Friday, April 08, 2005
I AM a Total Dork
All this week I've been attempting to get my bi-annual clothes shopping out of the way, since wearing the same pair of pants three days in a row can get a little...shall we say, creepy?...after a couple of months. On Wednesday night I went to my local corporate death machine über-store because I am poor and they use slave labor which, of course, us crazy liberal Democrats wholeheartedly endorse. More meat for the grinder, I say! So there I stood, in this market of mediocrity, this bastion of consumerism run amok, carefully picking and plotting my way through the clearance racks for affordable and most-likely-previously-worn-and-returned merchandise in order to fill out my sparse wardrobe. I had picked out two pairs of shorts and one T-shirt that wouldn't look AS horrendous as everything else they were offering up to clothe my horrendous frame.
After picking out said sundries, and against my better judgement, I continued to browse the non-clothing parts of the store. After frolicking gaily among the frills and false flowers of the crafts section like a Vietnamese grandmother during Tet, I wandered aimlessly through rows upon rows of bargain basement DVDs, priced-to-own pots and pans, and sub-standard car batteries until I got...THERE.
THERE is where my entire conception of myself as a responsible adult came crashing down like so much of my self-esteem. THERE is where the entire world halted for the briefest of moments, and the very devil himself crawled into my brain and took control. THERE is where I realized any semblance of maturity I may have tricked myself into believing existed within my body was merely the faintest twinkling of an ever-elusive star. THERE is where every piece of subliminal marketing that has been injected into my frontal lobe spewed forth in one glorious eruption of irresponsible purchasing power.
I ejected the T-shirt from my carriage. One pair of shorts lay wounded at the fore of the aisle. And I picked up not ONE...
not TWO...
but FIVE Star Wars Revenge of the Sith action figures.
FIVE. Priced at $5.24 a piece.
I can almost feel my tough-as-nails grandfather weeping from beyond the grave. I only hope that he understands that there was nothing I could do. There was no stopping "THE PURCHASE"©. I watched helplessly as my hands flew through the air, clutching 3¾" plastic representations of C3PO and General Grevious in thier elaborate packaging, grabbing R2D2 from in front of a small child, and delighting in the prospect of placing Yoda and Darth Vader side-by-side next to my computer screen, light sabers crossed, blankly staring into the nothingness with thier dead eyes. I smiled pleasantly at the teenaged blonde female cashier and slowly unhooked her bra as she gave me my change. Or at least, that's what went on in my head.
I went through the self-checkout in shame. The robotic voice thanked me for shopping at thier establishment. I flipped it off and got the hell out of there.
I will most likely pick up the Emperor this weekend.
EDIT: Sorry about the quadruple post earlier; Blogger went assfuck all OVER my shit, and gave me about 500 "No Content" messages yesterday. Which was when I wrote and submitted this fucking thing. YESTERDAY. So I've had the same window open for about 24 hours now, just pressing publish post or, when I was feeling saucy, Save as Draft. I'm surprised it didn't publish this little anecdote a couple dozen times. Had that happened, I probably wouldn't have even bothered deleting them all. I would've just yelled "APRIL FOOLS!" and ran away as if I was a giddy British schoolboy. More kippers, Mum?
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All this week I've been attempting to get my bi-annual clothes shopping out of the way, since wearing the same pair of pants three days in a row can get a little...shall we say, creepy?...after a couple of months. On Wednesday night I went to my local corporate death machine über-store because I am poor and they use slave labor which, of course, us crazy liberal Democrats wholeheartedly endorse. More meat for the grinder, I say! So there I stood, in this market of mediocrity, this bastion of consumerism run amok, carefully picking and plotting my way through the clearance racks for affordable and most-likely-previously-worn-and-returned merchandise in order to fill out my sparse wardrobe. I had picked out two pairs of shorts and one T-shirt that wouldn't look AS horrendous as everything else they were offering up to clothe my horrendous frame.
After picking out said sundries, and against my better judgement, I continued to browse the non-clothing parts of the store. After frolicking gaily among the frills and false flowers of the crafts section like a Vietnamese grandmother during Tet, I wandered aimlessly through rows upon rows of bargain basement DVDs, priced-to-own pots and pans, and sub-standard car batteries until I got...THERE.
THERE is where my entire conception of myself as a responsible adult came crashing down like so much of my self-esteem. THERE is where the entire world halted for the briefest of moments, and the very devil himself crawled into my brain and took control. THERE is where I realized any semblance of maturity I may have tricked myself into believing existed within my body was merely the faintest twinkling of an ever-elusive star. THERE is where every piece of subliminal marketing that has been injected into my frontal lobe spewed forth in one glorious eruption of irresponsible purchasing power.
I ejected the T-shirt from my carriage. One pair of shorts lay wounded at the fore of the aisle. And I picked up not ONE...
not TWO...
but FIVE Star Wars Revenge of the Sith action figures.
FIVE. Priced at $5.24 a piece.
I can almost feel my tough-as-nails grandfather weeping from beyond the grave. I only hope that he understands that there was nothing I could do. There was no stopping "THE PURCHASE"©. I watched helplessly as my hands flew through the air, clutching 3¾" plastic representations of C3PO and General Grevious in thier elaborate packaging, grabbing R2D2 from in front of a small child, and delighting in the prospect of placing Yoda and Darth Vader side-by-side next to my computer screen, light sabers crossed, blankly staring into the nothingness with thier dead eyes. I smiled pleasantly at the teenaged blonde female cashier and slowly unhooked her bra as she gave me my change. Or at least, that's what went on in my head.
I went through the self-checkout in shame. The robotic voice thanked me for shopping at thier establishment. I flipped it off and got the hell out of there.
I will most likely pick up the Emperor this weekend.
EDIT: Sorry about the quadruple post earlier; Blogger went assfuck all OVER my shit, and gave me about 500 "No Content" messages yesterday. Which was when I wrote and submitted this fucking thing. YESTERDAY. So I've had the same window open for about 24 hours now, just pressing publish post or, when I was feeling saucy, Save as Draft. I'm surprised it didn't publish this little anecdote a couple dozen times. Had that happened, I probably wouldn't have even bothered deleting them all. I would've just yelled "APRIL FOOLS!" and ran away as if I was a giddy British schoolboy. More kippers, Mum?
