TRUE NAMES

Las Vegas' miraculously metastasized, monstrously mutated, megamarketed monuments to mathematical morons are on a neverending quest to expand the manufacture of their one real product; fuel to burn in people's fantastic pipe dreams.

This quest has caused these gaming corporations to acquire egalitarian attitudes towards their patrons. Very few individual distinctions are perceived between visitors. Credit ratings are checked, previous gaming histories are tabulated, and tendencies to compulsive behavior deeply studied. From the resulting equations pavlovian marketeers calculate the essential differences needed in the necessary baits, lures, sinkers and hooks, but customer volume is their one driving need.

These properties are hooked, brutally addicted. A voracious insatiable hunger gnaws holes deep within, threatening their very existence. Money is needed to cover gargantuan payrolls, for employees numbered in kilohead. Payment must be made on milkenian wetdream junk bonds, which finance capitalization of Babel's proportions. Quarterly tidal outflows of pure liquid capital gushes from the Body Corporate to slake the thirst of shareholders, parched from the heat and glare of titanic dividend expectations. Mammoth daily infusions of cash are needed by the modern Vegas resort to sustain it. Only enormous raw numbers of bodies, mainlined straight into the doors that open onto the hypnotically throbbing casino floor, can keep the bone-jarring hunger at bay. Faceless multitudes fed into the casinos' maws to be shaken down and wrung out.

Very few differences are perceived between individuals of this prodigious mass passing through on inexorable treadmills (estimated at 30 million+ this year). To ease in processing, all guests, upon their arrival at front desks, are given one of three names. This is the gaming corporation's true name for them.

Which name is yours?

Is it MARK or JOHN or PATSY?

TWO

Up in wiseguy heaven, in the club where Gabriel comes to blow his horn, there is a table reserved for Bugsy Siegel. He planted the original seed, kudzu dreams, mutating into modern day Las Vegas. Even though his vision was constrained (it takes computers to operate resorts with rooms numbering in the thousands) and his focus tight (he was only looking to fleece LA's stupid elite and returning World War Two pacific theater vets, who were heading eastward on I-15), he was the first to reach for Nevada's offering of a grifter's dream come true, a state sanctioned licence to steal.

Life is slow and boring in wiseguy heaven, with an eternity to learn all the tricks, and not a rube, sucker or mark to be found, so a game was created to pass the time. They look down at the people in Las Vegas and label them with an animal association that best fits:

Pigeons abound everywhere pecking at the stale bread crumbs spread out on buffet tables.

Sitting ducks manning row upon endless rows of slots.

Dumb oxen incessantly running plastic through the myriad of ATM machines.

Chickens, heads cut off, wandering aimlessly, waiting to be plucked.

Fish in barrels, there to be easily hooked.

Sacrificial lambs, necks willing extended at the altar of their greed.

Scapegoats looking for salvation in their guilt.

Blind bats betting systems that will never beat the odds.

Dogs licking wounds at every casino bar.

The occasional wolf, grown fat and lazy from prey thick as mosquitoes over a midwestern lake in July.

Poorly disguised sheep, who think they can hide in their cheap wolf's clothing.

And everywhere greedy pigs, who believe they can fly, rooting around, already fat for the slaughter.

The game could on forever, and does up in wiseguy heaven.