What Happens in Vegas Comes Home

Ever been to Las Vegas? I got married there, but I only visit often enough to be really aware of the changes. The new casinos on The Strip in particular. In case you don't know, 'The Strip' refers to Las Vegas Boulevard, a six to ten lane wide surface street that is lined with casinos and shops on both sides, as opposed to 'Downtown' Las Vegas where many of the older casinos are found.

The Strip has been the site of much of the new construction during the last 25 years because there is plenty of room to build these huge casino complexes and, as everyone knows, The Strip is where all the action is.

What strikes me about 'Glitter Gulch' is how much money has been spent, presumably to draw me here and give me an opportunity 'win' lots of money. As I walk along the strip at night, the sights which greet me almost defy description. I don't know how many millions of light bulbs, or how many miles of neon tubes are stretched out in this magnificent and gaudy display, but the numbers, if actually known, must be staggering.

The only thing as amazing as the casino light displays are the people walking the strip. I have never seen a more diverse cacophony of human condition anywhere. High society meets seamy depravity seamlessly on the streets of Las Vegas. Quarter-million dollar Lamborghini's are parked near casino entrances while 75 feet away, dark skinned Latinos are gathered in clusters on the sidewalk, clucking and snapping and trying to hand passers-by playing card sized advertisements for prostitutes. Are you a dad walking with your family? They will try to put a card in your hand. At least they aren't giving them to the kids......yet. But then, of course, downstream from the hawkers, the sidewalk is littered with these discarded mini-billboards. full color photo included. It's sad.

Perhaps much of this is due to the rise of American Indian Gaming across America. It wasn't really that long ago that Nevada was the only game in town in this country. If you wanted legal gambling you came here. Then the casinos in Atlantic City arose to capture the dollars that were going off-shore from the East Coast, and the give the folks that can't afford to travel West the same gaming opportunities as the people on the Left Coast. Now that Indian Gaming has pretty much spread throughout the country, Las Vegas has been left with no choice but to go way over the top to attract the bucks. It is more 'theme park' than anything else.

In the early days, the casinos worked hard to encourage visitors. Rooms were very reasonably priced, food was good, plentiful and cheap. Shows in the evening were not as extravagant, but not nearly so expensive, either. Ahhhh, for the good old days!

Now Vegas is an exercise in non-reality. Overkill for the senses to the nth degree and all of it thin shelled illusion, very convincing, to be sure, but illusion none the less. From the false-fronted New York, New York to the 'roller coaster in space' Stratosphere, Las Vegas is a huge stage, and from the moment you arrive until the second you leave, you are an actor in a 24/7/365 play whose only plot is making your purse as much lighter as possible.

There are two distinct worlds here. The front, or outside; the constant carnival the marks see, and backstage; the pumps and motors of the the water extravaganzas, the casino security, a thousand restaurant kitchens and laundries, the people and facilities to accommodate untold numbers of conventions and conventioneers.

Even Vegas weddings are part of the machine. I mentioned that I married in Las Vegas (it is still a go, BTW); my blushing bride and I were whisked by limo from our hotel to City Hall for our Wedding License, where the female half of the couple in line behind us was clad in a gorgeous blue bikini with matching wedding veil, then off to the famous 'Chapel of the Bells' where, following the service, the fella who married us reached down below the podium behind which he stood and came up with an audio cassette tape which he handed to my new wife saying, "Tomorrow morning, if he says he didn't, you now have proof that he did." Yep, pure essence of Las Vegas.

Is it fun? Hell, yes! Suspend your disbelief for a day or a weekend. Treat it like the amusement park that it is. There really is some amazing stuff to be found. Will you go home with more money than you brought? Possibly, but not very damn likely. That isn't in the script, you see. What really 'Stays in Vegas' is your money.

How Cool is This?

