Lottery curse???

I believe that when money marries money, the problems come from the fact that both love their money more than they love each other.  If they love each other.



Facts About the Lottery

Many lottery winners claim that winning the lottery was not all that it is made out to be and that winning the lottery is the worst thing that ever happened to them. In fact many of these winners claim to have lost their friends and family due to their large winnings and the circumstances that surrounded their new status in life.

Lottery winners eventually have financial difficulties due to the lack of budgeting and making a solid financial plan with their new winnings.

Americans spend more than $25.1 billion a year on lottery tickets.

A $1 million dollar jackpot is not a $1 million prize by any means. Technically you are only a thousandaire, not a millionaire, thanks to the IRS withholding their 28% each year from your lottery check.

If you purchase a lottery ticket with a group of people, a winning lottery ticket can become your worst nightmare if you solely claim all of the money as the lottery reports only your SSN to the IRS. This makes you liable to pay all of the federal income taxes due on the winnings. If you distribute the winnings among group members, you are additionally liable for gift taxes on amounts more than $10,000 given to each group member annually. To avoid this problem you can draft a simple group partnership agreement using a do-it-yourself legal kit available at office supply stores. You should also request a free SS-4 form from the government that includes a Federal Employee Identification Number for joint winning lottery claims. Call the IRS at 800-829-3676 for the form.

More than $61 million dollars have gone unclaimed as most states require that winning tickets be filed within six months of the winning date, and tickets get thrown away, washed, stolen or misplaced.

Privacy becomes a thing of the past once you become a multimillionaire as you are now considered a celebrity. Getting an unlisted phone number, post office box and a sound security system installed into your new home is important to your sanity.

Psychologist Steve Danish, a professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, has studied the impact instant wealth has on lottery winners.

"The dream you have about winning may be better than the actuality of winning," he said. "There have been families that have just -- just been torn apart by this process."

Kenneth and Connie Parker were winners of a $25 million jackpot. Their 16-year marriage disintegrated just months after they became rich beyond their wildest dreams.

Jeffrey Dampier, a $20 million winner, was kidnapped and murdered by his own sister-in-law.

In 2002, Jack Whittaker won the largest individual payout in U.S. lottery history.

"I can take the money," Whittaker said at the time. "I can take this much money and do a lot of good with this much money right now."

But it didn't work out like that. Whittaker's life was consumed by hardship, including the death of his beloved granddaughter Brandi, who was a victim of a drug overdose, and the breakup of his marriage.

"If I knew what was going to transpire, honestly, I would have torn the ticket up," said Jewell Whittaker, Jack Whittaker's ex-wife.

For Eddie Nabors, the 52-year-old truck driver from Georgia turned recent mega millionaire, Danish offers this advice.

"I think you can probably fish for a couple days … but I'm not sure you can fish for 10 or 20 or 30 years," Danish said. "Without that goal or plan about what you expect to happen for yourself … it could be your worst nightmare."

Lottery winner Bud Post of Pennsylvania was nearly murdered for his money when his brother reportedly hired a hit-man to kill him in an attempt to get his cash.

Victoria Zell won the lottery in Minnesota but soon landed in jail after being found guilty on multiple counts of vehicular homicide.

And Texan lottery winner Billie Bob Harrell sadly ended his own life after out-of-control spending sprees and an affair left him deeply in debt and divorced.

* Daryl LePage, certified financial planner, on challenges that lottery winners face â€" “When you win a large sum of money, you would think that your problems go away. In reality, a new set of problems come in.

* Michael Carroll on losing his family after winning the lottery â€" “In some ways I think to myself if I had never won, I might still have my wife and daughter.†Evelyn Adams, who won the $5.4 million dollar New Jersey lottery not just once, but twice in 1985 and again in 1986 gambled most of it away, and is broke today.


1993 Missouri lottery winner Janite Lee won $18 million, but was overly generous by giving the money away to a variety of causes leading to her filing bankruptcy just eight years after her stroke of good fortune hit.

