Category Archives: Observed

Dim Neon, Observed, Poky Town

People Who Parlay

Perhaps the man/woman parlays which follow were just as bald back in New York. There, though, unlike here in Las Vegas, the couples involved are more discreet.

The Mojave Mecca’s transient nature permits the sort of convention flouting which would make proper Easterners recoil. Of course Westerners could claim by their openness they’re unbound by rank hypocrisy. Continue reading People Who Parlay →

Observed

Shades from the Eleventh Hour

A few weeks ago while rummaging through the Mojave, dumb luck delivered me to an odd spot. Somewhere amid the desert’s Joshua trees rather than near habitation I saw a simple cross stark against the sky upon a granite outcropping. This was a World War I monument. Continue reading Shades from the Eleventh Hour →

Observed, Pop Culture

Modern Horrors

Could the sharing economy produce a new line of horror stories? After all, its basis tosses to the wind every caution under which older sensible Americans were raised.

Don’t get into strangers’ cars. Don’t let just anybody into your home.

So what are the two attractions best fueling the quasi-barter economy? Gig drivers and homeowners turning into hostel keepers. Continue reading Modern Horrors →

Dim Neon, Observed, Poky Town

Distressing Displacements

Was the summer heat so relentless in Southern Arizona, in the Sonoran Desert, as it is in a Las Vegas set amidst the Mojave? Just as likely. Possibly even more so. The Sonora sits at a lower altitude. Its desert classification aside, it’s also a less arid ecosystem than the Mojave.

Youth, accompanied by more involved living, frequent insobriety, and greater disregard of nuisances like heat and lack of sleep, probably registered those Arizona Augusts on some lower discomfort scale. The escapades immersed in then must’ve somewhat negated the arduous climate.

Almost five years living in Las Vegas and I’ve learned to evade a trap that snares too many willing natives and long-time residents. I’ve managed to look through the transients, deadbeats, and bums littering the street corners and raised medians. Continue reading Distressing Displacements →

Observed, Quarropas

Decoration Day

We Americans need to remove Memorial Day from our Monday holiday schedule. Instead, like Independence Day, observe this occasion on the date whence it falls. Unless it occurs on a Saturday or Sunday. Only then we should accede and extend the holiday onto Monday.

We should resume Memorial Day’s normal cycle in order to give more than lip service to patriotism and sacrifice. Americans have been giving both shorter shrift since the Reagan Administration. Currently, President Scalawag has all but erased their meaning.

The America in which we presently reside has become at its now feebly beating heart one the Founders would not recognize. Not from the technological or social advances none of them could’ve conceived. The tricorns, breeches and buckles set would see that little of the premise which created our once great nation still exists.

Rather, Americans have been gradually becoming disinclined in practicing the attributes that incited the Colonials to become Americans. Continue reading Decoration Day →

Baboon America, Dim Neon, Observed, Poky Town

Little Incivilities

Living in Las Vegas, a k a, “The Big Mayberry,” has disabused me of any nonsense that small burg residents conduct themselves kindlier than big city dwellers. In New York, we weren’t rude but as befitting a hustling cosmopolitan metropolis, just in a hurry.

See, there was always more to do and less time to do it. Continue reading Little Incivilities →

Agitprop/Propaganda, Baboon America, Observed

Magnificent Arrogance

Were Time magazine founding publisher Henry Luce still alive, the man who’d coined the 20th century “the American Century” would today declare any extension of it dead.

Our epoch of true world influence stretched from the Jazz Age until Bolshevism collapsed under capitalist superiority. Although our Levant fiasco significantly diminished the nation’s prestige while emboldening adversaries, much of the global community still accepted the United States as the planet’s cock of the walk.

After wrong-footing throughout 2017, the only standing America retains is being musclebound and brainless. Continue reading Magnificent Arrogance →