Here Are Your Winning Powerball Numbers

After just about the longest, most anxiety-inducing wait that Americans have ever collectively experienced, the numbers are in. The winning combo for the $1.5 billion Powerball jackpot was announced Wednesday at 10:59 p.m. ET on local news stations across the country. Now that the ridiculous wait is finally over, there's not much else you could be wondering other than what the winning Powerball numbers are.

Well, here you go: The winning numbers are 8, 27, 34, 4, 19, and the Powerball is 10. And what a crazy set of numbers that is.

If you were one of the many, many, many folks who purchased a ticket (or maybe a few dozen), this is where you check if the numbers I just mentioned are the same as the ones on your little piece of paper. Do keep in mind that the order in which the five white balls are drawn is irrelevant, so as long as the first five numbers you picked match up in any order, you're all good. You still need to have a match for the red Powerball number, though.

Now, if you're done your checking and cross-checking and you're looking at samesies, you should kiss your old life goodbye and call up the best attorney/CPA duo you can find immediately. Otherwise, you just lost a couple of bucks, and you're exactly where you were before the numbers were announced. Sorry, buddy. It's always better to just rip off the Band-Aid, isn't it?

As a non-believer of buying lotto tickets, I can't say that I can share in the joy or pain. What I can say for certain is that for the vast percentage — we're talking 99.99999, plus an unreasonable number of additional 9s — of people who bought a lotto ticket, it's more pain going around than the former. Ah, to see the dreams of a nation get dashed in the pulling of just six balls from two big drums.

Personally, what I find disappointing is that the numbers didn't match up with Hurley's winning combo from ABC's TV series Lost (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42). Then, everyone in America would forget about the fact that basically everyone lost, and instead focus on waiting for a winner, if there is one, to experience the same series of seriously unfortunate events that Hurley went through on the show. Of course, then there would be someone out there living a real life as miserable as Hurley's fictional one.

Maybe it's better this way.