I went to Las Vegas and all I got was this louzy flyer for sex workers.

We've now been to Las Vegas, but we took no pictures. I thought that the only way to expose the real side of Las Vegas is not to surrender to it's sights and sounds and obey it's attaque sur les sens, but rather to pause and reflect, translating it's horror and paradoxical beauty through the medium of language and metaphor. And I forgot the memory card for the camera at work.

There are many different facets of Las Vegas that are constantly fighting with each other to leave a worse taste in your mouth than the one before. For us the aspect of Vegas that came out on top was the city itself, rather than something to do with the casino and entertainment industry. Las Vegas is the fastest growing city in the US, which basically means that the whole city is a large suburb. In the desert. The same house is repeated hundreds of thousands of times across the desertscape literally as far as the eye can see. As gas prices go up and up and up I have absolutely no pity for these people who have made their beds even after it's become obvious that this type of living will be unsustainable in the future. Then again each new house is only $150,000 instead of the $500,000 it would cost for one in LA so maybe they're not so dumb after all. It's just scary that this has become the new model for a growing American and Canadian city. Development, development, Walmart, development, development, Home Depot, development, development, megachurch, etc. It is unbelievably gross looking and must be seen to be believed.

It's hard to imagine the people who work in the casinos doing anything but working in a casino. They were definitely born to do just that. I'm sure that in hospital waiting rooms all across America in 1963 doctors were emerging from delivery wards and, after being asked by the husband wether it was a boy or a girl, would have say "I'm terribly sorry but it is neither. Mr. Johnson, I'm not sure how to put this but.....you've had a cocktail waitress.", at which point Mr. Johnson would rush into the delivery room and lay his eyes upon his new child Shyla, who would be clutching a used ashtray in one hand, and a half empty Miller Light with a dollar jammed in the top in the other.

There is one thing we didn't do in Vegas that I plan on doing at some point:

Go to this place.

No, not ELVIS-O-RAMA, the automatic weapon range. There are a few friends I would love to see shooting any number of the guns listed in this ad. Since none of us (I assume) have spent any time with automatic weapons, and even if we were to join the Canadian army we would probably be given guns that look real then when the time came and the enemy were upon us we would find out that we were given super-soakers, I think this is an opportunity that should be siezed. The most memorable guns would the uzie, which would have to be fired with one hand only and in short bursts at a slightly downward angle, and the M3A1 greasegun, which I would like to see Jer shooting with his feet slightly more than shoulder width apart, knees bent with the gun held really low just below his waist, and the only thing moving when he's got the trigger pegged would be his cheeks.

I would love/pay to see that.