Are you supposed to be a cat or a prostitute?

Aside from New Year's and payday, Halloween is Vegas' favorite holiday. The already crazy populace of the city has an excuse to get a little crazier, to let it all hang out, and be completely unapologetic about it. We even have a strategically placed government holiday, Nevada Day, that acts as a buffer from work sometime around Halloween weekend.

I'm curious to see what this Halloween will bring. For those of you who haven't been to Fremont Street lately, the place has turned into a sad Hollywood Boulevard. A guy dressed as Freddy Kruger has been stationed there for weeks. In fact, entire brigades of unemployed people have taken to downtown, costumed and desperate to make money from a photo op. How we'll tell the professional Jokers from the amateurs, I have no idea. Chances are, both demographics will be drunk when October 31 comes around.

As fun as Halloween is here, a place where you don't have to be a kid to celebrate, it's pretty stressful. There's a lot of pressure for a woman to find an original, flattering costume that won't disintegrate when doused with booze. Ok, to be honest, most women aren't all that creative. The scantily-clad teenagers in the pre-incarceration Lohan flick, "Mean Girls," spoofed it best: You really can't tell a cat costume from the work uniform of an actual prostitute.

This year, all my personal costume inclinations have been too political, from "recession showgirl," who would don a headdress made of beer cans and old newspaper, to being the city of Las Vegas in a t-shirt that reads "15% unemployment," and "foreclosed," maybe I'm just not in the mood. I've finally settled on a flapper. After all, what would be more ironic right now than an outfit right out of the Roaring Twenties?

When it rains, it floods

Between working, going to school full time, launching a new website, and buying my first pair of jeggings, I've been really busy lately. Then, this morning, my life was put on hold when I woke up to ridiculously heavy rain. In any other city, rain means nothing more than dragging around an awkward umbrella, but in Vegas, rain equals Armageddon.

First of all, people in the desert don't know how to drive in the rain. Or if they once did, they completely forget as soon as they cross the Hoover Dam. People drive about 20 mph and STILL insist on crashing into each other. Once, I even saw a car catch on fire in the rain.

Second, the streets flood. The city was built before climate change was even a term that "scientists" could deny, so we don't have a sewer system. This makes Vegas less advanced than India circa 1500 B.C. The point is, I had to drive for an hour to get to work today. And since I know I don't have any readers in Los Angeles, that's a long time to all of us.

But my extended commute did give me time to think. It gave me time to breathe. And it gave me time to make a mental list of everything I wanted to be hit by lightening. None of those people/places were, of course, but it's fun to pretend.

The Classic Vegas Night

Many tourists think a classic Vegas evening begins with Tequila shots, centers on losing your money playing baccarat, and ends with a head in the toilet (not that you'd remember). And I don't think "The Hangover" helped our case any. But really, a classic night in Vegas is characterized by nothing. Classic Vegas is completely random.

Tonight, for example, we headed to The Palms Casino to see Vampire Weekend, an indie band that has been around for a few years now and has recently gained modest notoriety in the mainstream. The occasion was a launch party for Fallout: New Vegas, a video game sequel set in a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas. I'm not sure why Vampire Weekend was playing at this event, or even how I ended up on the guest list exactly, but that's just so typical. In Vegas, you never really know what's going to happen next.

But then, before the band went on, who steps into the spotlight but Mr. Vegas himself, Wayne Newton, wearing a half-mesh black shirt and looking, well, as weird as usual. He awkwardly referred to Fallout as a "video I had to be a part of," and then sort of stood there while everyone took pictures of his plastic mug with their iPhones. Bizarre and strange.

That's all. There wasn't really a point to this post. It's just sort of a weird slice of life.

Pushing people into limos and other Vegas career options

I know I've been posting a lot about jobs, careers, and career-hunting lately, but I haven't had time to think about much else. I've applied to some jobs lately that I truly hoped I would get. And then there's everything else.

At least job hunting in Las Vegas is entertaining. There was the posting for "Steel Erection Manager," which is giggle-worthy just from the title. This is pretty much what I'd call level-one job search humor: The simple idea of the job is funny.

Level-two humor occurs when the salary or, more often, wage, is laughable. I can't tell you how many times I've been really excited about a certain job until I get down to the bottom and see how much they're offering to pay me. "Seeking ghostwriter to turn my life story into a manuscript. $9 per hour." Come on people. I'm a professional.