Just in case you are not one of those who keep up with such, Google Earth has been improving their free product, and there are some very nice features available. You do have to execute a new download, but it doesn't take too long. They have added significant underwater mapping, which not only looks awesome when hovering over the ocean, but gives you something to look at when you duck below the surface. They also snuck in star maps with embedded imagery of galaxies, nebulae and such from the Hubble telescope. Pretty cool. The Google Maps street view images can be selected from within Google Earth as well. Now, if we can get them to update the surface photos again..........

While you are there, check out the ship-breaking shores of Alang, India for a thought provoking view of how some Third World inhabitants are getting by.

Several evenings ago, Papa came by for dinner, still reasonably spry at 82. I hooked up the lap-top to the big screen, and we spent an hour or so taking the Grand Tour courtesy of Google Earth. Papa liked it, and although he owns a PC, he is not its master. Got me to thinking about the process by which we keep up with our technology. 'You snooze , you lose' has never been truer. The eight year old is growing up with all this, and if we manage not to burn down or drown the planet, she will see stuff the like of which I have not dreamed. Exciting/scary.

Another Fat Tuesday Down the Tubes

Lent has begun. I've never been one to give up something for Lent. It just never meant anything significant to me to do so. I had a relative by marriage twice removed who was raised in the Islamic way. When Ramadan came each year, she would declare that she was observing this by fasting from sunrise to sunset. OK.........Thass cool. Then she would switch from being a diurnal creature to a nocturnal one, so she could eat as much as she liked during the night, and sleep all day to avoid being aware of any hunger issues from her religious fasting. Huh.........? Observing the letter of the law while circumventing the spirit completely! Maybe she thought Allah wouldn't find out?

Anyway, I have given up plenty of late. I quit drinking alcohol. Turns out I was allergic to the darn stuff. Every time I drank, I broke out in handcuffs. I'm not agin it, it just doesn't work for me. Then I quit smoking after way too many years. I thought for the longest time that I would be immune to effects, but I was wrong, and it came down to choosing between smoking and breathing. That was a pretty easy choice, and when ever I have the urge to light up, I take a deep breath to remind myself how sweet being a non-smoker really is.

I was researching Ash Wednesday and Fat(Shrove) Tuesday this morning. Turns out that Fat Tuesday is called so because in the olden days, people would cook stuff to use up stores of items that wouldn't be used during Lent because during Lent you were not supposed to eat things that actually tasted good. Fat was one of those ingredients that added flavor and would not keep well during the Lenten season. Ergo: Fat Tuesday! Voila!

So what am I to give up for Lent? If I thought I was going to have any sex in the next 40 days, I could give that up, but honestly, I would be putting myself in the same boat as my Muslim ex-relative, and that is way too close to suit; there wouldn't be enough room in there for the both of us. Actually, since I quit smoking, I have put on a pound or two....maybe not eating stuff that tastes good isn't all that bad an idea.......

Why?

Why is it that I can track and intercept a ping-pong ball coming at me a bazillion miles per hour, not only hit it back, but return it with additional speed and monster spin to a selected spot about the size of a postage stamp on my opponents' side of the table, but take another ball about the same size, balance it dead still on a wooden tee, then give me all day long to hit it, and all I can do is embarrass myself?

I've heard they only call it golf because all the other 4-letter words were already taken.

Das Geschenk

Earlier I spoke of Gifts, but I didn't really mention mine, so here goes.

Like a composer who can hear music in his or her head just by listening, and let it flow out their fingers on to paper to form a score, or a sculptor who can look at a slab of granite and 'see' the statue inside waiting to be released from its stony prison, I 'see' the way things work together, the relationships between devices mechanical and how they interact with each other, and often, the reasons why they are not working as they should.

It is not easy to describe, but it goes something like this: I let myself unfocus from the real world around me, and look with my minds eye at the problem I am trying to solve. I imagine that I must look like a kid daydreaming in school with that thousand-mile stare that sees nothing on this world.

I still do see, of course, and I'll often walk about as I imaginate; I know I must see, because I don't run in to stuff, but I don't really pay much attention to the outside world. It is odd to be looking at the real world, but actually see the bits I am working on displayed sort of transparently, floating in my field of vision.

