Find what you like and let it kill you

This is why I like Texas, Texans, and read Texas Monthy....

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no William Bennett, the guy who gave us The Book of Virtues and then reportedly proceeded to blow $8 million on the slots and video poker in Vegas. The only things I have in common with him are (1) we’re both slot players and (2) we both had the same girlfriend. (Hunter Thompson and I also once had the same girlfriend—poor girl—but I don’t think Hunter played the slots.)

The AXE is thinking about going to a professional conference in Vegas at Caesars. Since it will be on my own dime, I've been wondering if I really want to do it. GINORMOUS DEFENSE CONTRACTOR has a convoluted way of paying for training. At the level where the  company actually makes money, they don't. Since I used to work in the industry, I find casinos in general pretty despicable , but I enjoy the show. Sex, drugs, rock n roll, fulled by fear, alcohol and desperation. Yeah, excellent place to study humanity.

That said, I think this piece by bon vivant and failed politician Kinky Friedman has convinced me to take a pass on the whole thing. He likes it for some reason, the way some people like traveling the country on buses as opposed to airplanes or by car. "Planes might crash and we'd have to eat each other...and, you meet such interesting people on a bus." Yeah. He nails the dark side of the experience well. Since I consider slots to be crack cocaine, his addiction to $5 slots is apropos.

I sit there in the Champagne Slots at the Flamingo (located conveniently close to the dumper) smoking cigars, watching the lava flow, and drinking Mexican mouthwash until I’m walkin’ on my knuckles. The only interruption is that about every two minutes people come up to me and tell me they voted for me. Either they’re all pathological liars or the election was rigged.

Who better to sum up the despair in it all, but Lou Reed...