Americans would rather live by a Chamber-of-Commerce Creationism...satisfied with a divinely presented Shopping Mall. The integrity and character of our own ancestors is dismissed with "I couldn't live like that" by people who barely know how to live at all.
Gary Snyder (1930 - ), Poet, essayist
Shopping. We made the mistake of thinking it would be possible to quickly run into Best Buy on Friday afternoon to avoid the crowds. The Misanthrope is obviously not much of a shopper. But, we can say for certain that NASCAR has nothing on the figure-eight parking-lot demolition derby that occurs in these shopping mall lots around the holiday season.
The trouble starts by trying to fit all the elephantine vehicles (Humvees and huge SUVs) into a small boa constrictor parking lot. Meanwhile, rather than park another 10 yards away from the store, people stop their car in the middle of a parking aisle backing-up traffic, waiting five minutes or more (they could have jogged around the block and still got into the store quicker) for the finished-shopper to load his/her car with packages, arrange the bundles to ensure they don’t tumble about, then the finished-shopper eventually saunters into the car and with the careful precision of a diamond cutter attempts to back out. In the interim, parking-lot traffic has snaked out to the street inferring with boulevard traffic.
Once this time-efficient shopper moves out of the way, it’s as if the gates of hell have just opened and the starting flag waved as cars race around looking for spaces before the music stops. Tis the season to be jolly?
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