The California Lotto has been re-regulated by the Omnibus Lottery Regulations Act presented by a 5-member commission appointed by Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger.

According to lottery spokeswoman Olga Gallardo, the previous set of regulations had become “a haphazard piecemeal of over 22 years of changes by various commission.”

The review was initially labeled a “a routine, regularly scheduled ‘housekeeping’ step” by the governor’s office, but became a sweeping clean-up that “created consistency among our regulations, allowing more comprehensible regulations for both lottery staff and the general public” wrote Gallardo.

The overhaul can be found at this URL location.

Scott Adams, creator of the popular Dilbert cartoon, revealed his devious mind (what else is new?) in a blog post about Powerball earlier this summer.

Adams suggests that the real reasons so many lottery winners say they’ll continue working go something like this:

“Holy s***. I don’t want to spend more time with my wife. What am I going to do? I know, I’ll say I’m going to keep working. That will make me look like a great guy. But I’ll hire a chauffeur to drive the truck for me. I’ll trick out the trailer part with a beer tap, big screen TV and a sofa. And I’ll only pretend to be transporting air conditioners. … YEE-HAAA!!!”

Could he be right? My initial thought is that he’s not, that regular-people-turned-celebrity-millionaires really mean it when they say they don’t want the money to change them.

Then I think back to the days I worked in an office and nearly every Dilbert cartoon reminded me of a coworker or actual event, and my confidence takes a slight dip.

Elwood Bartlett says he made a deal with his Wiccan gods to help him win the lottery. Putting all the random numbers in place was a one in 176 million shot, and he got it.

A beliefnet.com blogger wrote that Elwood’s winnings may justify paganism in the minds of some. “No matter what God or gods one worships,” he writes, “who wouldn’t bow down to Mr. Easy Money, Mammon, in the end?”

Well, um, I’d like to think most devout worshipers aren’t just in it for the money.

Not to be left out, devote Catholic Joe Hornick, Sr. claims divine intervention as a factor in his winning the lottery four times between 1988 and 2002. “I’ve got the Lord on my side,” he explains.

A major theme of the Book of Mormon: another testament of Jesus Christ is that “if you obey, you will prosper.” A rough translation may read: be good and cash out.

Whatever your take on this theme, ya gotta admit that all this talk of God wanting you to win mega millions and be “prosperous” (whatever meaning you attach to that) is a pleasant departure from Dark Age philosophy when the Western world believed that our eventual reward depended largely upon the intensity of our suffering now.