Atlantic City, NJ

i've never been to vegas, but this is supposed to be close. what to say about AC that's original? not too much. think neil gaiman or michael chabon writing about quintessential america and you pretty much have the idea: gaudiness glorified, the only thing too loud is silence etc. the housemate unembarrassedly brought his camera and took shots from the roof of caesar's hotel, a bit much even for me. i finally got to see the real boardwalk and park place and all the rest of them, which was strangely cool. i'll never outgrow geekhood.

dinner: all-you-can-eat, of course; we all took turns insisting that it was part of the definitive supererogatory experience until we realised that no one was actually dissenting. closed our eyes and picked one of the 29 places that had proclaimed themselves the best buffet in town, and the housemate had dessert first, and alyson picked at things, and i had too much mashed potato. buffets make me so ill, but i can't stop going to them. i want to go to vegas right now and gain 20 pounds.

casinos. i always tell myself that i'm never one for gambling, not a risk-taker etc. and then find out that i am. surprised anew. or at least -- that i enjoy it, different perhaps from actually wanting to take risks, hedonic value vs rational desire. the tables have $10 minimums, which for a grad student = "would you like some ramen with your ramen? for the next 8 years?", but we sit down anyway and ss bleeds away $100 and then we go and play video poker, and i try and do a lot of sums in my head and fail. there is plenty of winning and losing and at one point a slot machine mysteriously gives me a lot of money for no particularly good reason, but at the end of the night, i think we're pretty much down, except that we've had lots of free white russians.

and to end on a super-geeky note: go read about the kelly criterion, and be a little more educated.