Billie Bob Harrell Jr. hit the $37 million dollar Texas jackpot in 1997 only to end his own life less than two years later when he realized that all he wanted his marriage more then the money, but that it was too late to fix the strained marriage. Why was it strained? His spending habits spiraled out of control, and his wife only wanted a normal life which was anything but.

Scholars disagree on who started the ancient tradition of lotteries, but there are references in the Bible. In Chapter 26 in the Book of Numbers, Moses used a lottery to award land west of the River Jordan. For more information about lottery history, go to:

-http://www.naspl.org/05/history.html
-http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2941589
-http://faithcenter.wordpress.com/2008/02/16/the-lottery-curse-by-elaine-davenport-tuesday-february-26-2008/
-http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/70165/winning_the_lottery_curse_or_a_blessing_pg3.html?cat=47

Joel Lamangan's Deadline is the first film on media killings

“Deadline: The reign of impunity”, the first Philippine movie tackling
why media killings happen in the country.

Directed by award-winning director Joel Lamangan, the movie was
inspired by the recent spate of media killings including the massacre
of 32 media workers in Maguindanao. It revolves around four journalists
who find themselves caught in a web of political violence that has claimed
the lives of other mediamen.

One of them, a journalist working as an apologist for government officials,
was bothered by his conscience upon realizing that a local warlord was
behind the recent atrocities against provincial journalists.

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines hopes that the film will be a venue to show solidarity in the face of what appears to be maneuvers by the Ampatuan camp to clear Zaldy Ampatuan of any criminal liability in the
massacre.

The suspended governor was recently confined at the Philippine Heart Center
following claims of serious medical condition. His andiogram however revealed
there is no life-threatening heart disease, and that his coronary heart disease
is insignificant.

Bonifacio Ilagan wrote the film’s screenplay.

The film stars Tirso Cruz III, TJ Trinidad, Ina Feleo, Lovi Poe, and Allen Dizon.
Proceeds of the screening will go to the media workers welfare fund.

Amapola Española and Patricia Denise Chiu of tinigngplaridel.net share their views:

No shortage of heart: A review of Joel Lamangan’s ‘Deadline’

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

The word “deadline” may be feared by many a media student, considering it is practically synonymous with pressure and struggle, but Joel Lamangan’s Deadline (Reign of Impunity) plays on altogether different fears: the crushing exerted by the government on the media, and the continued struggle for press freedom in the Philippines.

Deadline is the newest release from veteran filmmaker Lamangan and screenwriter Bonifacio Ilagan (who also collaborated with Lamangan in Sigwa, Dukot and The Flor Contemplacion Story). The film focuses on the aftermath of the death of Henry Rosales (Luis Alandy), a young journalist who is killed after writing a series of exposés on warlords and political dynasties in Mindanao.

Alternately mourning his death and battling her own demons, his girlfriend, news anchor Greta Manarang (Lovi Poe), attempts to continue his mission by tracing the evidence he used back to its sources: Mindanao Weekly News reporters Azad Sinan (Allen Dizon) and Claire Pantilan (Ina Feleo), who are themselves being hunted down by mercenaries after their connection to Rosales’s work is discovered.

Meanwhile, Rosales’s death has awakened contempt in his colleague, Ross Rivera (TJ Trinidad), who used to be the government’s paid hack. The almost cursory way Rosales was killed drives Rivera to travel south, to the fictional province of Abdul Rabb, to find the story Rosales was trying to tell.

Fiction it may be, but the disguise is thin: the film’s antagonist, Abdul Rabb Governor Muntazir Ghazi (Tirso Cruz III) is leader of a massive political dynasty, commander of a formidable private army and evidently a silver screen stand-in for embattled Maguindanao mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr.

