#marrying absurd

[cupidford]

Johnlock Love Letters

(AKA - JL3 Declarations of Love from fan fiction) #755

Marrying Absurd by JenTheSweetie

[disceautdiscede]

Las Vegas is the most extreme and allegorical of American settlements, bizarre and beautiful in its venality and in its devotion to immediate gratification, a place the tone of which is set by mobsters and call girls and ladies' room attendants with amyl nitrite poppers in their uniform pockets. Almost everyone notes that there is no "time" in Las Vegas, no night and no day and no past and no future...neither is there any logical sense of where one is. One is standing on a highway in the middle of a vast hostile desert looking at an eighty-foot sign which blinks "STARDUST" or "CAESAR'S PALACE." Yes, but what does that explain? This geographical implausibility reinforces the sense that what happens there has no connection with "real" life; Nevada cities like Reno and Carson are ranch towns, Western towns, places behind which there is some historical imperative. But Las Vegas seems to exist only in the eye of the beholder.

Joan Didion, from “Marrying Absurd,” published in the essay anthology Slouching Towards Bethlehem

[unshynessmoviesbooks]

Las Vegas is the most extreme and allegorical of American settlements, bizarre and beautiful in its venality and in its devotion to immediate gratification, a place the tone of which is set by mobsters and call girls and ladies' room attendants with amyl nitrite poppers in their uniform pockets. Almost everyone notes that there is no "time" in Las Vegas, no night and no day and no past and no future; neither is there any logical sense of where one is.

Joan Didion, from “Marrying Absurd”

[conky]

But Las Vegas seems to offer something other than “convenience”; it is merchandising “niceness,” the facsimile of proper ritual, to children who do not know how else to find it, how to make the arrangements, how to do it “right.”

--Joan Didion, "Marrying Absurd"

Isn't this just everything now? HGTV and magazines and reality shows and "The Sports Guy" writing 20,000 word treatises on "How to get from your man-cave to a blackjack table in 21 simple steps" and Ikea and Mad Men and red carpet coverage? In the 45 years since this was written haven't we all ended up living in a tacky wedding chapel, trying to pick out the perfect all-inclusive package TO ME?