While doing this, I feel like I am in a trance. I am alert, but my awareness of activities outside of myself is diminished. I can see how things will need to be shaped to accomplish a task, how they will need to move to achieve a goal. This is very much a 'daydream' state for me. Often it helps to move my hands as though they were the parts I am trying to noodle out. The kinesthetic motion of my body is translated into visualized motion in my head.

If I take one of those stupid skills tests, the areas I'll do well in are the ones where you are asked to look at several flat patterns and determine which one will create a given shape, or the questions that involve which of these patterns is most like that one or what is next in a given series. I don't believe I am exceptionally smart, but maybe somewhat above average.

I work on two separate levels. The first is the concept level. This is where most of the 'Outside the Box" thinking happens for me. I am often looking for new ways to accomplish an ordinary task. I usually start from an ideal result and try to reverse-engineer a solution, keeping in mind design points or objectives which I have defined at the start of a project. These can be anything from developing a less expensive process, making a task less labor intensive, incorporating new materials, setting limits or boundaries, increasing efficiency, or creating a new product, to solving a recurring maintenance issue or redesigning to accommodate the unavailability of original parts (this is becoming an increasingly inconvenient situation). Always, simplicity is a given. It has been my experience that needless complexity has resulted more failed design than any other single cause. For me, simplicity is beauty.

Once I have a concept that pleases me, the nuts and bolts have to be made to work. Sometimes reality interferes with concept, but the fun part has to do with available technology. Because there are so many advances in materials, power and control happening every day, the designs have to re-evaluated with respect to new information and new technology. Making the system work is one thing, making it easy to build is quite another. I try to always keep in mind the strengths and weaknesses of the people who will execute the design, and often seek their input at this stage. Talking with the people who have to do the work - early and often - can save many headaches and a bunch of time. I must trust others in their areas of expertise to be effective in my role. I have a tendency to be a bit anal at times, and this really comes in handy when doing the detail work. I like to get the screwing up and fixing out of the way before the building starts.

Because my talent is focused pretty much in the mechanical arena, there are specific disciplines that are crucial to my success. The first is basic physics. The concepts of mass, inertia, speed, acceleration, torque, friction, gravity, momentum and energy form my building blocks; mathematics provides the tools I need to plan and analyze, to choose which of so many options will result in the best compromise for the situation. Cross training in chemistry, hydraulics, pneumatics, electricity, electronics and computers has also been essential to me.

I am fortunate to be able to work in a situation that takes advantage of my Gift. I enjoy going to work every day, and they pay me to do what I would gladly do for free. Can you believe it? They even provide me tools which are beyond my means, and which make me better and faster!

My most abiding personal trait is curiosity. Always has been. I have to know the 'why' and 'how' of stuff. I can watch people work, plants grow, animals forage, even paint dry for hours with an eye to extracting every bit of information there is to be gained from the processes I observe.

My biggest resentment is that I did not have a mentor in my youth who could say to me "Look, this is your Gift, this is what you love and this is what you are good at. Here are some ways you can use this Gift. Go. Take advantage of what you have been given." But there was no single person who had an opportunity to observe me and give me direction. The end result for me was some needlessly wasted years.

Here is a bit of advice. If you are still wondering what you are to do with your life, take a long look at the things you enjoyed doing as a child, especially the things you pretended to be then. You know, the things that caught your fancy before others began stepping on your dreams. This is where you will find your purpose and your fulfillment.

When I look back (Yeah I know, that's a big waste of time), I can see so many instances where I used my Gift as a youth, solving problems that baffled the adults around me; it seems like it should have been obvious to me, but seeing the obvious is not necessarily one of my Gifts.

So what do I like to do when I'm not working? I love music, both playing and listening; painting with watercolors; photography, especially fine art images with an emphasis on the unusual or unexpected perspective; flying; sailing; driving fast cars fast; meeting new people; but perhaps above all, learning. as I said before, I have to learn.

