The annual Ann Arbor Jaycees Carnival is happening at the Pioneer High School parking lot until Sunday. The carnival has everything one could possibly want in a summer night of fun: rides that offer the prospect of puking, injury or death; and deep-fried foods that put you on the fast track to diabetes.

Sign me up.

I’ve been battling an intense over-competitiveness that makes me the go-to scorekeeper at “just for fun” games of family whiffle ball and a mild gambling addiction for basically my entire life. In other words, I’m the perfect mark for a carnival game operator. I have an overwhelming desire to win games that mean absolutely nothing and am willing to reach in my wallet to do so.

When I heard the sweet sounds of iron clanging at the corner of Stadium Boulevard and Main Street earlier this week, my eyes lit up like the seizure-inducing lights on the tilt-a-whirl.

The carnival games beckoned me.

Somewhere inside my over-competitive self is a rational voice telling me I shouldn’t take out a second mortgage in pursuit of oversized stuffed animals and that I’m no less of a man if I can’t knock a stack of beer bottles off of a table with a baseball.

Her name’s Katie. We’ve been married for two years.

So I gave myself a $5-per-game budget and set out to conquer the carnival games. The weather interrupted, so I wasn’t able to hit them all, but here’s a summary of the games available at the Ann Arbor Jaycees Carnival.

The carnival is open though Sunday, I’d highly recommend attending.

Beer Bust

Level of difficulty: Extremely high
Level of addiction: High
Chance of winning: Extremely low

“Beer Bust” or as I like to call it “throw a baseball, break-a-bottle, win a prize” has everything you expect from a carnival game: It’s highly addictive, extremely difficult and highly addictive.

The concept is simple enough: five dollars gets you six baseballs that you throw in an attempt to break empty beer bottles. The bottlenecks are threaded through wooden shelves in order to keep them still. Break two bottles and you win a fairly large stuffed animal. Break three, and you get something that would make Clifford the Big Red Dog blush.

Some might consider hurling baseballs at empty beer bottles juvenile, but if I stumbled upon a bag of baseballs and a row of empty beer bottles happened to be nearby, I might not be seen or heard from for days.

Perfect place to start.

The game operator at Beer Bust went by the name Country and said one in three participants wins. Thursday had been slow because of the weather, so he hadn't seen any winners.

My time to shine.

On my first throw I hit a bottle square, but there was no indication that my throw would ever break it. However, the bottle nearly fell from the rack, so I shifted my strategy to try to knock a bottle out of the rack and have it break on the ground rather than from my throw itself.

This proved more difficult than expected.

“That wood ain't gonna break,” Country sarcastically quipped as my pitches flew off target.

As my arm grew tired and the bottles sat unblemished, Country - no doubt sensing how little of a threat I posed - offered me a free game. My pitch count mounted and velocity plummeted, but I finally knocked a bottle out of the rack, shattering it on the pavement below.

As the shattering sounds of victory reverberated through the tent, I began to reach for my wallet for another go when Country deadpanned, “Bottles gotta break in the rack to count.”

Defeated. I moved on.

Balloon darts

Level of difficulty: Low
Level of addiction: Low
Chance of winning: High

Five dollars gets you three darts in "Balloon Darts" and there’s truly nothing difficult about it. Pop three balloons with the darts, win a huge prize; pop two balloons, win a small prize.

Pop one or less? Get in your car and go home.

I popped a balloon on my first throw with relative ease, as I gathered any functional human being should be able to. This provided a jolt of confidence after the Beer Bust disaster.

My next two throws missed, putting me at an exclusive level of loser reserved for people who can’t pop a balloon with a dart from four feet away and Cubs fans.

Luckily Brian, the fast talking carnival veteran of 16 years explained to me that I qualified for the "adults only" bonus shot because I was over 18, and I made good of my second life.

After hitting the adults only bonus shot I qualified for the $5 trade-up shot, of course. If I popped a balloon with the trade-up shot and then gave Brian $5, I could have one of the small stuffed animals.

What a deal!

I missed the trade-up shot, but luckily Brian threw in another one. For free.

“No charge,” Brian said and I threw what was now my sixth dart in pathetic pursuit of a stuffed animal and finally popped another balloon. “There ya go, now take out five dollars.”

I got three extra throws, won a stuffed Monsters Inc. doll and was only $5 over budget.

Success.

Shoot Out the Star

Level of difficulty: High
Level of addiction: Extremely high
Chance of winning: Low

Perhaps it was an ominous sign when Michelle—the young, blonde carnival worker at “Shoot out the Star”—handed me a BB gun and the power went out.

Standing in the dark with a loaded weapon, something was telling me to walk away.

But no amount of torrential weather could make me resist firing 100 shots out of a machine-gun style BB gun at a paper target. Destroy the red star on the target, win an oversized stuff animal.

My $5 got me one clip, but one round simply isn’t enough. I thought I had won, but when Michelle reeled the target in for me to see, there were specs of red staring back and mocking me, so I handed her another $5.

“I thought you were doing just $5,” my wife kindly reminded me.

But I had a strategy; I couldn’t quit now! Another 100 shots later and again tiny specs of red remained on what I thought was an annihilated target.

I wanted to reach for another $5, but I somehow managed to resist. Three games in and I was $10 over budget with nothing but a pity stuffed animal to show for it.

Balloon Dart Roulette

Level of difficulty: Low
Level of addiction: High
Chances of winning: High

I had proven poor at darts earlier, which made the opportunity to redeem myself at “Balloon Dart Roulette” particularly enticing. Behind every balloon sat a chip affiliated with a different prize. I assumed the biggest prizes would be hidden behind the balloons that were toughest to hit.

But wait, maybe the workers knew I’d be thinking this, so they hid the chips for the biggest prizes behind the balloons easiest to hit?

My strategic planning session wasn’t the only thing causing me to go cross-eyed as the bright lights surrounding the game flashed like strobe lights at a dubstep concert.

“I’m used to it,” said Michael—the carnival worker in charge of the game—of the lights. “I’ve been doing it for 13 years,”

I hit two of the three shots and behind each one was a token for a “medium" sized prize. I chose an oversized smiley face with arms, legs, a graduation cap and a shirt that said “Rad Grad,” which I’m sure my cousin who recently graduated from high school will appreciate as a graduation gift.

Who needs money for books and beer when you could have a stuffed animal that says, “I still think you’re eight years old.”

Mini-basket Free Throws

Level of difficulty: Debatable
Level of addiction: High
Chance of winning: Debatable

Mini-ball. Mini-basket. Mini-prizes.

Simple enough, right? Wrong.

As not much of a basketball player in the first place, it’s hard for me to say how much my 0-for-4 performance had to do with my lack of skills and how difficult the game actually was.

In defense of me as a shooter, the balls are rubber and inflated to the point where it feels like they might actually explode at impact. Working against me was the fact that my fourth shot completely missed the backboard and rim altogether.

Five dollars gets you three shots and you need to make at least two to win. Speaking from personal experience, if you miss the first three, the carnival worker will throw you a pity ball.

“You gotta make at least one,” Michael said, handing me a bonus fourth ball, which I promptly air-balled.

No, apparently you don’t.

More information available at the Jaycees website. Pete Cunningham covers sports (and occasionally carnival games) for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at petercunningham@annarbor.com. Follow him on Twitter @petcunningham.