Mall Carnies

Posted on 13 December, 2008 by Spark E.

 

Twas two weeks before Christmas
and all through the mall
the carnies were lurking
and accosting us all.
Like many people, I don’t like Christmas shopping. I especially don’t like going to a shopping mall. I get very claustrophobic around large herds of unpredictable slow moving humans with little to no spacial awareness. So suffice it to say, I have not been in a long time; Many months for certain. And while I have noticed the phenomenon I am about to mention before, it hasn’t seemed quite so rampant till late. The subject I mean is the “Mall-Carnies”.

Apparently waiting for customers in the concourse of mall to choose the store they wanted to go into was not convenient enough. Some retail marketting genius decided it would be better to bring the store out to the customer instead.

Where once there were places for people to walk or sit, now the center of the mall corridors have been turned into retail sales space. The former pedestrian areas have been whored out with booths for all manner of specialty items. I call them “Mall-Carnies” because the people who man these sudden kiosks have the same manner of interaction as the carnies at the state fairs of my childhood. You run the gauntlet of salespeople stopping you to try a sample of this or that while they try to engage you into a conversation as they lead you to their wares. Putting you in the awkward position of having to be rude in order to get away. God help you if you carry a cell phone on some kind holster that can be seen. There will be at least 3 competing Cell phone company booths in every mall.They will all try to snag you as you go by. Usually with some pretty 20 something asking you “Oh, hey what kind of phone to have?” And so it begins…

I think that I am particularly vulnerable to this kind of attack because I believe that my appearance is rather innocuous and non-threatening. This has been a curse throughout my misanthropic life. I don’t generally like unwanted human interaction, yet I somehow am the target of it. I am a virtual magnet for homeless people looking to score change, customers looking for help when I worked retail, people in all situations looking for directions or the location of the nearest bathroom and most of all Mall-Carnies. Apparently I have a very forgetable face as well. Because I am severely navigationally challenged, I will pass the same vendors over and over again. Each time, it’s like the first time they have laid eyes on me. They ask me what kind of cell phone I am carrying over and over again. Instead of buying lunch, I could have easily overeaten by accepting the sample food I was offered by the same Mall-Carnie each time I passed it to get to the mall directory sign.

I’m a guy with an obvious lack of style or fashion-sense. How could I possibly be interested in a portable steam-iron, curling iron or sun-glasses?? It is December in Seattle. Who would decide it would be a good idea to put a “Sunglass Hut” in the middle of a mall in SEATTLE, WASHINGTON??
But this inspires me to begin my own retail venture. I could open a stand at one of the main mall entrances and sell big, red, one-size-fits-all tee shirts. Each one imprinted front and back in capital letters “STAND BACK I AM NOT INTERESTED IN YOUR CRAP”.

Can I interest you in a free sample??
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Don’t Forget to Tip Your Server

Posted on 23 November, 2008 by Spark E.
So I do my Sunday trek to the local coffeehouse this morning.Nothing quite like a clear frosty morning to make everything crisp, clear and dry. Dryness being a luxury here. The other luxury is rewarding myself with a three dollar latte for the three mile walk.

The house contains a crowd typical for a Sunday morning at 7:30am. Not full, but somewhere between one third and half full. When I order my java, I pay in cash. I like to pay in cash so that when I walk I am not encumbered by a wallet. The other nice thing about cash is that I get change back and this allows me to leave a tip. When I use plastic, they just run the card and give me a receipt. It’s such a small amount that they don’t even make you sign. So there is no opportunity to write in a tip.

I really don’t like standing in front of a tip jar and not contributing. The folks behind the counter are making minimum wage or less. I figure if I can afford the extravagance of having someone make me coffee, how rude would it make me not to afford a tip??

The latte usually runs $3.50 or so, I give them a fivespot and dump the remains in the tip jar. Which is exactly what I did this morning. As I do this, I notice that even though there is no lack in patrons, there is a surprising lack of funds in the jar. There is one lonely buck and some change. And then it dawns on me that due to the perceived economic hardship this country is in, people are cutting back on the tips. I find this disturbing.

