Home » United States » FEAR AND LOATHING, THE GOOD CANYON, DUSTING THE VODDY

I took the stretch limo option ($10 extra) for the ride to the chopper depot for my tour of the Canyon, good but not really ‘grand’……on our return, we flew down ‘the strip’ , the heart of Las Vegas, and this was the Grand part…..I’ve seen many fantastic canyons over the past 14 months, this one is big and all that, but not the most speccy by far…..but the whole Las Vegas thing, Jesus wept, this is soo different…there is NOWHERE like Las Vegas…it’s big and glitzy, total BLING…plastic fantastic, phoney, skin-deep, rip-off-heaven, schmaltzy, smokers’ heaven, money, money, money (all going one way!) ..….and there’s nothing apologetic about the plastic glitz….fantastic..they know what they are and they are damned proud of it…and it works…a totally artificial, contained, cosmos, and all these hotel/casino complexes all trying to be bigger and bolder and more standoutish, fabulous architecture, in fact an architect’s dream, open cheque book, ‘just make it bigger and brighter than all the rest’ instructions…unbelievable!….and from the air, unforgettable! Inside, they’re all the same, miles and miles, millions of poker machines, gaming tables and (more sedate) poker rooms, bored looking people staggering around with bottles or glasses….altho’ many made it to the pool…they tell me this is why the prices are rising…more tourists, less gambling…as they say…go figure!

FEAR AND LOATHING, THE GOOD CANYON, DUSTING THE VODDY

Bill Shum
2006-09-30 11:16:35

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out in the middle of the hot and dry high desert……I was expecting a ‘strip’ of joints in the middle of nowhere but it’s a strip in the middle of a huge, constantly expanding city/urban-sprawl nightmare, caught, or limited, by the ranges of mountains on each side of this huge flat plain, it must be 50 miles wide…it’s the fastest growing city in the US (is that some claim to fame?)…they say a new school opens every week!!….but what are they teaching?…or what are they learning?….a bit of schadenfreude for Oz educationalistas!...and did I just hear our history
is being reinvented by a politically selected group of experts??...hasn't our education system been dumbed down enough already?...it's bad enough that the mad monk can't recognise a conflict of interest with his religious bigotry when trying to set a moral/ethical standard for the country? .......people...hello..is anyone there?...who cares??
Ahh, but back in San Fran…and feeling more comfortable, in fact completely comfortable, in my neighbourhood, still lots and lots of poor, disadvantaged, dislocated, fcuked up, disowned, what’s that classic expression?…can’t think of it right now, but the expression that sums up the government’s (our?) attitude to disassociation of these people…ahhh …‘marginalised’….is that the word?…so innocuous, ..so easy to hide behind……..but the people… never threatening, never a worry, is it because they have enough drugs to be harmless?…or enough fear of the forces of law ‘n order?….they’ll always put the bite on me for a smoke or a quarter but never, ever, threatening…but you’ve got to feel it’s close to the surface…these people are seriously left behind…and on every corner there’s one in a wheelchair, sometimes falling out of it….it’s hard to imagine this whole community, and there is a strong sense of community, I can see them all now, much better, they all know each other, there ...