Are Oompa Loompas and flying monkeys normal?

     It's the start of 2011 and time to take stock of our lives.  And I find myself wondering if I'm actually living a normal life.  I'm pretty sure I'm not.  I've been reading a friend's upcoming book (she was nice enough to give me a sneak peek before it's published) and notice how the problems in the book don't really relate to the kind of problems I have here in my life.  I know her book is fiction, but it's about romance, and unhappy marriages, and kids, and...well, things like that.  A rekindled romance, and how things eventually worked out.  Meanwhile, here's my life:

     After working Saturday night and finishing off a wild and stupid New Year's Eve, I was invited to a party with my coworkers.  It was to be held at a strip club called "Hustler's."  Yes, related to the magazine. A lovely morning of drinking, sleazy women, and discussing how we watched idiots beat on each other and destroy property all weekend.  Since I don't drink, I declined.  Someone received a call from "Hustler's" before our shift was over though, and was told that the place had to "close prematurely before the party" and would be unavailable to us.  So were they raided?  Maybe didn't have an up to date liquor license and were caught?  I don't know, they didn't want to tell the reason why.

     So the get together was moved to some other place.  I think it was moved to some place called "Crazy Horse 3?"  I tried, but couldn't even download any pictures of that place.  Since I don't drink, don't really care for people that much, and didn't feel like dropping a few hundred dollars or more on some stripper who I'd probably never see again (Unless of course I went back to the club to drop even more money), I still declined to go to this place, too.  I overheard them telling one coworker who isn't well liked (Ok, no one likes him) to meet at a dumpster on the corner of Tropicana and Maryland Parkway.  I wonder if he actually showed up there and waited for other people?

     Do other people go to strip joints to celebrate surviving New Year's weekend?  I wonder how the party went?  One guy told me, "You don't have to worry about the strippers, we'll have our own room with all the beer we can drink!"  So...they have a rented room at a strip joint and no strippers will come into the room, huh?  Somehow I don't think a strip joint rents out rooms like that.  I wonder if anyone got into trouble, and who was the first person thrown out?

     I grew up in an area where there weren't too many divorced people.  Here it seems like everyone is either divorced, or cheating on their wife.  Or cheating on their girlfriend.  Or cheating on the girl they're cheating on their girlfriend, or wife with.  This place is nothing like where I grew up.  I have two friends who call where they live "Villages."  I thought villages were tiny little hamlets that only existed in movies now.  I guess I'm wrong.  One lives in a little village in England, and the other a little village in Michigan.  Who knew there were villages in Michigan?

     There's an old Chinese curse that goes: "May you live an interesting life."  I wonder if I've been cursed like that?  I certainly live an interesting life.  I go to work to see domestic violence between people, thefts, hookers, drunks, and all manner of insanity.  I live in a world of neon now.  A world that looks good on the outside, but inside is full of greed, and violence.  I do wonder occasionally if I moved somewhere else, found another job that didn't involve all of this, would I be bored now?  Even if I do leave eventually, I'll never think about Las Vegas the same way again.

And all I can say for 2011 is wow.