(I'm still a couple days behind in posting... This is 16a)

Screened Out. After leading a panel about social media and health care, I went for a walk around Las Vegas. Baudrillard was rattling around in my mind as I took in the scene; words like simulation and illusion. Perhaps some of it comes from walking around with a magician telling me stories of various performers on the strip. I walk through Planet Hollywood, the Paris, the Cosmopolitan and others. It is also so ornate and decorated. Perhaps the illusion is for people to feel some sort of grandeur and importance that they miss in their daily lives. Perhaps the illusion is simply that it will all be alright.

Perhaps there is a different illusion, one of wealth that isn't transient. Yet the goal of many of the illusions is to make the wealth transient, to transfer the wealth from those wandering the strip to the owners of the shops and casinos. If I had been reading Hunter S. Thompson, I probably would have had a much different reaction, but Thompson wrote of a Vegas that has been torn down and rebuilt many times since.

The glamour and sex is perhaps another illusion. If you flirt the right way and wear the right clothes, perhaps you can have a physical, sensual experience full of passion and romance, and ultimately of human connection. But first, we need to airbrush away any imperfections which really just removes any chance of a true human connection.

The Paris has its replica of the Eiffel Tower. You can see parts of it surrounded by slot machines, and I wonder how many people even notice. Do they see the walls painted to be small Parisian shops? Do they even care? The Cosmopolitan is more striking with interesting lights and videos. There is one section where thousands of chains of cut glass hang like a chandelier on steroids and gone out of control. Beneath all of this is a giant show that young women pose in as their boyfriends take pictures.

We checked out a shop in the Cosmopolitan; very high end artsy sort of stuff, like a bureau made out of legos, or a pinball machine of china cats.

Later, we walked down towards the seedier part of town, past the Harley Davidson Cafe and the Travel Lodge. There are Elvis impersonators here, just like in the more upscale portion of the strip. Instead of young blond models playing the role of cops, here you see Darth Vader and the Mario Brothers.

The streets are just as crowded here, but they are littered with the cards of scantily clad women in suggestive poses that you can see at some club, or perhaps pay extra for a private show. The people in this part of town are also looking for something, but with perhaps a little less pretense. Or, really, perhaps with just a different set of pretenses. The pretense of being rich and glamourous seems unattainable, and is replaced with some other pretense, some other longing, leading back to the desire for human connection that is hidden beneath the illusions and simulations.

This is a world of brands, and it is harder to get your brand recognized when every other brand is trying so hard to be recognized. My mind goes to Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, and the heroine who is a cool seeker, allergic to brands. I don't have that allergy, but I can see where Gibson got the idea and feel a little bit of it.

Further out of town is Occupy Las Vegas. It is a bit far to walk and we don't go down there. Occupy Las Vegas seems somehow redundant. You don't need a bunch of kids camping in tents to point out the great disparities of wealth. You can see it walking from the Cosmopolitan down to the Travel Lodge; not only in the buildings and the decor, but also in the people themselves. Further down the strip, you find the more of the folks with cardboard signs and dreadlocked hair, looking like they've been occupying Las Vegas for much longer than the Occupy Wall Street Movement has been around.

I don't remember my historical periods that well, but it feels like Las Vegas is reflecting one of the many periods in history of great economic disparities. The rich play opulently and everyone else struggles to get by.

Underneath all of this feels like there is a current of everyone being on the make, in one way or another. Trying to get something from someone else. Even the free gifts are come-ons.

A major premise of this experimental memoir is to live one's life as if it were the great American Novel. These past few days don't feel so much like that. They haven't been about the written word, as much as I try to find words for them. Instead, there is much more of a popular electronic culture, as if I am caught in a song, a movie, or perhaps a video game. Everything seems to be an image, representing something else, instead of standing on its own. It feels like what Baudrillard was warning against and I wonder if there is some way of breaking through the illusions.

This gives the whole experience a touch of a science fiction feel to it. Las Vegas, as an anti-utopian paradise, where the outsider, the interloper is drawn to the illusion, but rejects it and tries to break through the illusions to make human contact. Perhaps by giving out free hugs. Online, I find a video of someone giving free hugs on the strip, and later I see a bail bondsman advertisement that also includes the line, "Free Hugs".

The altered reality of it, surreality? hyperreality? Superreality?,I'm not sure, is amplified by the different time zone. I went to bed early last night and woke up early this morning. I never sleep well when I travel, and it is worse when I cross time zones. Tomorrow, I'll wake up early and spend much of the day in flight back to Connecticut. Perhaps I'll have more energy to write, more ideas.

With the conference over, I no longer have access to the free conference WiFi. The limited internet connectivity afforded by my cell phone is enough for right now. On my phone, I check various emails and messages on different social media platforms. Somehow, the connections via social media established over a combination of radio signals between my phone and towers connecting me to the internet seem much more real, much more personal than the simulated illusions people are participating on the strip. It will be good to be back in Connecticut tomorrow.