Even the film’s climax is strongly reminiscent of a very real event: the 2009 Maguindanao massacre, which has been called the “single deadliest event for journalists in history” by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In the film, Manarang and the others race to a hastily-arranged press conference to expose their discoveries, but are met with disaster when bombs are detonated before their big reveal. The explosion kills 57 people, 32 of whom were members of the media. These figures reflect that of the Maguindanao massacre, which killed 58, including 34 mediamen. Ampatuan, son of former Maguindanao governor Andal Ampatuan, Sr., is being tried as the massacre’s mastermind.

Though it understandably modifies the basic narrative, Deadline skilfully handles the fictionalization of the massacre. It highlights the essential elements of the event, such as the perpetrators’ political motivations and the journalists’ struggles. Journalists are killed brutally and without remorse, for the selfish interests of the people to whom we have entrusted our government: this is the film’s primary message.

Yet that is not the only message: the film’s strong writing also shows how in reality these killings affect not just individuals, but whole families. The victims, then, are not only those killed, injured or threatened. While the journalists portrayed try to uncover the story, their families too become targets – if not physically, then emotionally.

However, not all the plot points that Deadline modifies for cinematic (and political) value maintain their essence. Of course it was more exciting to watch the antagonist get shot with military-grade weaponry, instead of watching him sit through legal proceedings, as the Ampatuans do these days. Yet the vengeful ending seems to suggest that justice cannot be obtained by due process, but only in Hammurabi-like fashion – an eye for an eye.

The portrayal of some aspects of journalism were likewise questionable. Perhaps it was a matter of acting, but Poe and Trinidad’s characters often seemed gauche, lacking the decisiveness and confidence one would expect from journalists who have achieved their status.

Deadline also fictionalizes front pages for major dailies, but these are often poorly formatted, and therefore do not at all look believable. It may seem a tiny nitpick, but if the filmmakers expect real media practitioners to watch and appreciate Deadline, then the commitment to journalistic standards – whether ethical, grammatical or visual – must be upheld.

In terms of production design, Deadline is in no way groundbreaking; in fact, at some moments, the film is poorly lit or angled. The most compelling visual device, however, is the simple shock of death – the sight of journalists being killed mercilessly and being found in ditches among weeds – which is simultaneously gruesome and powerful. The fact that Lamangan makes no attempt to conceal the brutalized bodies is a statement in itself. You need to see this, he seems to be saying.

Deadline lacks the polish expected of a veteran film maker like Lamangan, but then again, perhaps there lies the beauty of it. This is certainly not a perfect film; it looks like it was made, in parts, haphazardly. Yet its imperfections present the very earnestness Lamangan embodies when he calls for an end to the extrajudicial killings.

Ultimately, the movie achieves what it sets out to do, reminding us that while we declare ourselves a free people, many things still threaten our liberty. In doing this, Deadline proves itself a brave piece of film making, deserving of an attentive and critical audience who can see through the fiction to the heart of the issues, and dare to decide for themselves.

Brazil’s top 10 carnivals

The 2011 Miss Universe is on Sept. 12 in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Yes, Brazil, the home of the world's famous carnival!

Here is an interesting article about Brazil and its carnivals courtesy of Lonely Planet.

Party! Brazil's best festivals.

And you thought it was all about that famous Carnival? Oh no, the good times roll all year round in Brazil.

Brazilians know how to throw a party on a mammoth scale and make other festivals look like trainspotting conventions. So charge your caphirianas, don your most sequinned outfit and samba your way through the hottest carnivals in Brazil.

Rio de Janeiro- One of the world’s largest parties, Carnaval – in all its colourful, hedonistic bacchanalia – is virtually synonymous with Rio. Held over five days of revelry during Easter, from the Friday to the Tuesday preceding Ash Wednesday, residents of Rio begin the partying months in advance. Parades featuring elaborate floats flanked by thousands of pounding drummers and twirling dancers, is the culmination of the festivities – though the real action, Cariocas profess, is at the wild parties about town.

