Bright light city gonna set my soul, gonna set my soul on fire...

I've never been to Vegas and have very little desire to do so any time in the near future. The place just never really appealed to me - I don't gamble and I am not a shopper (at least not in the recreational sense). Despite the city's declarations that Vegas is now a family vacation destination, it seems its dark underbelly is thriving. The Salon article "Bright Lights, Big Weirdness" chronicles a couple of wild murder cases that have come out of Vegas in the past couple of years:

"The myriad connections -- innocent as they may be -- between the Rudin and Murphy cases do nothing to dispel the notion of Vegas as the glittering capital of inbred thuggery, a hot, cheap burg where amoral yahoos party with mobsters while the town's behemoth gambling factories trick hardworking saps out of their vacation money. "

I bet the Las Vegas Tourist Board is gonna love that.