Vegas
Just got back from Vegas this past weekend, and without breaking the code (what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas) -- it always leaves me a little off-kilter for the next few days. What a strange and artificial place, Vegas is. Its location is a metaphor for its existence. It was created in a desert, where there are no natural resources, no other local cities, no roads through the area, and really no reason at all to be there, other than the fact that things are legal there where they are not legal in most of the rest of the country. Now, there are lakes and pools and water fountains and 24/7 establishments, entertainment and sin of any flavor -- just because they can. If you were to take away the sin, the city would die. It's a shiny apple with a rotten core -- all Illusion and no substance. And yet, there are people who live there, make their lives there, raise their families there. There are real people who live in this unreal place.
Money makes the world go round, and Vegas is spinning on its axis at a thousand miles an hour. It's always fun to visit, but I really can't take mor than a few days there before I'm just ready to go home to my safe life.
I think it's funny how people say "what happens in vegas stays in vegas". I mean what is it that they don't want to say? They were drunk/high most of the time? Had many a lap dance? Gambled more than they told their wives? Because when I hear it my imagination leads me to believe that you lost your child's college fund at the craps table, then we're robbed by the hooker you were fucking who you found out was actually a transsexual a little too late in the exchange and murdered him. And I doubt that's what you mean when you say "what happens in vegas, stays in vegas."
Well, the 'What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas' is a bit of a smokescreen, I think, obscuring the actions one takes so that they may be big or small, and no one is the wiser or can discern if they are frivolous or grievous. It's like encrypting your email -- if you only encrypt your email when you have something clandestine to say, people will know you're up to something if they see that PGP signature. However, if you encrypt EVERYTHING you say, then no one really knows if you're obfuscating something important, or just your grocery list, therefore -- you obscure your intent.
ever read Last Call by Tim Powers?? a very intersting/excellent take on how vegas got to be, and the story behind the town. If not, stop at Borders (or a more suitably crunchy Marin alternative) and buy it on the way home. you don't have time to wait for those Amazon slackers, you NEED to read this book. tonight.