’s, and Harbor House. If you’re in California, I highly recommend that you enjoy these places while you have access to them. I haven’t found better tacos, grilled cheese sandwiches, tortillas, quiche or crepes, potato cheddar soup, dessert, or milkshakes since I moved to New York.

For those of us without a car, the “Driving Directions” feature on MapQuest or Yahoo is ineffective. Thank goodness someone came up with HopStop, which lets you find subway/bus/walking directions.

I redesigned papertowel.org to stop using frames (I liked them, but Google didn’t), and I made some cute little rounded pods, for the navigation on the left, using style sheets (and no graphics). They seem to work in every 5.0+ browser except Internet Explorer on Mac OSX, in which the round corners appear backwards. And nothing I do seems to fix them. Arrgh!

Based on the following Gothamist article, I think it’s safe to say that New York City is creepy at times. Please, no one forward this link to my mother. However, what I love about Gothamist is the graphic they made to go with it.

Body Parts Found in Subway

Last week Improv Everywhere pulled their most interesting prank ever. They put a fancy bathroom attendant in the men’s restroom at McDonald’s Times Square (via kottke).

Even the manager convinced himself that this wasn’t a prank, but a simple misunderstanding. Surely we were just at the wrong McDonald’s.

What I love about it is the huge variety of people who came in during a single hour on a Sunday, the way the attendant represented the company with their catch phrases and cheerful attitude, and the fact that everyone just accepted both the bathroom attendant and the guy snapping photos.

It’s only in a camera-crazy tourist haven like New York that you can go into a public bathroom, snap photos of men standing at urinals, and not only will they NOT be angry, they’ll often take out their own camera and snap a pic of that same urinal, thinking, “Huh, this toilet must be famous.”

I suspect that, as a result of this, McDonald’s Times Square will hire a bathroom attendant.

For anyone who doesn’t already know about it, there’s an easy way to score free songs from Pepsi’s iTunes Giveaway. There’s a free song code under the cap of one out of every three bottles. You can read detailed instructions on how to win every time, or I’ll just summarize it for you:

1. At the store, tilt a participating Pepsi bottle so that the liquid almost touches the cap.
2. Look up toward the cap through the side of the bottle, just above the label. You’ll be able to faintly see the inside of the cap.
3. If you see “PLEASE” upside down or “AGAIN” right side up, put the bottle back and try another. Rotate the bottle a little bit to be sure. If you see something other than that, buy the bottle.
4. Just like washing your hair, repeat as desired.

I hope this will help anyone who’s into iTunes and doesn’t mind drinking Pepsi instead of Coke for a few weeks.

At some point, razors had only one blade. Then they had two, and then three. Next they had three blades and a lotion strip. Then three blades and two lotion strips. Recently Schick introduced the Schick Quattro, with four blades.

Well, friends, I’ve decided to make millions of dollars by inventing the next breakthrough in razor technology way ahead of its time. Introducing… DIECI.

City University has an amazing web site dedicated to Barnum’s American Museum (via bb), which was destroyed in a fire in 1865. The museum is especially interesting to me since it’s mentioned throughout the musical Barnum, which I happen to love. Anyone else who’s familiar with the musical will enjoy seeing some of the bizarre items and people (his “living collection”) that Barnum talks about in “The Museum Song.”