Travel Blizzard Come in from the cold.

Las Vegas is a sexy themed fantasy land flowing with milk, honey, and alcohol. I think of Las Vegas as the reality version of Second Life, it is filled with brand name themed bars, restaurants, clubs, and casinos. Coca-Cola has a two story store here, so does M&M. Playboy has a club here. Hawaiian Tropic, the sun tan lotion company, has a bar next to Planet Hollywood Hotel. Planet Hollywood is the defunct and bankrupt Hollywood themed restaurant chain modeled after Hard Rock Café. In Vegas, folks come here to reinvent themselves, that is true even of tourist. In Vegas, no one is from Vegas. Everyone is from somewhere else, trying to be someone else, with someone new. Even Vegas doesn't know itself, it is schizophrenic cityscape, it wants to be a fantasy land in Excalibur, a Egyptian archeological dig in Luxor, French in Paris, Italian in the Bellagio and yet it is all the same, a smoke filled casino filled with unhappy dealers, depressed showgirls, unaware tourists, and racks of high power super computer servers that calculate probability of your losses to six decimal places.

The house is sober and yet it wants you drunk with water down drinks, cheap thrills, and flashing lights, so as to date rape you and take your money. Casinos are like one night stand sort of banks, you go in and deposit some money in glowing machine as if they where ATM machines except they don't call you in the morning with a statement or interest or receipt.

Vegas has been a boom town for fifty years, new casinos go up and old ones are torn down in a continual circle of life sort of way. It is the phoenix rising from dirt and litter of flyer for call girls.

The one arm bandits pay 30 cent to the dollar. Las Vegas has removed the foreplay of gambling, you can lose thousands of dollars in mere seconds, you don't even get a happy ending. Everything is a show, and everything is for show. Everythig is a game, and the house always wins. You may be up in one hand and down on a bad roll. You shouldn't have to pay to play but if you are then my only advice is play like the house. The house plays the game to win, it does not split 10s or double down or buy insurance.