If one’s finances are in such poor shape that you can’t afford to tip on a three dollar cup of coffee, then perhaps you shouldn’t be buying a three dollar cup of coffee. When you don’t tip, it’s like saying “I have enough money burn on an unnecessary item, but I have absolutely no regard for anyone else in the world.”

If you need to save money then try and find things to cut back on that do the least to help your local economy. Instead of throwing things away, sell them on Craig’s List or donate them. Scale back on your cable channels. Buy something made locally in lieu of something made in a foreign country. Shop at a locally owned store instead of a chain that supports a foreign economy and shortchanges its in-store workers. Better yet, try getting something fixed rather than throwing it away and replacing it.

If your job status hasn’t changed and there is no immediate threat of losing your job then I hope you will continue to support your local economy in one of the ways that has an immediate positive impact; Tip your server.

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Murphy Christmans!

Posted on 24 December, 2007 by Spark E.

A big “Howdy” to you all from the MT state!

I’m sure you all know that here the holiday is known as

I would imagine that most of you, however do not know the
origins of this now famous holiday nomenclature. And since
I am here and have an over abundance of free time and no spell check,
I will torment all of you who have the endurance to read further.

Way back in a time that the ancients knew as “The Eighties”, there
was a little electronics store on what is probably the busiest
street in the bigest city in the fourth biggest state.

The little store had a reader board at the edge of the parking
lot that bordered on the busiest street in the biggest city
of the fourth biggest state. You know the type of reader board
I’m talking about. The kind with the three or four lines that hold
the black-on-clear plastic letters that slide into place to
make words. Or get stolen and/or fall off to make
funnier words.

It was winter time in the city and the temperatures frequently
run anywhere from -30 to the teens. This part of the state is
relatively flat and the wind is a constant nagging bone saw.
Biting at exposed flesh with the temperment of a rabid
wolverine.

The extreme cold makes normally flexible materials like the
rubber suction cup on the end of a telescoping pole rather…
unflexible. When the suction cup is in this condition, it makes
it difficult to lift a large plastic letter from ground level
to a reader board some fifteen feet high. Compounded with a gusting
wind and, well, you got yourself a job from hell. The only
satisfaction one might get is the ocassional letter being
ripped from the end of the pole by the evil wind and carrying it
unpredictably into one of the six lanes of 45mph traffic.
This has led to more than a few near wrecks, cracked windshields
and the loss of countless members of the alphabet.

It was the night before Christmas
and the call came to the store.

The owners were screaming,
“Get Merry X-mas on that board!”

The store had three sales people who we shall call Timmy, Sparky
and Davey. An election had to take place to determine who must
brave the cold and do the deed. Timmy, Sparky and Davey all drew
straws and since Davey was the new guy, it was decided that he
drew the short straw. Plus, Davey was still in high school and
hadn’t the full benifits of remedial English and watching him
spell even the simplest words on the reader board was an
endless source of amusement for Timmy and Sparky.

So Davey gathered up his weapons and what alphabetic ammuntition
he thought he would need and headed out to the parking lot.

The only way to make any progress at letter placing in winter
is to carry a large 5 gallon bucket of hot water out to the
sign so that the suction cup may be dipped and thawed long enough
to grab a letter and place it in the tracks of the reader board.
If you were good at it, you just might be able to get the letter
in the track before it became hopelessly frozen to the suction cup.

Davey was not good at it.

Being Christmas Eve, Timmy and Sparky were probably busy in the
stock room crash testing remote control cars, playing Xenos on
one of the TRS-80′s or performing some other mind-altering
activity. After some time it occurred to them that they should
supervise Davey’s progress and were amused to find him walking
back from his latest acheivement reading “MURRY CHRISTMANS” with
the suctioncup and pole still dangling from the “C”.