I can guarantee you that when I die, if you listen carefully, at the end you'll hear me say something along the lines of "Now, isn't this interesting!"

Yeah, Right. Like That's Gonna Happen.

When do you abandon the past? Seriously.

Advances in technology are making so many skills obsolete, when do we embrace the new and cast out the old?

Take photography, for instance. Digital camera technology is advancing at a most rapid rate. Digital image processing, even faster. So, what of film processing skills? I know for a fact that as beautiful as my digital pictures are, they pale in comparison to a well crafted film based image. And yet, the market will dictate that film photography will cease to exist for most of us entirely, or at least become so prohibitively expensive that few will maintain the necessary skills.
This is the way of things, though.
As an example, how many people know how to create a daguerreotype (or even know what the hell it is!)? Ansel Adams, one of the best film guys ever, acknowledged that digital photography was the 'wave of the future' years before his death in 1984. Still, as I look at the funny flat black areas on my digital prints or the solid whites of the clouds, I recall that yes, there was detail I could see in real life that exists not in the digital world.

Digital music has replaced analog recording pretty much completely. I was in a recording studio a couple of years ago. In the technicians' booth there was a huge mixing board, easily six feet wide and three feet deep, covered with switches, dials and sliders. Sitting on top of the mixing board, right in the middle, was a laptop. The laptop made everything else in the room obsolete. No audio tape on slow turning reels. The mixing board would have been gone, as well, but it cost too much to remove it. And yet some folks claim they can tell the difference between digital and analog sound. No, not by the lack of hiss, clicks and pops, but in sound quality; a richness born of overtones and harmonics and the sympathetic responses of our surroundings to frequencies that we cannot hear directly, but which are captured in analog recordings and rejected as noise in the digital world. And what about the guy I saw on the tube who could identify music by looking at the light reflecting from the grooves of a vinyl record? (For those of you under 25, a vinyl record is like a big, very flat, black pancake, which when played on a 'record player' would yield a sort of 'music') How is that guy gonna earn a living now?
Of course, complete digital files are better than the MP3 files of which we are so fond.
Still, I am willing to endure the clipping inherent in these to have thousands of my own tunes available and oh so convenient on that long airline flight, or to cover the yapping of my neighbors wiener dogs while I work in the yard.
How many kids will never pick up a real guitar because they can play Guitar Hero right now?

If you were born within the last twenty years, you may never know what you missed, and you just might not care.

I saw a movie, THX 1138, released in 1971. It depicted a future in which people lived in relative isolation, communicated (and 'hooked up') via video screens while eating prepackaged meals. They were monitored 24/7, and reality was tailored for them to suit the purposes of the controlling 'powers that were'. I remember thinking 'Yeah, right. Like that's gonna happen'

Hang on!

Here's Your New Car

The Academy Awards were presented last night. I didn't watch....again. I feel that actors are incredibly overpaid, and I have no desire to watch yet another episode of these people patting themselves on the back. I think the fact of the matter is that they do not often have the opportunity to go home after an honest days' work and take pride in a job well done. Therefore they have to constantly seek the approval of their peers.

Aannndddd, while we are on the subject, what on Earth qualifies any of these folk to attempt to impose their opinions on me? I certainly understand that they make so much money and work so little that they are bored out of their gourds, and I do believe that some of them want to make a difference in the world, but most of them absolutely go about it the wrong way.

Take Oprah, please! (To paraphrase Henny Youngman) Giving away all those cars?!? I will only believe that act truly benefited anybody except Oprah herself when she visits the people she 'helped' and learns first hand how much her generosity really changed their lives in a positive, lasting and meaningful way.

I do not believe you can improve any ones' life by giving them money (or a house, for that matter). Call me old fashioned, but people don't appreciate things they haven't worked for. The recipients only end up resenting the gift and the giver.

