showboat
I don't watch sports, but I do care about this one. "Is this what happens when you leave Tucson?" Happycat asks me. "You start caring about the Wildcats?" Guess so. That, and cooking lots of Mexican food.
Having spent rather a lot of time in Reno over recent years, this article is sad for obvious reasons.
"The gaming industry has provided for older adults what we as a society have not done," said Pat Fowler, executive director of the Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling.
"For most of them, it's an exciting, safe, user-friendly outing," she said. "The message is, 'We value you; come on in. We'll get the wheel chair, we'll bring the refreshments to you.' They can't find that kind of reception in many areas in our society."
Kendzierski, negotiating the maze of slot machines and gaming tables at Showboat, marveled that the casino welcomes even gamblers who are blind or mentally disabled. "This is the most democratic place I know," she said.
Interview with Julian Barnes, who has just written a new book which I won't be able to read in the near future, as I won't be able to read much of anything until I get this behemoth book finished. And Barnes of course has a potshot at people who try to write behemoth books:
I think some people write long novels because they think they must be important if they're that long. But if you're going to write something as long as Anna Karenina, it had better be good. Every so often, a whopping new novel will come out by one of my contemporaries, and I'll think, "Hang on, I haven't read . . . you know, Ford Madox Ford's First World War quartet." So I'll say to myself, "I know, I'll read that instead!" And then I'm very grateful to this guy for having made me read some great novel I'd never read.
Well, shit.
