Satan Is Alive - The Vegas Conclusion and Moving On.

So what did I learn by visiting Vegas now that I'm fully grown?

Vegas is Hell on Earth. People are roasting right before your eyes, and unless you're burning with them, you don't get the full experience.

One of the funniest things I kept seeing in Sin City was people with one hand or both cupping their foreheads. In that "I can't believe I just blew it" posture. It's not something that will make you empathize. After all, it ain't your money that became part of the Vegas dissapearing act. I was having a blast for little money without really gambling, yet folks on all sides were draining themselves emotionally, financially and physically, just to have a chance at the Dream.



Hunter Thompson, author of Fear and Loathing, was a great writer, but he was so geeked up when he wrote about his experience that he ended up writing something that consumed him while making him famous and legendary. We as a culture regard Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as a great story about "The Death of The American Dream," when it's actually the death of one man's dream. After all, he was honest enough to admit that he fell for the LSD craze of the mid-sixties. Doing acid in Vegas has to be one helluva trip, and I'm not willing to buy the ticket or take the ride, even if I want to hear the story or tell my own version.



H.S.T.'s generation always operated under the idea that help was on the way because of their righteous cause. My opinion is that help is already here in the form of that tiny voice in the back of your head. Some call it a conscience. Others call it Multiple Personality Disorder, or "The Devil".


That voice is actually the human instinct, which I'm dumb enough to believe is still slanted towards good in most people. That is, until you poison it enough with strip-club mentality, rent-to-own sluts and enough alcohol to cure the AIDS virus. Nolo.

If we listened more to that voice, which is most likely the implated voice of God - sorry to get spiritual on you heathens - I would say that we'd probably avoid places like The Las Vegas Strip. But just as it is an ideal fantasy to say you went to Vegas and had a blast, it is also a fantastic lie to expect good things of the sustainable sort to happen just because you were brave enough to visit Nevada and cake yourself silly. But we listen to others, who lie about how much they won, how many hoes they effed, and how they spent more money than you've ever made in one weekend.



The truth is that they probably lost more than they won (so Vegas ultimately wins), they paid for sexual congress (another W for Vegas) and they tricked away their next two to six months bills all for three days of suffering suckertash.

Vegas is now corporate America. It used to be run by the goons, until the TIs and YTs decided that the cake was smelling too sweet for them to refuse. Now, you can get Devil's Food and all types of other yeast-infected desserts in one of the country's most rapidly growing residential areas.



Shout out to all of the media corporations who have sponsored the evolution of the ultimate fantasy world in the middle of the desert. You'd better believe that we'll soon see Playstation Palace, Hellman's Mayonnaise Museum and the LifeStyles Hotel and Casino, where you get free unwrapped rubbers for every hour you spend getting jerked at the card tables or slot machines.

Real life is bigger than Vegas. Yes, I had fun, and yes that might make me a hypocrite of sorts when it comes to being this harsh on a place that wasn't really uncomfortable. But since when did I start saying I was perfect? I'm just a jaded young writer, who has decided to start being as honest as possible when presenting myself in my own literary character. Maybe it'll work. If not, I can always buy lottery tickets and malt liquor on a daily budget of five dollars in nickels.

Ciao,
MJ
"Gonzo Lives."