1. Tourists: Are you staring at my man-tits? Or at the argyle sweater on top of my man-tits?

2. That red neon sign of the milkman looks at certain angles like a stylized head whose face has just been violently ripped off, exposing a mass of bloody muscle tissue and bone. If you squint at it, anyway. And you’re drunk while squinting.

3. The security guards around the Fremont Street Experience seem to make a point of speaking VERY LOUDLY on their walkie-talkies and use LOTS OF OFFICIAL-SOUNDING SECURITYSPEAK LANGUAGE with words like “situation” and “subjects” and “intercept” so as to REINFORCE THE MEAGER IMPRESSION among the public that they’re SERIOUS SECURITY PROFESSIONALS and not just WAGE-WORKERS ON BICYCLES with those weird wispy gray pre-adolescent mustaches and who only happen to be wearing shirts that read “security.”

4. I’m increasingly convinced that the conspicuously dark Neonopolis has gone beyond being a mere failure of conventional existential absence and is, in fact, metamorphosing into a more active, dynamic, evolving and forceful category of failure, an exertive void that can influence, act upon and taint the world around it. This is quite awesome to behold.

5. The Canyon Club inside the Four Queens has the best bar in Las Vegas, if only because it’s flanked on the left by a statue of the Buddha, and on the right by one of Michael McDonald’s guitars, as well as a large picture of Michael McDonald’s head. There’s some spiritual mojo at work here beyond my feeble ken, and I respect that.

6. The Star Wars penny slots only function on the scale of mere penny slots if you somehow waylay the burning temptation to spend $20 because you keep hoping for that cool bonus round when you and Yoda get to use The Force to float the X-Wing fighter from the bog to make the bonus wheel on top spin.

7. The bands that opened for Dillinger Escape Plan at the Canyon Club can best be described by the term screamoemocoremetalrockwithartfullystreakedhair.

8. Hipster fans of the screamoemocoremetalrockwithartfullystreakedhair bands: Are you staring at my man-tits? Or at the argyle sweater on top of my man-tits?

Since it sure doesn’t look like 140,000 heavily armed American troops will drag the Middle East out of the Middle Ages anytime soon, the heavy lifting, as is so often the case in such defining moments, has fallen to the weakest among us.Could a new day for justice and reason be rising from the Gulf of Oman to the Mediterranean Sea?

[Note: The final word in the header is, I believe, Arabic for “asshole.” Or maybe not.]