Tickets to the $579.9 million jackpot were reportedly sold in Arizona and Kansas City.  This is the second largest jackpot in U.S. history.  Yesterday tickets were selling like hotcakes — printing out at a rate of 130,000 a minute nationwide. Actually hotcakes have never sold that fast.

Do you need to be told that you’d have had better luck putting two dollars in the toilet and suddenly striking oil when you flush it?

Amazingly it’s not just chronically stupid and/or desperate people who buy tickets when jackpots heat up.  We have it on good authority that many esteemed editors in the newsroom at the Wall Street Journal had a Powerball office pool going.  Wish they had won.  Love to see the articles about scratch-off tickets as a sound way to plan for your retirement.

But seriously, if the odds are worse than terrible and that money could be spent on something better than a slip of paper — like, you know, an actual delicious hotcake — why in tarnation do we do it?

Funny you should ask because we have a hilarious and informative original photo gallery to tell you exactly why:

PHOTOS: Why It’s Dumb to Play the Lottery But We Do it Anyway

[truTV]