Headline June 29th, 2012 / '...Not The Way I Play It, Pin Head!...'

''...Not The Way I Play It, Pin Head!..."

And then, and then, there were exceptions to the rule. Horse racing: some forms of cards, because they were deemed games of skill and not chance; church bingos, because of the clout of the Priesthood, and slot machines in various Knights of Columbus and Elks Club halls, because life is not fair. 

But by the end of the Second World War, casino gambling had been driven from every state except Nevada. But to the horror of many, many, no one could kill the Steely Beast. And what many thinkers of the time then and now thought what was to turn into a real insight: As Alex de Tocqueville, the Nostradamus of American Civilization, scribbled in 1835, 

''Those who live in the midst of American Fluctuations have always before their eyes the image of chance; and they end by liking all the undertakings in which chance plays a part'' So it's fitting that gambling loomed large on the American Frontier, since gambling thrives in borderlands, at the ragged edges of communities and civilization, in the kinds of towns where people learn to avoid cards with anyone named Doc, Hahaha! to guzzle enough strong drink to steer the mind toward the gritty realization that hardwork and princely rewards 'have little or no connection'. Haha! 

The American frontier was a veritable university for teaching these lessons, what with rape of the land, periodic genocide of the natives and the sight of mentally defective prospectors hitting the mother lode. From just such a witches' brew of sloth, booze, ill temper and cloddish luck rose the great Hearst fortune, which still befuddles the American mind with various magazines and newspapers. Hahaha! Amazing!! 

For a while, only for a while, in post-Communist Moscow, a private club flourished where the newly rich bet on rats, trained by an expert from the famed Durov Animal Circus, that careened down a neon-lit maze. Each race was started by a Dwarf in a eighteen century costume ringing a bell. 

In turn of the century Winslow, Arizona, a similar bar flourished, the patriotic participants bet in the rats in a fight to the death. So, imagine Las Vegas as a fabled brothel on the dark edge of town. No one not sufficently closed with mescaline could even cross the windy bleakness of the Mojave Desert and anticipate that such a fleshpot shimmered just over the next barren hill. 

And yet it does, mainly because after seven decades of listless statehood, Nevada came to the conclusion that it had no reason to be a state! And to remedy this gaping hole in its self-esteem, Nevada legalised gambling in 1931. 

Here was, after all, an industry that did not require fat rivers, abundant natural ressources, and huge financial centers! Remarkable!! So see you all at the Casinos tomorrow! You will love the thrill and then we are no pin heads. Haha!

Good Night And God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - The Voice Of The Voiceless