I'm in Las Vegas, where I've come with my brother to catch up on life while watching my favorite magic show: money disappearing right before my eyes.

With all the extravaganzas to choose from here in the Neon City, I consider the best show to be watching fellow sojourners in the casinos deal with the inevitable ups and downs of random processes. Many of them will expound on their na�ve theories of luck and probability (one interest of mine); often, with no encouragement, some of them will open their lives to me (another interest of mine).

I prefer the blackjack table as a great place to meet that special someone. You can learn more about a person in an hour there than you could from twenty dates. Of course, to see and enjoy this show, you have to set aside your own emotions. I do this by telling myself that I'm willing to lay out a grand for two full days of this entertainment. When I'm losing, it's easy to keep this in mind. What's hard is maintaining my perspective after scooping in several big hands in a row. "Maybe," I think, "I'm finally on to something."

The people you encounter here cut across all demographics and types. On this trip, I spent several hours between a fifty-year-old brain surgeon from L.A. who, with some patients, will agree to a free consultation if they tell him a lurid joke he hasn't heard; and a twenty-five- year-old lass trying to break into radio who gambled away her cab fare and then fought back tears until I helped her figure out how she was going to get back to her hotel a few miles away. "My brother will take you," I volunteered.

This is my first trip to Vegas since becoming a PoopReporter, and I came in high hopes of finding some worthwhile material. What made me particularly hopeful was the knowledge that many gamblers find it almost impossible to step away from a table or slot machine if they think either that their luck is running good or that their bad luck is about to turn around. Of course, one of those two conditions always applies, so for these people there never is a good time to step away. As a PoopReporter, I hoped to document the behavioral fallout of this war, which pits the allure of instant fortune against the mounting pain of intestinal and bladder build-up. As far as I know, no one has reported from this front before. With a good story here, I figured I could become the Peter Arnett of crap.

Once hunkered down on the front line, I soon discovered that it's hard to spot your target in an active war zone -- just try to pick out the people who need to go real bad from those who are just excited. In a casino, everything and everyone is jumping. Lights are flashing, sirens are going, people are leaping out of their chairs and shouting, faces are contorting, hands are wringing, bodies are squirming in seats. You worry that people who aren't moving are dead. And nearly everyone walks briskly towards the restrooms, but not necessarily to avoid an impending accident. They're walking fast in large part because they desperately want to get back to their destruction sites. In fact, I observed that people walked the fastest when headed towards the ubiquitous ATM machines, many of which in Vegas spit out Ben Franklins.

The second day, we found a quieter venue: the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. (By the way, I highly recommend this place, especially to you rock music aficionados.) After several hours observing here with no results, I finally broke down and asked those who would know best: the dealers. "Oh, we regularly have people who pee right in their seats," one offered. I heard several detailed stories, but I can't in good faith report these here. PoopReport is all about first-hand accounts, and rightly so.

I did have a unique experience, however, in a restroom at the Hard Rock Casino. The first time I went in was to use the urinal. I found an inviting row of them, all glistening, and no one there but me. Oh, which one to bless? I choose one in the middle, which happened to have a bit more clearance between it and its neighbors. After satisfying myself, I turned around to step up to an equally-long counter of sinks when I experienced a death shudder that rattled from the nape of my neck to my balls. I was staring straight into the mirror, yet there was no reflection.

It turned out to be a counter with no wall above it, and thus approachable from both the urinals and the stalls located on the opposite side of the restroom.

My next trip in, I had to use the stalls. Mid-way through my dump, some guy walks in to the stall next to me, turns around, closes and latches the door, pulls down his pants, and plunks himself down on the toilet, resting his elbows on his thighs.

I didn't infer this -- I observed it, crisply reflected in the highly polished black marble floor.

As a PoopReporter, I saw an opportunity here, made possible by a technology not unlike those new turf cameras introduced for this year's Super Bowl. But I'm sorry; I just don't have the stomach for this sort of snoop-PoopReporting. Furthermore, it didn't take me long to realize that my neighbor had a comparable view of me. I got out of there pronto, but not without offering him a demonstration of my wiping technique. Had the people designing this place -- the floor that was a mirror, and the mirror that wasn't there -- said to themselves, "Let's have some fun"?

As I stepped up to the counter to wash my hands I noticed right across from me a thirty-year-old guy at a urinal. As he turned around, he froze, mid-zip, as he caught sight of me.

"Hey, buddy," I said, "you just got a glimpse of yourself twenty-five years from now. Take fucking care of yourself."

-- Logjam [1]

(Oh, and Dave, do I submit the travel expenses directly to you?)