After Timmy and Sparky recovered from the initial hysterical
laughing fit, they inquired about the obvious mis-spellings.
Davey, being more than likely dyslexic, had completely missed
the “N” at the end of Christmas which was left over from the
previous wording of the sign. As to the “U” in place of what
should be an “E” in MERRY, he lowered his head and pointed to
the slush covered plastic letter now being ground beneath the
wheels of countless speeding cars. “It was the last E we had”
he mumbled, the “U” sounded phonetically similar to Davey.

Another round of laughter ensued.

He further explained that he became frustrated at that point and
had dunked the entire letter “C” in the bucket of no longer
hot water and it was frozen in the signs plastic tracks along
with the telescoping suction cup pole and could not be removed.

After careful analysis, we decided that the best course of action
would be to pelt the sign with snowballs until it surrendered
the pole. Which it eventually did along with an “I” which were
notoriously quick to dessert due to their narrow width.
So you can actually take an “I” out with a snowball.

After replacing the “I” we were now faced with fixing the
“MURRY”. In the freezing cold, we could not get the electrical tape
to adhere to the plastic long enough to transmute an “F” to an “E”.
“MURRY” also had the conotation of being a Jewish name, so
We decided that “MURPHY” had a nice catholic ring to it and
being as we had plenty of P’s and H’s it seemed like a more
appropriate choice.

CHRISTMANS was just plain funny.

So there you have the legend of “Murphy Christmans”.
I hope you have enjoyed learning about it as much as
I have recalling it.

This story has been brought to you by the letter “E” and
dedicated to the memory of my friend, Tim.

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Join the Anti Hyphenation League of America!

Posted on 10 August, 2007 by Spark E.
My fellow Americans. There is a disease spreading through this great country of ours. I feel that if it is not stopped, it will eventually erode the foundations of equality that our nation, the United States of America, is built upon.

This disease is quietly infiltrating our society with the guise of social acceptance, but with an insidious payload of segregation and bigotry. I am calling this disease “The Hyphenation of America”.

I have disliked it for quite some time now. But I only recently noticed how it has begun to spread and gain acceptance.

I was reading a short biography of someone on wikipedia when the information described the subject’s father as a “Jewish-American”. It caught my attention because I wasn’t aware that there was a country called “Jew”. So I was like wtf?? So now people are just hyphenating America with whatever they like. And what is the motivation? Why is it important that I take special notice of a person’s religion? How does it somehow enhance the context of an actor’s biography to know that one of their parents was Jewish?

I then had to analyze the whole concept of being a Hyphenated American. Apparently, certain people are not happy just being treated like any other human being. I am finding it strange that so many people who profess to be striving for equality are the ones vehemently using the hyphen to separate themselves from everyone else. Why?

Does the hyphen give them some sort of super powers?

Isn’t it more desirable to be recognized by your achievements, by who YOU are, than by some arbitrary facet of your predecessors?

Can’t I just be an American? Am I somehow doing some disrespect to my heritage if I don’t start describing myself as an Italian-American? Do I need to be more specific and notify my peers that I am a Sicilian- American?? How is it relevant that someone know that their Doctor’s ancestors were from Africa or that their Senator’s parents were from Mexico?

Regardless of whether you believe in some form of Creationism or Evolution, there is a “First Human” that all other humans more or less descended from and that human lived in some location probably in Africa or China or the Middle East. Unless you need a language interpreter, there is no reason the general population needs to know your latest country of origin.

Now that people are using the hyphen to classify themselves by their religious persuasion, it becomes more apparent that the hyphenator’s motivation is anything but about being American. I now realize that it is not an innocent hyphen at all. No, it actually a minus sign. “I’m a [SOMETHING] minus American”. So apparently these individuals are so much better than ordinary people who happen to live in America, that they have to separate themselves from it using a minus sign.

If an individual feels so spiritually, ethnically or morally superior to America, maybe they should separate themselves from it with something a little longer than a hyphen.
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