The type of help I respect is performance based. George Weiss began a program in 1991 which offered college tuition to high risk students who were willing to do the work necessary to graduate high school and gain entrance to college, with excellent results. Although not all the kids ultimately went to college, a much larger percentage graduated high school than would have been expected. The message was clearly " I'll believe in you if you will believe in yourself."

Tell me that is not a bazillion times more empowering than saying "Here's a car...good luck!"

Not a 'Rant'......Honest

No one ever accused me of linear thinking. That isn't either good or bad, it just is. Non-linear thinking does take one on some interesting mind trips: the question is, where is the line between cutting edge and over the edge?

Anyway, I was thinking about people whose life paths are highly non-traditional. By that I guess I mean that they are more decorative than useful.

That led me to thoughts of how our communities are organized today versus how they might have been organized 10,000 (arbitrary, to be sure) years ago. Back when we were hunter-gatherers, we lived in much smaller groups. Everyone had a function and contributed to the survival and well-being of the band.

If you were a member of such, you might have been a hunter, or someone who prepared the catch, either for immediate consumption or for storage and use later, perhaps in winter. Maybe you were a toolmaker, a farmer, a medicine person or a historian. There weren't books then; all records and collected knowledge of the band were passed from generation to generation by word of mouth from story tellers who were repositories of fact and legend. People would sit around the fire and learn by listening to his story.

Bottom line, though, is that contributions were required from every member of the tribe. There simply were not the resources to support a large number of 'decorative' individuals.

If the tribe needed to move frequently to follow the game or harvest the grain, a smaller community unit could handle this easier than a larger one. The smaller unit was also simpler in terms of organisation and control. The span of command was doable.

If a group wanted to live permanently in a single location, the questions of food supply, water availability and sanitation had to be addressed. Conservation of resources was a necessity even then. If the local area was 'hunted out' the group could starve; mismanage sanitation and disease could easily decimate the village.

Still, solve these and other issues, and you could establish your town, and economies of scale might allow some more esoteric occupations to flourish. Perhaps your community could support a budding scientist who might make discoveries which could improve the common good or a group of full time entertainers. These entertainers may have previously travelled about, visiting tribe after tribe, providing much needed R and R without being a burden to any one group for long.

Anyway, you get the picture.

Today we have the option of choosing our occupations and our lifestyles with an unheard of degree of freedom. Some of the lifestyle choices we make close the door, either temporarily or permanently on occupations available to us. Our high degree of specialization and integration are important factors which allow this. This all works pretty good in a system that is functioning in good order, much as ours has for the last hundred years or so, but we are coming up on more difficult times. Can you afford to be 'decorative' today?

To Be or Not To Be.......Me

Yesterday I was skipping/skimming through YouTube. It's funny, but it really doesn't matter where you start, it doesn't take long before you stumble into some pretty bizarre content. I am constantly amazed by the breadth and depth (or lack of same) to be discovered here. Is the content truly endless? (I know some is truly mindless!) How much server space is used by all this? But I digress.....

I ran across a bunch of Vlogs posted by a T-girl, handle of karmatic1110. After ponging through several of the posts, I came to several conclusions. The main one being that I am so glad that I am not conflicted about my gender. Another is that it is incredible to contemplate the lengths to which some people will go for happiness peace of mind. Seems like all we really want is to be happy, but the harder we chase it, the more difficult holding on to it becomes. Kinda like holding butter in your hand....if you try to squeeze it, it goes away. What begs the question is this: seems like there are a lot more guys who wish they were girls than vice-versa. Is being a girl more rewarding? Or is the surgery just a lot easier? Perhaps men are more subject to the gender blender than women? I know there have been many women who lived life as men in the past, but I am not really sure if that is related more to sexual preference or economic consideration. The pirate Mary(Mark) Read comes to mind. Thank you, karmatic1110, for the insight into your world. I do wish you all the best.

