Land of Ten Thousand Lemmings
Ok. A review of this mornings news indicates that holiday shopping is getting mixed reviews and not enough people are buying things at Wall-Mart, and dammit people are not gobbling up enough high ticket items and therefore the economy is going to have a bad day on the streets of wall. It’s our fault. We aren’t buying enough crap. We only have two more days to right our wrongs!!! Well luckily people, Afrojet is here. A sane and comforting voice to speak clearly through the endless noise of cash registers, HDTV 7.1 surround sound demonstrations, and mouse squeaking one-click shopping. People. Put away your credit cards. The economy is doing just fine.

Venturing out yesterday into a sea of humanity that clawed over each other to get that precious last minute gift, gave me deep horrible flashbacks of when I was a skinny ten years old tight-end for the Phalen Park Raiders. In the big game, I fumbled the ball on the 2 yard line and ended up at the bottom of a pile so crushing that I almost wet my pants.

All pretense of Christmas cheer has been wiped away from the faces of all, replaced by gnarly grimaces and desperate attitudes. Trying to get into the parking lot of a major electronics dealer yesterday, I was confronted by law officers roping off whole sections of parking lots with criminal Police Line Do Not Cross yellow tape. When they were questioned as to why they were doing what they were doing, they mumbled back, “Because, they pay us to do it.” Jigga what?!? Since when? Isn’t there more pressing criminal issues than securing parking lot space for mega electronics companies. Am I missing something here? Walking into said store, I was greeted by a 14 year old bleach spiked topped pimple freak child laborer, who welcomed and then asked oh so insincerely how we were doing, no doubt repeating a line some training video tape had burned into his mellon. Stopping in the midst of the endless flood of humans pouring into doors, I stated that I was, “doing well thanks and how are you doing?” As I stood there he did not even acknowledge my presence a mere 18 inches in front of his face. He simply looked over my shoulder and greeted everyone else with his holiday poetics. I swear I may have seen a microchip just behind his left ear flashing periodically.

And so it was that I wrestled with the lemmings to secure items for my loved ones. I stood shoulder to shoulder with people in the DVD aisle and, not having the patience to actually think logically and critically what DVD’s would actually be a good match for friends and family, I just punched my hand through when I saw an opening. I was content to buy whatever ended up in my hand. Rob Schnieder movies for everyone. The economy doing bad? Consumer confidence down? No way! The shelves were practically empty. I went to find one popular CD for the missus and found six of those empty place cards with the bands name above it holding back nothing. No product. Sold out. A search for a major appliance revealed that not only did this store not have any of that item in stock but no store in Minnesota had that item in stock. This was the trend of the day. Everywhere we went. People hungrily buying. Either the economists are lying through their teeth or we are all going to wake up with one hellova January shopping hangover. I already feel a bit queazy.