The Friday Random Ten+5 writes checks that neither its body nor any of its other possessions can cash.

As my unemployment enters its second month and the search for new full-time wages grows longer and more frustrating, I've started looking for outside-the-box ways to make some extra cash. Some, like manning EDSBS for a week, have been right in my wheelhouse and relatively simple to pull off; others, like Johnny Dillinger-style bank robbery, have been sexy and potentially lucrative but rather impractical, both from a logistical and from a legal standpoint. But then there's the lottery. Only requires a small investment, is perfectly legal, potentially has a huge, life's-troubles-vaporizing payoff -- other than the fact that any given participant has but an astronomically small chance of actually winning, it's a can't-miss proposition.

Last time I paid a visit home to Georgia, the Mega Millions jackpot was at $120 million, and since then it's rolled over to a cool $146 million. What would I do with money like that? Oh, I'd find some ways to blow it to pieces, make no mistake. Obviously my first order of business would be to take care of practical matters like paying off credit cards, making charitable donations, and investing to create a secure future for the children I will one day either father myself or purchase off the Chinese black market, but with nine figures at my disposal I'm sure I'd have a lot left over even after all that. So this week's +5 is The First Five Things I'd Buy If I Hit The Mega Millions Jackpot Tonight:



A beach house on Edisto Island, S.C.
We first went to Edisto back when I was like 12 years old because one of my dad's patients gave us a week at his (gorgeous, immaculate) beach house there as a thank-you for having treated him so well. I fell in love with the place almost the minute we set foot on the island. It's about halfway between Hilton Head and Charleston on the South Carolina coast, which means it's close enough to those places to go shopping or get a fancy dinner or something, but far enough away that things are fairly quiet and isolated most of the time (and it's nowhere near as loud or tacky as Myrtle Beach). Sort-of-funny story: The guy who owned the house was a South Carolina grad and had Gamecock memorabilia all over the place, but this was long before I had any sort of real immersion in SEC football, so I just snickered at all the books and signs and trinkets referring to the Cocks. Heh, I really haven't matured in the last two decades at all.



A Lego room
We've been over this, right? Yeah, we have: a room covered floor-to-ceiling with those green, nubby Lego baseplates and with a giant walk-in closet full of shelves and drawers to contain and organize different kinds of Lego pieces. I certainly don't pretend to be the first person to come up with this idea, but I'd like to think I could do it better than anyone who has come before me. And that would be a major step in forging my lifelong friendship with Knowshon Moreno.



An antique Citroën DS
Preferably a fuel-injected, flush-headlamped DS23 from 1973 or so. I have to think I'd be the only person in Birmingham with one of these. And just to be really pointlessly extravagant, I might also try to find an old, scrapped 2CV body shell that I could put in the game room of my man-cave and use as a driver's seat for playing Mario Kart Wii. With all this newfound time on my hands, I have been crushing it at Mario Kart these days.



Eighties-style tabletop-cabinet arcade game
Man cannot live on Wii alone, however. If I could, I'd try to find one of those arcade machines that has like 39 games in a single machine -- Pac-Man, Galaga, Spy Hunter, Xevious, Donkey Kong, Arkanoid, all the good ones. Why a tabletop-style setup rather than an upright cabinet? Because you can't set a drink on an upright.



A big enough donation to the University of Georgia athletics association that I can get season tickets for the rest of my life
I honestly can't even fathom how big a donation this would have to be, but I'd like to see if, oh, a check for $20 million or so would be enough to convince them to name it Doug Gillett Field at Sanford Stadium. And if it was, whether they would then paint this picture in little logos on the 20-yard lines.

Wish me luck, peasants! In the meantime, the Ten:

1. Big Audio Dynamite II, "Can't Wait" (live)
2. Marvin Gaye, "Right On"
3. Gorillaz, "Latin Simone"
4. Talking Heads, "Slippery People" (live)
5. Thievery Corporation, "The Foundation"
6. Isaac Hayes, "Theme from 'Shaft'"
7. Pet Shop Boys, "Up Against It"
8. House of Pain, "Jump Around"
9. Handsome Boy Modeling School, "The Projects"
10. Pet Shop Boys, "It's Alright" (extended disco mix)

Your turn: Throw your lottery-jackpot wish lists and/or Random Tens in the comments.