Level-three humor is, I think, mostly unique to Vegas, though I'm sure lots of locales have their own version of it. Level-three humor occurs in the job description, maybe in some of the listed duties or directions for the hiring process. "Woman needed to shove tourists into cabs to be driven to VIP locale," is a hilarious way of saying that you'll have to target drunk twenty-somethings who look like they're apt to lose track of direction while someone drives them in circles on the way to an unmarked brothel. "Looking for an experienced executive assistant who types at least 70 wpm and has knowledge of Excel. Must be willing to interview in a bathing suit," is another way an employer says he doesn't care if you know how to answer the phone; he was short in high school. Now he's a freelance accountant, dammit.

At least, in the dismal process of job hunting, I get a few laugh breaks. Even though I'm not going to submit a paralegal application that requires headshots.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred job applications

Ok, not really. But you have applied for 42 jobs. Here's some more employment math: You've received two nice rejection emails, one rejection phone call, and zero interviews. It's like a countdown, except at the end, instead of a rocket taking off, you have a cocktail.

Did you know that all the fixings for turkey sandwiches for every meal for one week are only $13? Also, if you feel guilty stealing the internet at a coffee shop without buying anything, the cheapest drink is generally a small iced tea. And you won't run out of gas driving across town with the needle below empty.

And no matter how much debt in graduate student loans you carry, you still aren't qualified to work at the make-up counter at Macy's. Not even as the person who takes the inventory.

But you're alive. You're alive, and you have some amazing friends and family. So there's that. At least there's that.

Shameless Self-Promotion

Hello, Loyal Followers (all three of you). My editing business has really been picking up lately, so I thought I'd spread the word that I am a freelance editor in addition to being a teacher, student, and asshole. My undergraduate degree was actually in editing, and I have lots of experience editing things like term papers, resumes, applications, business plans, grants, etc. I charge really competitive rates, and I'm practically broke. Actually, my rates are probably why I'm broke. Hmm, that's a topic for a different blog.

Cheers.

I was just trying to send a letter

For the first time in months, I took a trip to America's favorite artifact: the post office. Usually, if I need to mail a package, I go to the grocery store near my house, but they always have really long lines, and I just wasn't in the mood today.

Apparently, the postal service has finally realized they are soon to be extinct, because they seemed to be making an honest effort to improve their customer service. Of course, what this really did was piss me off.

I was sending a flash drive across the country, along with an invoice for my editing business. I picked up the smallest padded envelope I could find and stood at the island to address and stuff the envelope. But then this annoying postal worker began systematically accosting everyone, traveling from person to person, trying to be "of help" by suggesting alternative methods of mail transport.

"Is that all you're mailing?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Well, before you do that, let me just..." he said, taking my envelope away and going over to the wall of packaging stuff to grab a cheaper, un-padded envelope.

"Here, you go. This will save you 80 cents!" he replied gleefully.

"Um, ok. But won't that rip open? It better not rip open."

"Uh..." he replied.

"This is a really important package," I said.

"Well, how far are you sending it again?"

"To Florida."

"Um, well, it should be fine."

It should be fine, he said. Great, that reeks of confidence.

"Fine," I said. "Give me the cheapo envelope."

I packed everything up stood in the line for checkout, assured that the worst customer service of the day was over. The available mail clerk was a short, partially bald, middle-aged guy who wore two huge silver pentagrams from his neck and insisted on wearing his hair in a ponytail even though he was partially bald. He also sweated profusely.

Him: Hello. How are you today?
Me: Fine. How are you?
Him (smiling mischievously): Well, I'm great now.
Me: Oh?
Him: You wanna know why????
Me: I think you're about to tell me.
Him: Because you're here! You wanna know why that makes me happy?
Me: Uh.
Him: Because you're sooooo pretty! It always brightens my day when a beautiful girl enters my line!
Me (handing him the package): That's nice.
Him (swiping my credit card incorrectly, then swiping it again): Oh! You're not married.
Me (looking at my hand): Um, no.
Him: I can cook! Haha! I'm naughty today!
Me (grabbing my credit card and fighting back vomit): Uh, ok, thanks.

Normally, I would be really mean to the guy, but apparently this was how he translated their new, improved customer service initiative. Customer service=sexual harassment. I thought of his personal life, conducting desert seances and preparing Ramen noodles six different ways, splitting the portions between himself and his three cats, named after the girls from "Charmed." I couldn't be mean. Actually, I just drove away. Now that's restraint.