It appears there is just one winner in the stunningly huge Powerball drawing from Saturday night. Someone in Florida has to fess up that they are ready to be both the most envied and most reviled individual in America as everyone else’s jealousy and greed collide to focus on one person.

How could anyone properly prepare for the Giant Paper Check Press Conference, where reporters pepper the winner with a litany of “what next” questions? The surprised and freshly minted tycoons are always so cheerful at this most public moment, but afterwards things tend to go off the rails as relatives clash for control of the windfall and an excessive amount of media scrutiny exposes a host of personal weaknesses.

It often ends badly.

What if the winner this time decides to start out with sadness and regret? Perhaps an acknowledgement of the enormous challenge involved in suddenly managing hundreds of millions of dollars would lead to a new level of understanding of the tremendous responsibility that wealth carries with it. People would see that being on the receiving end of such a mammoth cash deluge is really as much a cause for grief as joy. Sympathy would be the order of the day. Condolences would be offered. Sincerely.

Well, probably not, but my advice to the winners is the less said, the better. Keep your answers short, in the range of five syllables per answer. Or seven.

Yes, Haiku short.

I
Lottery winners
squander their fortunes quickly.
Mine will take some time.

II
No one needs so much.
Yes I am undeserving.
Just like you would be.

III
Smiling muscles ache.
It’s an exhausting pastime,
handing out money

IV
I will buy houses.
Relatives who don’t need them
still must be appeased.

V
This burdensome win
has made me melancholy.
What lucky numbers?

Write a press conference haiku for the Powerball Winner.

For those who decided last week that the long slushy slog of winter 2012-2013 was finally over, a cold slap is in the forecast for today. Rain and/or snow and a high barely in the ’40’s make me glad I decided to leave the snowblower gassed up for another few weeks.

Just in case.

Meanwhile, America’s Singsong Poet Laureate, Schuyler Tyler Wyler, climbed into his drafty garret to produce this May Day Ditty.

Embrace the May, but be a cynic.
Mother Nature’s schizophrenic.

She brings us air so sweet and mild,
and then a freezing zephyr wild.

She’ll green some grass, hey nonny nonny,
then kick your ass a little, honey.

Drape floral garlands ’round your feet,
then fill your face with freezing sleet.

Get out and do your May Pole dance,
but put some hot sauce in your pants.

Though May bringst bees and buds to flower
Conditions changeth by the hour.

When has a sudden change caught you unaware?

Ever helpful Google has developed a gizmo to deal with your vast digital treasure after you have gone rogue.

The Inactive Account Manager (I.A.M.) can be set to delete or distribute your files if you do not log on for a specified time – 3 months, 6 months or one year.

As part of the set-up process, you have the opportunity to write a message to the person who you designate as the recipient of all your gmail. This message is delivered after your prolonged absence from Google’s universe sets the gears in motion.

I suppose this would be a strange e-mail to write, since it will only be delivered once you have been offline for at least three months. In today’s world, that means dead, or nearly.

So what should you say?

I put this question to Trail Baboon’s Rhyming Poet Laureate, Schuyler Tyler Wyler, and he came up with a message that is carefully organized to have 14 syllables in each line, because in Egypt, the Amenti, an area west of the Nile where souls go after death, was divided in 14 parts.

I asked STW to explain this in more detail and he couldn’t. He said he read it in an unsolicited e-mail that came from a Nigerian Princess.

I’m sending this unwelcome note because I am logged out.
I trust you’ll know the reason why, and what it’s all about.

I’ve been inactive ninety days, and you know that is odd.
I might be comatose, or sick, or wind surfing with God.

I could be traveling abroad – a touring man of leisure.
Or like some old soap opera star – a victim of amnesia.

I may have lost my password or forgotten it or both.
But Google doesn’t care. For it has sworn this sacred oath:

When I fall silent ninety days the system will arise
to notify you properly and then – this grand surprise!

The Garbage I collected (that’s the “G” in “gmail”, dear)
My digital detritus – will now suddenly appear.

The messages that plagued my nights. The crap I learned to rue.
I now transfer into your care. I give it all to you!

The newsletters from NASA and my Facebook friends’ remarks.
They all belong to you today – the compliments, the snarks.

The many mails I didn’t read, the very few I did,
They’re yours forever more my love. Here’s looking at you kid.

Inactive Account Manager (it’s known as “I.A.M.”)
Has sensed I Am No Longer. That’s why you’re stuck with my Spam.

Here’s hoping I am still on Earth and not somewhere beneath it.
At least I know I’m Free At Last From Gmail. I’ve bequeathed it!

Who will inherit your e-mail? Whose e-mail would you want to inherit?

Today’s post comes from Bathtub Safety Officer Rafferty.

At ease, civilians!

Keep your feet on the ground and you’ll be fine, unless you’re standing over some kind of a sinkhole. I’m here to tell you about a public safety menace currently making the rounds – namely the cavalier public discussion about, and reviewing of, Sunday’s vivid basketball injury to Louisville’s Kevin Ware.

If you operate a TV station or cable channel that is constantly re-running this footage, shame on you! If you are someone who has been describing this injury in gruesome detail to people who didn’t see it, shush. And if you haven’t heard anything at all about it all, please, never mind.

In all my years as a professional alarmist I have worked hard to unsettle audiences everywhere by sharing explicit injuries using full-color photos, close-up videos and the most powerful tool of all, words. But I’ve never seen anything like this. Ware’s tibial twist threatens to make jumping the new smoking. And it has sent people into their respective camps.

I have learned that there are really only two different kinds of people – The Squeamish, and Everybody Else. One type is nearly incapacitated by the mere thought of a traumatic injury. The other type shrugs.

If you are a Squeamling, you know how little of someone else’s pain is required to send you into the full fetal position. If you are a Shrugger, really – you couldn’t care less. But I still want you to stop jumping, so I’ve made up a little poem to help you remember.

Be careful when leaping
Stay low when you soar
Go up just enough,
not a quarter inch more.

Between you and the ground
do not put too much room.
your leg bones are not
as tough as you assume.

So be frugal when launching
yourself into the air.
Because when you return,
you don’t want to be Ware.

Yours in compulsive, marginally irrational caution,
Bathtub Safety Officer Rafferty

Are you squeamish, or are you a shrugger?