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I hate shopping. Or rather, I hate when other people are shopping at the same time I am. I tend to actually enjoy running out and blowing my hard earned money on DVDs, video games, and comic books. But not when I have to deal with other people to do it.
The worst day of the year you could POSSIBLY go shopping is the day after Thanksgiving, for this is when everyone and their neighbor decides to go out and find the "bargains". Even the crazy old hermit comes down the mountain on this day to buy enough supplies to get him through the next year before disappearing from our sight again. Only a fool would go shopping on a day like this. And yet, I went.
You see, I was lured, quite cruelly, by a Best Buy advertisement that promised me a copy of Fight Club on DVD for merely $11.99. Normally it's about $28. Now that's quite a deal, especially when you're talking about a brilliant piece of film that was only outdone last year by American Beauty (in my humble opinion, anyway). And though the deal was for Friday AND Saturday, my prescient abilities told me that it would be completely sold out by Saturday, so there was only ONE day to go. And that was the most dreaded shopping day of the year.
So I laced up my combat boots, threw on the trenchcoat, prepared the gas grenades and sharpened the knife. Never good to go without the proper tools. Having properly prepared myself, I hopped into the car and headed off. I had forgotten, really, how bad traffic is on this terrible, terrible day. And it's not so much only the sheer NUMBER of cars on the road, it's also the fact that everyone's intelligence drops to about that of a brick when they get behind the wheel on this day. No, scratch that, not just any brick. A fucking stupid brick.
As I was parked in the middle of a wall of plastic and steel that wasn't going to be going anywhere for a while (when simply watching the pretty green traffic light is apparently more fun than hitting the gas), I turned on the radio. Gah! Fuck! Christmas music! I changed the station. MORE Christmas music! I fucking HATE Christmas music! I gave up on the radio pretty quick and popped in a tape as the wall of cars began to inch forward once again.
Finally, I arrived at Best Buy. Fuck. Parking lot was full of cars. Fortunately, while all those other dumbfucks drove around in circles, I stalked a person coming out of the store right to their car, nearly driving all over their heels the whole time. Their spot was mine! Mine, I tell you!
I walked inside the store and was totally unprepared for the smelly horde of people waiting within, milling about like cattle ready to be slaughtered. Well, in my opinion they were ready to be slaughtered anyway. My jaw dropped with a loud proclamation of "Fuck!" as I stood inside the doorway. The kid who was standing nearby's jaw dropped open too when he heard me say "fuck" but hey, those are the hazards of shopping on a day like this. No sympathy here, kid.
After pushing and shoving and cursing my way back to the DVD section, I was pleased to see that they still had plenty of copies of Fight Club left for sale, so I grabbed mine quickly and then decided to look around the rest of the store. Boy, that was stupid of me. I don't know what I thought I would see, because there was a person IN THE FUCKING WAY every time I turned around and tried to look at anything! If there's one thing I hate, it's when people are IN MY FUCKING WAY. This is why I hate shopping when other people do. Normally I save my shopping for 2 am at Wal-Mart, or during off hours at whatever store I'm going to, where I'll only have to deal with a bare minimum of morons. Not so today, oh no!
I quickly gave up on the idea of looking at other things, and got into one of the mammoth lines. I stood in the back of the line. I looked at my watch. I continued to stand in the back of the line. The line did not move. The line continued to not move. As I waited in this line for over twenty minutes, I looked around at the other people in the store who were also waiting in line.
And THAT'S when it hit me! The worst part about shopping on the day after Thanksgiving isn't the traffic, it isn't the bad Christmas music on the radio, it isn't the crowds, it isn't waiting in line, and it isn't the morons. It's much more insidious than any of that. It's having to look at the CRAP these other people are buying. That is by far the worst part. Nobody you see in line is EVER buying ANYTHING you would even REMOTELY consider worthwhile. They're buying things that I wouldn't even buy for my WORST fucking enemy! I looked over and saw one older woman buying not one but TWO copies of the "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" computer game. If anybody EVER gives me a copy of that computer game, I will gouge out their eye with a sharp stick, and that is a fucking promise. The hillbilly girl and goofy boy band reject in front of me were buying all sorts of horrid Pokemon paraphernalia. Someone else was buying the new Backstreet Boys cd, simpering stupidly the whole while.
And then I really had to wonder why in the hell I bothered racing down to the store to pick up Fight Club so quickly in the first place. I should have remembered that most of these yokels don't have anything remotely resembling anything even barely RELATED to good taste. What in the hell was I worried about? I don't really know. Maybe I'm just a masochist, and I wanted to suffer by going out into the horde of sweaty, smelly, stupid humanity. Or maybe on some level I was hoping that all of the copies of Fight Club would have already been gone from the shelves and that I wouldn't have to worry so much about the future of mankind. But they weren't. So I guess most of the people out there are happy with their fucking Pokemon and Regis crap games. But not me. Never in a million years me.
note: Protoclown wasn't even buying shit for other people
this day, he was buying shit for himself! What a selfish bastard!
note #2: -RoG- now has to go
back to Best Buy to return the "Who Wants To Be A
Millionaire?" computer game that he bought for Protoclown.
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