Doom, despair, and agony on me!
Deep dark depression, excessive misery!
If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.
Doom, despair, and agony on me!
— Recurring skit from the TV show Hee Haw

This sounds like a great idea. But I have to wonder about it.

I know a woman, a friend of ours, with totally abysmal luck. She suffers minor — and very odd — disasters on a regular basis. And it’s not from anything she does — they’re just random events that could happen to anyone, but that happen to her with far more regularity than mere chance would allow for. On a related note, she loves to complain about her life, and these little visits from the misery fairy seem to give her plenty of fodder. It’s an open question whether the complaints come from the bad luck, or the bad luck comes from the complaints.

On the other hand, I know one person who could fall into a sewer truck and discover a gold nugget, and I can’t attribute that to any particular perspective on his part.

I also know people who technology hates — they get near a watch and it starts gaining time, and woe betide them if they try to use a computer. And others (like myself) who technology adores, and whose mere presence often fixes wonky machines.

It’s enough to make you seriously consider that there might be an element of truth to The Matrix, that the entire universe is nothing but a simulation that we’re all in. Which gives rise to some interesting philosophy, and might explain quite a bit, when you think about it.