Hemorrhoids More Likely Than a Nintendo Wii?

For those of you that might not be paying attention, Amazon.com periodically runs special promotions wherein their customers can vote on deals. It usually involves choosing an item (out of three) to be sold at a ridiculously low price (in limited quantities, of course). This week, however, they changed things up a bit…

They turned their Customer Vote into a lottery of sorts for the right to buy one of the hot new video game consoles — Sony PlayStation 3 (20GB), Nintendo Wii or Sony PlayStation 3 (60GB).

In order to be eligible, your account had to have been created prior to December 11th, and you had to have a valid credit card on file (this was to try and weed out fraudulent signups). Anyway, now that the signup period is over, they have posted the final odds along with odds of some other interesting occurrences.

The odds for the Wii stand at 28 to 1. For the sake of comparison, the odds are slightly better that you’ll develop hemorrhoids at some point in your life (25 to 1). That being said, if you signed up it’s more like that you’ll be given the opportunity to buy a Wii than it is that you’ll:

- Hunt small game next year (54 to 1)
- Seek hypnotic therapy (79 to 1)
- Get audited by the IRS (175 to 1)
- Get botulism next year (2,300 to 1)
- Die as a result of a major asteroid hitting Earth (20,000 to 1; not sure about minor asteroids)
- Ever be a professional athlete (22,000 to 1)
- Get hit by lightning (576,000 to 1)

Unfortunately, the sign-up period is over (it closed last night at midnight) but for those who managed to signup you can swing by on Tuesday morning to see if you won.

Click here for a full list of the odds.