I had a little bit of surplus cash squirreled away from abstaining from the finer things in life - soda, non-tap water, etc. - so I did a few things with the surplurs, like my most recent little humor charity drive here on Dkos. So then, my civic duty discharged, my testicles just has to throw in their two kilograms so I ended up going to the San Manul Indian casino in the East Empire.
First thing about San Manuel, it's way out out of the way, but that doesn't mean it's easy to get to: It's very easy to get lost in the San Bernardino morass. Once you get there, the casino and the parking garage are widely spearated, and the interior of the garage was designed by abstract artist with no sense of rational traffic flow. Fortunately you eventually get to park and then spend 20 minutes wandinerg the garage looking for the way out toward the casino. I will say this; It's a nice, open, and tranquil garage with the breezes from outside passing through. One feels a sense of caramaderie with the elderly, overly-zaftig Latina ladies and elderly people who compromise the majority of patrons.
The slidewalk is nice given the distances involved. You walk to at least twice your natural speed while the scenery flashes by at twice the normal parallalax. It can be disorienting if you let it, but otherwise it's invigorating. I wish we would walk like that everywhere, all the time.
At the door to the casino is a cop who no longer cards me, but had carded me the past two times I'd been there last year. Ah, life change. There are two stories to the casino, both equally large and labyrinthine. Don't waste your time for the 2nd floor. It might have things I wasn't looking for, but it definitely didn't have what I was. Plus there are a lot of good eateries on the first floor and clearly-marked restrooms.
But I was looking for one specific machine, for which there are only four in the entire casino - video roulette. There was a real roulette table, but somehow the idea of other people seeing my shame at losing was not desirable. I'd rather win silently in private, or lose dismally in private. I had a system that wasn't foolproof by any stretch of the imagination, but worked as long as you kept yourself in control and didn't act on impulse to post the wrong bets or risk too much or play too long. In other words, you find wehere you end up moderately in the black, and that's when you quit. It works. It always works for me. Excpet when I fuck it up and end up listening to my balls instead of my brain. THe way it's supposed to work, and the way I had worked it before, is that would very slowly build up a 39% profit margin or lower and then I'd leave.
This time I had mentally regressed a bit to high school for some reason. I saw that I had $150 and instead of thinking, "Mission Accomplished," I imagine that I could do more with it - imagined what it would look like to put it all on the 1st 3rd and imagined having the machine give me $300 more dollars. Now I know what gamble junkies mean - I could taste the sex of the play. Wasn't much rational thought involved, just holy shit is going to be awesome. The word "if" is nowhere to be heard in this degraded thinking. So I rolled and busted the whole wad. Just kind sat there like a deflated chump briefly. They should really offer free hugs from the more anatomically gifted waitresses for people who bust. That would have been comforting.
Blah. Guess I'll have to sell a bunch of vintange NES videogames to make up the difference.