And I visit the casino, with the view to improving my fortunes.
It's hopeless, this, I'm better off buying a lottery ticket, the amount of improving my fortune needs far exceeds any lucky streak this casino can offer.
But I'm looking for opportunity, trying to get out of my box, do different things, and this is one of those things. Never mind that the every fibre of my being resists this, it's where I'm off tonight.
From the moment of entering I'm distracted by the endless rows of VLT's.
I'm not a VLT sort of guy. I'll play them, for a few minutes, but the money goes too quick, the addiction wears thin, the winnings are trivial, the amusement slim and the losses great.
I walk through the dimly-lit maze of VLT's, searching for some games tables. Eventually I find some, but situated, as they are, in the dim light between the forest of VLT's and their attendant zombies I'm not so inspired.
I have a different vision of a Casino, and this isn't it.
I'm picturing, remembering a time when Casinos had a dress code, demanded membership, when the only games were table games - Baccarat, Craps, Roulette, Blackjack, Poker. Where to be there meant you had money to lose. I had a membership in London once, Charlie Chesters, I remember them because they sent me birthday cards, even when I moved back to Canada.
Now, here - and I mean the Alberta Government and the Native Run Casinos - they're all about the VLT's. I know they're great earners, but there's something missing. You follow around the retired people squandering their pensions, or smell them sat in front of their "Lucky" VLT, their pampers on to ensure they don't have to leave, you see the gangsters laundering their drug and other ill-gotten gains - obviously - (and in Victoria they've actually found money stained with dye-packs being laundered in government casinos), you see the single moms squandering their child support and welfare payments, single dads wasting - like me - their EI on the hope that they'll be paid just enough to....
It's bleak. Really bleak. There's no hope here, only despair, and I leave long before my budget's expired.
I have a different vision of a Casino. Where you can only lose money you have to lose, no VLT's, more Croupiers, table games, and everyone is dressed well. Here it's like standing in the welfare-recycling line.