Two words that I find interesting this week are: "Sidekick and "stand-up". Think about those a little bit, and what they might mean.

So, what do you really need in order to be happy? Well, more to the point, what do you require to have a fun time. I don't need much in either case. I was sitting around thinking about a fall/winter vacation, and it occurred to me that in an interesting locale, I can literally just sit on the side of the road with my best gal and watch stuff happen and have a perfectly good time. This, in part, is why I enjoy going to Las Vegas so much. There are so many interesting people walking around that provide a good source of mind stimulation. There's also lots of cars and lights and general bustle, so I hardly ever feel bored, even when I am doing nothing. Also, in Las Vegas, public intoxication is legal. So I can grab some whiskey or a bunch of beers, and just go sit on a bench on the strip, and watch the world go by for hours on end. This is also relatively inexpensive.

I recently went to Bossier City on a mini vacation. I kinda figured it would be like a smaller shittier version of Las Vegas, and while it is in many respects, it does lack a few elements. I had a great time there, but I realized that I was not necessarily having a good time because I was in Bossier City, I was having a good time because I was hanging out with my best gal and my friends. To some extent, I had a better time sitting doing nothing than I did in the glitter of the casino. Now, granted, I did not go exploring the city as much as I perhaps should have, but there did not seem to be a place to just sorta hang around and do nothing, other than in our hotel rooms, especially at night. There was plenty of debaucherous drinking, gambling, and chain smoking, and it was a hoot, but it generally took place sitting at a gambling table or in front of a line slot machines, which meant that it was costing money to perform the same activities that could be performed in the street in Las Vegas for free. Also, for some reason, there was no place to just go buy a beer there, which is very strange. The cocktail waitresses would give you free beers or mixed drinks, but if they didn't come around at a decent interval, you were just fucked. This is easy enough to rectify, because it is easy to bring your own, but at the time, we didn't know this was a necessity.

Ok, so when I began this post, it was going to be a philosophical analysis of what it really means to be happy, and the apparent dichotomy between having fun and being somewhere foreign, but I think now I like it better as a real quick assessment of my first run at Bossier City. I had an excellent time, but I am not 100% certain that the backdrop of Bossier had anything to do with it. Maybe it did, but I think it will require more research. I will likely return to Bossier City between now and whatever fall/winter vacation I make plans for, to see if i can figure it out. This time I'll bring some liquor and some burritos.

The whole thing reminds me of a fitting song from the Cheech and Chong movie "Things Are Tough All Over"...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNoF7nJb6X4

Me and my old lady,
we like we like like like like
to get outside.

Sometimes people space us out,
so we just make like a bakery truck
and haul buns out of there.

Sometimes we are so much in love,
that we go on a picnic
and don't even take any beer.

We just like to cruise around,
and try to find the main drag in town.
Then after we go try to find,
a 7 eleven and try to get some beef jerky.

Me and my old lady,
we like we like like like
to get outside.

Sometimes people space us out,
so we just make like a bakery truck
and haul buns out of there.

I think so far I have spent only 1 weekend sitting at home doing nothing so far this summer, and that is primarily because I am on call at work, so I am doing well on my goal of making it a really kick ass season.

Twat magnets!

Three weeks since I've posted, and the last of the pie was gone days ago. I should write a letter to Olive Picklefeather.

Ok, A few quick thoughts here.

I have noticed lately that seeing dead animals makes me sad. fuckin possum crossing the street to go grab something to eat, BAM, fucking car kills him. That sucks. I was driving down the road the other day and I saw a what I think was a pigeon hanging out in the street getting a drink of some water from a puddle. It was a two lane street and I was in the other lane. The bird just kept on doing its thing, and pretty much just ignored this huge hunk of steel going by at 45 miles an hour. My truck weighs around 5,000 pounds, and the bird weighs maybe what 3 pounds? So say 1500 times the size of the bird, and I was probably 4 feet from it. I may be wrong, after all I'm no physicist, but proportionally, that seems to be the equivalent of a huge hunk of metal weighing 150 tons flying by a human at ~65,000 miles an hour. That would blow my mind up. How can this bird get accustomed to something like that? Then you have some animals like that poor possum that couldn't quite figure it out, and got flat. Anyhoo, there is no point here, but I feel sorry for these poor small animals. They aren't doing anything wrong, and I am sure they were happy right up to the point of impact. Weird.

So, completely unrelated, I started thinking about Bernie Madoff. He got 150 years in prison for ripping people off. He will die there, without question. His life is over, and I suspect he will die soon. Then I started thinking... would you rather be stuck in a really bad extremely dangerous prison full of the worst criminals in the world for short period of time, say 2 years, or a "good" easy white collar prison that is a glorified resort for a long period of time, like say 15 years. In the bad prison, you might get killed, you will have to fight, you will get ass raped, etc..., but in the good prison, 15 years of your life will be gone. I don't have an answer. I might opt to take my chances in the bad one.

Next up on the random thought list... You go to a casino and watch a roulette table, and you notice on the board that red has hit 150 times in a row. So, do you wager on red again, because it is on a streak, or do you bet on black because it is long overdue? I myself bet black. Does this make sense? FUCK NO. If red hit 1,543,455,642,910,502,384,256,780,324,536,574,434 times in a row, the next spin still has exactly an 18 in 38 chance of hitting black or red. It is 38 and not 36 because of the green 0 and 00. So I suppose ultimately it does not matter. Taking the stupid mental blocks and superstition out of gambling is the key to success. If you play long enough in ANY casino game, eventually you will have exactly 0 dollars. So I guess the thought process should be to determine how much money you want to gamble with before you go, and just have fun, and drink shitloads of free cocktails and beer.