Visitors are welcome to join the mayhem. There are free live concerts happening all over the city, while those seeking a bit of decadence can head to the various balls about town. Whatever you do, prepare yourself for sleepless nights, an ample dose of caipirinhas (the unofficial Brazilian national drink: cachaça with crushed lime, sugar and ice), samba and  joyful crowds.

Copacabana beach, Rio de Janeiro-The best way to see in the New Year is to join the Reveillion party on Rio’s mighty Copacabana beach, where the spiritual and the secular come together for one amazing night. Two million people pack the sands to welcome in the New Year. From about 8pm, top bands perform on stages strung out along the 4km-long beach, pumping out a variety of Brazilian and international music. At midnight, a spectacular fireworks display lights up the night sky while the hardiest of revellers keep things going til sunrise.

Salvador-Carnaval in Salvador happens on the streets in late February to early March, where music and spontaneity rule and trios elétricos (electrically amplified bands playing atop speaker-laden trucks) work two million revellers into a frenzy. For an entire week they dance, drink and kiss until they drop, get up the next day and start again. Each year the city designates a theme for Carnaval, and decorates the city accordingly.
Belém

The largest festival on the River Amazon, Círio de Nazaré revolves around a small statue of Nossa Senhora de Nazaré (Our Lady of Nazareth) which is believed to have performed miracles. For centuries, Brazillians have come to honor the Virgin and carry the statue from Belem to Icoaraci and back in a river procession of hundreds of boats. Millions of people fill the streets during the second week of October, along with the sounds of hymns, bells and fireworks, to accompany the image from Catedral da Sé to the basilica.

São Luís, Maranhão-Bumba Meu Boi is a wild, folkloric festival is derived from African, Indian and Portuguese influences that mingled in colonial times. The event, held from late July until mid-August, revolves around the story of the ox’s death and resurrection. Accompanied by much heckling, a stream of street performers, many dressed as oxen or mythological creatures, tell the tale through song, dance, theatre and capoeira (Afro-Brazillian art form).
Olinda

Everyone dons a costume for the 11 days and nights of Olinda’s Carnaval, held over Easter. Balls, nights of samba, Afro-Brazillian rhythms and plenty of street-style merriment characterize the festas (party). Everything else happens in impromptu fashion on the streets. The official opening commences with a parade of 400 ‘virgins’ (men in drag) and awards for the most beautiful, most risqué and the biggest prude.

Recife-The pounding rhythms of maracatu (slow, heavy Afro-Brazilian drumbeats) played during Recife’s festival aren’t for wallflowers. It is a participatory event held over Easter, with an infectious euphoria and fabulous dancing: people don’t sit and watch here, they join in. The months leading up to Carnaval are filled with parties and public rehearsals that are almost as much fun as the actual event, especially the week before.

Porto Seguro-Porto Seguro throws an impressive Carnaval and hedonistic bash, complete with plenty of dancing in the streets, round-the-clock music jams and no-holds-barred partying. It’s a little less wild than some of Brazil’s famous, but it lasts until the Saturday after Ash Wednesday. For cultural buffs, the Festa de São Benedito is celebrated in the Cidade Histórica. Children blacken their faces and perform African dances from December 25 to 27.

Paraty-Paraty loves to put on a good festival, starting with has its own odd version of  Easter Carnaval. Hundreds of young revelers dance through the cobblestone streets and during Holy Week beautiful torchlit processions take place. For Corpus Christi in June, streets are covered in coloured sawdust, leaves, flowers, coffee grounds and chalk. New festivals keep springing up each year; recent additions include festivals of photography, gastronomy and seafood.

Natal-Carnatal takes to the streets with Salvador-style trios elétricos and blocos sporting names like Jerimum (Pumpkin) and Burro Elétrico (Electric Donkey). It’s the wildest out-of-season Carnaval in the country – held in the early weeks of December, it is a great substitute for anyone who can’t make it to the real deal.