Kudos to the PopMatters website for hitting on a new way to understand Las Vegas: keen analysis of the Yellow Pages.

“Like Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel, the inhabitants of the town he put on the map do not trend toward self-realization,” the site’s books blogger reported in February; “it should therefore come as no surprise that ‘full service’ massage parlors outrank book stores by a staggering ratio in Las Vegas.”

By God, they’re on to something! What else can the Yellow Pages tell us about ourselves? Well, along with being horny (massage parlors and all those “entertainer” ads), we like to sit when we don’t read (more furniture listings than bookstores), prefer reading each others’ skin to books (more tattoo listings) and care far more about plumbing than reading. Presumably this will change when Las Vegans become self-realized—which might take awhile, given the scant listings for psychotherapists.

While it’s regrettable that Vegas doesn’t have more bookstores, the PopMatters Yellow Pages Analysis Method makes it clear that more of us read than skydive, so we do have that going for us.