At times one feels besieged by human wreckage in Las Vegas because it seems one is besieged by them here.
The common questions that should cut across all social, economic, class lines are “Who doesn’t have a hand out? And why is that grimy hand always in my face?” Continue reading No Alms for the Unworthy
Let me give two examples of just how different life is here in Las Vegas.
Earlier in the month, a complete stranger sidled up to me. He asked where he could score some “H.” Some smack.
Drat! If only he’d sought hookers instead. Continue reading Crazed
Middle of November 2019, the Las Vegas city council approved ordinances to corral the homeless. The legislation will ultimately frustrate all involved and prove meaningless. The only good which may come from them is a somewhat honest public debate regarding transient control and the funds taxpayers will wish to dedicate to such.
There should be no doubt that a good portion of residents will suggest loading vagrants onto Union Pacific freight cars then shipping and leaving them in the Mojave. Here in libertarian Nevada, the idea of an individual making him- or herself incapable of carrying his or her own water, of being an intentional public burden, will rankle. Continue reading Sidewalks Are Not for Sleeping
Vernon is dying. He is a cousin who inquired about Edna Long three years ago. She was an unknown figure who appeared in one of our family branch’s turn-of-the-century census tracts. Turn of the 20th century.
The people who may’ve known about her, remembered her, they’ve been all good and dead way before curiosity aroused his present-day fascination with this stranger who’ll remain a mystery. Continue reading The Mohicans
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
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” The preceding originates from the drama Julius Caesar. Cassius’ line impels what follows.
Our Trump Error presents Americans a litany of such failings they would’ve bowed the backs of ancient Greek dramatists as well as William Shakespeare’s. Nearly half of us have become comfortable with weakness and shame thanks to the disgraceful real estate fraud now soiling the Oval Office. Continue reading Legacies’ Laments
One of the Las Vegas newspapers has an editorial page which lurches right. So far right readers should ask why columns and letters to the editor aren’t printed in Fraktur.
Given the harmful effect of Twitter on political debate, the city’s broadsheet, an at times schizophrenic news source – news remains objectively presented while opinions often harken back to those of Der Stürmer and Völkischer Beobachter – offers American reactionaries a forum through which they can mock tweets veering from their less enlightened view of our society. Thanks to Donald Trump’s current soiling the Oval Office, malcontents once rightly embarrassed to publicly demonstrate their various intellectual deficiencies may now further poison open discourse with them.
Say this about the short-fingered vulgarian he sure has tipped over a lot of rocks. Continue reading Sauce for the Goose
My last image of Perdu was a mundane one. The drug-addled, alcoholic, brain-dead swine we worked for had just admitted the company was flat-broke.
For an enterprise best known through word of mouth, throughout the industry its new name became “mud.” So many bridges were burned, including ones on drawing boards, no hope existed of any lifelines.
Solvent on Friday, tapped out on Monday. Continue reading Thoroughly Anonymous
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has gotten pilloried for past statements spoken during the appropriate era. In accordance to these semantically correct times, she’s walked them back. Okay. She’s apologized for uttering them. There was absolutely zero need for her to have done so.
Dredged up from the 1990s, and haunting her in 2016, Clinton referred to a subset of criminals as “superpredators.” What was then so accurate now offends the ignorant and sensitive.
Actually by having called them “superpredators,” Clinton raised the lowest of low-slouching beasts on the evolutionary ladder. Continue reading Untimely Torquemada
Know a discriminating cabdriver in Las Vegas. He prefers avoiding collecting passengers on the Strip. Let me qualify that. He prefers not collecting certain kinds of Strip passengers.
Daytime fares are fine. It’s who emerges at night which dissuades him. Continue reading Drunken Mistress