Vatican Media via huffington Would you like to see your money multiply tenfold, with little to no effort on your part? Do you have an innate and unfailing ability to forecast future events? Do you believe that debt can only truly become crippling once it involves ruthless thugs and one or more of your kneecaps? If any of these things describe you, then you might be a degenerate; the kind of person who sees money-making opportunities where others see tragic events and mundane updates. Welcome home.
This is the Degenerate’s Corner. Once a week we come together to examine the latest in pop culture, all through the obscure, legal-ish lens that is an online novelty bet. Maybe you’re looking to see the betting odds of Ralph Breaks the Internet winning Best Picture, or you might just be curious about the likelihood of a ‘polar vortex’ actually being code for a climatological wormhole. Either way, you’re in the right place.
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE PROCEEDING TO PLACE A BET OR ALERT THE AUTHORITIES: While the odds are real, our endorsement isn’t. We don’t claim any responsibility for losses or winnings resulting from a bet placed. Read this for your enjoyment, and think long and hard before using these odds to turn your student loans into a down payment.
Bono being the next pope – +50000 (My Bookie)
As a person who peddles something approximating journalism, I have to let you know from the outset that this bet has no chance of ever working out. In fact, even Richard Dawkins, world-famous atheist and wearer of this shirt, has better odds of being pope than Bono (+37000).
“Why write about it then?!” I hear you howling aloud on your train car. “Why stare into the abyss when there isn’t even enough abyss to look back at you?” Because 1) Bono is the underdog and underdogs always have upside, and 2) while the world of novelty betting has little to no room for common sense, long-term planning, or personal morals, there’s a corner office reserved for all things frivolous.
From a PR standpoint — the only standpoint we seem to take in the Degenerate’s Corner (see P. Diddy being the new James Bond, Oprah hosting Jeopardy, and Cardi B winning a Grammy) — Bono and the Catholic Church are a match made in purgatory. Both desperately need to reinvent themselves; recent press paints the Church as a cult of robed sex-offenders, and Bono needs to become something other than a nauseating rockstar.
The two could help rebrand each other, their coming-together analogous to a modern-day The Prince and the Pauper, except in this case the prince is a decadent, 1000-year old institution that shields pedophiles, and the pink-visor-wearing pauper is Bono.
It should also be pointed out that it’s Bono becoming pope right now that doesn’t make sense, a fact that changes once you view the bet through a longer lens. The papacy isn’t the kind of job that you quit, and unless you ride out of town just as a wave of exposés begins to manifest itself on the horizon — you know, pull a Benedict XVI — the job is supposed to kill you. Seeing as Pope Francis is rumoured to have some of that stealthy old man strength, the ‘die-where-you-stand’ part of the job might not happen for him for a little while. That gives Bono just enough time to dust off his Catechism, practice reading subpoenas written in Latin, and make us all forget about that time he infiltrated our phones all in the name of poor sales projections.
