Vegas

When I was driving back to CA from CT I ended a (very) long day of driving in Las Vegas; specifically, at the New York, New York Hotel & Casino. I thought it would be fun since it would be a very long time before I would see anything even remotely New York-related again.

But lingering memories of the Big Apple were not the things I remembered most about my stay there. Instead I was fascinated by how efficient the systems in Las Vegas are at diverting money out of your pocket. The casino is a staggering revenue generator. The methods that have been developed to entice (or delude) visitors and persuade them to "take a chance" are as sly as they are seductive. Spend some time in a Vegas casino and you don't feel like you lost money, or worse, that the casino took it from you. Instead you feel as if your bankroll simply evaporated. And you're ok with that and you'll come back because that's what happens in Vegas.

The other systems are not as clandestine. Everything costs extra. You want movies? You pay. Internet? You pay. Parking? That's extra. See the show! Ride the rollercoaster! Everyone wants a piece of you, even the casino owners who certainly weren't happy with the 300 bucks that just vanished from your wallet. My stay seemed to be less about hospitality and more about highway robbery.

But the prevailing attitudes on the Vegas strip are nothing when compared to the motivations of a spammer. Slashdot points us to the confessions of such a creature. I always thought that spammers were concurrently the lowest form of life and the highest form of greed, but this article proves it. The hucksters out in Vegas at least try to entertain you a little. These guys would sell their kids for a few thousand valid email addresses.

God I hate junk mail.