Hey, You Can Really See The Pockmarks On That Skank

Had a week in Las Vegas last week teaching ASP.NET 2.0.

I don’t gamble. It’s not from any particular moral objection: people should be able to go to hell any way they want to. I just find it a ridiculous pursuit – as the saying goes, a tax on people who don’t understand math. I wander through a casino full of gambling folks and it strikes me as a bizarre spectacle -  like I were watching a room full of people punch themselves repeatedly in the face.

(I realize this is a minority viewpoint.)

I was there for a week, so my wife came with me; she was working on edits for her latest book. We stayed the Venetian for a few nights and then checked in to the brand-new Wynn Resort, as I was curious to see what techno-goodies they were reputed to have spent three billion dollars on.

It’s an amazing hotel, but they’ve only been open for a few weeks, and it shows. They’re still working out the bugs. Computers had crashed when we arrived, so we were checked in to this technological showcase with paper and those old hand-driven credit card imprint machines, which half the staff weren’t quite sure how to use.

But the rooms are great, wonderful minimalist decor, great lighting schemes and lots of toys: VoIP phones, radio with an extension cord to plug in your iPod, remote control powered drapes. The fastest internet connection I’ve ever had. And flat-screen LCD HDTVs in all the rooms (including the bathroom), but the odd thing was this: the only HD movies you could purchase were porno movies.

Now, I’m fairly libertarian in my leanings; I don’t find pr0n particularly objectionable. It just surprised me that the showcase for this new technology was hi-def skin flicks. I guess it’s just another example of all major technological advances being not-so-secretly driven by porn.