Women really have a raw deal today. Everywhere you turn the message is the same. Stay young. Be a hottie. Like there is much of a choice. Men get distinguished, women get old. How many dollars are spent every day by women trying to slow or turn back the clock? Is this propagated by men or women? Everyone has heard of the 'trophy wife', but seldom is there talk of 'trophy husbands'. The women-folk have the good sense to rent rather than buy. Keep the man who is already 'broken to the bit' and won't be any trouble, and invest in a good massage once in a while. The guys, of course, have this need to show off, a universal pissing contest with no winners. Someone once said "Youth....... is wasted on the young."

Another thing....ever notice that the human animal is the only one that does not follow Mother Nature's path. Think about it. In every species except us, the male is the colorful one, the one with the magnificent mane or the glorious feathers, the huge horns or colorful markings. We are the only species where the female is the sparkly one. Twisted and un-natural if you ask me.

I Wish I May, I Wish I Might

Didja ever want someone else's Gift? (Yeah, Gift with a capitol 'G'. It's kinda like God and totally appropriate) I don't think I mean coveting your brother's bicycle at Christmas or even you neighbor's wife, but instead, wishing you could do something really well that you know you can't.

Here are examples:

I wish I could write a book, but I don't believe I can. There are so many great authors is the world; some are alive right now. Men and women whose imaginations bend to complete tales; who can envision dialogue and witty repartee, write it all down and entertain the heck out of me. It is a Gift. I get started with what I think is a great idea, and within 500 words or so, I have run out of ideas, motivation and patience pretty much simultaneously.

I would love to be able to draw or paint. I know there are those who can see images in their mind's eye, and faithfully re-create those images on paper or film or electronically and capture the in-head image for me to enjoy. A Gift. I am lucky to pick a trim color that goes with the wall.

Or the person who can hear the music between their ears, write out the notes, and then have someone else play the song for the first time, and it comes out just as they 'heard' it. Gift. Just think.....Handel wrote the Messiah in it's entirety in just 24 days. According to legend this occurred after accepted Christianity as his faith. Gift or Inspiration?

What about the individual who can see a printed note on a page and then sing that exact pitch? I have heard that the human ear can distinguish frequency differences as small as 1 cycle per second. Sing an A#. It's a Gift.

The engineer who can design a bridge or a dam. Gift.

The singer who can make me shiver, the driver who can pilot a race car at 200 mph inches away from the track wall and never flinch, the teacher who can explain so that even I can understand. All Gifts.

I believe we are all Gifted, and I believe some of us make much better use of our Gifts than others. What I am unsure of is the nature of our Gifts. Perhaps we are born with many opportunities, but only the ones that are nurtured really grow. Some of us are blessed with multiple Gifts, some with only one, and I suppose there a few unfortunates with none, though I find this difficult to believe.

So, yeah. I wish I could write like Clancy, paint like Bosch, compose like McCartney, fly like Scholl, make money like Turner, dance like Baryshnikov, sing like Sinatra. golf like Jack, play like Les, think like Einstein.....well, I think you get the picture. Which one do I want? All of them, please!

Hey, you! Yeah, you! What is your Gift? Use it or lose it.

I Don't Want A Harem

Had to visit a family member who was placed in a Convalescent Home to recover from an accident. Now there's a depressing place! As I was leaving, I walked down a long hall. Randomly scattered along the hall were wheelchairs, each occupied by a tiny white-haired woman.

It seems our Convalescent homes are, of course, filled with mostly old women. Our menfolk generally die off long before they reach the wheelchair stage. Except for one guy. Most of the 'homes' I have visited have one guy....one old fart who wasn't smart enough to die at the right time, or so pissed off God that She is making him pay by granting him the boon of extended life in the company of a virtual harem all to himself. Be careful what you wish for, right?

Anyway, these 'ladies of the hall' have a couple of things in common: the aforementioned white hair. and the fact that they were all fast asleep. I guess they are belted in to the wheelchairs so they don't tumble out. Very quiet bunch, they were. They mostly resembled a wide-spread flock of sheep gently grazing a peaceful meadow.

I am sure heart attacks are somewhat painful, and probably difficult to forecast, but at least the 'linger' factor is pretty low.