Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

I went out today to pick up a new CD – something I thought I wouldn’t do again. But Weird Al has a new album out, and he’s not listed on iTunes – so it’s off we bound.

I decided to pick up the CD from the one store I knew for a fact would stock it – K-Mart. How did I know they would stock it? Because they announce it every ten minutes over their loudspeaker. Why do they stock it? Hell if I know.

Now, if your community is anything like mine, then you’re lucky enough (or unlucky enough) to have both a Super Wal-Mart and a pre-Super Wal-Mart. It’s been years since I went into the Pre-Super Wal-Mart, so I thought on my way back that I’d stop off and scope it out. I justified it to myself by saying I was checking to see if they had any Micron pens – but we both know that there’s no way they would actually stock them.

Pre-Super Wal-Mart still does enough business to justify staying open, even while there’s a Super Wal-Mart across town. But, apparently, they don’t do enough business to justify cleaning the store any more.

I don’t know what it was, but the instant I stepped into the store through the manual doors (Pre-Super has automatic doors coming out, but none going in), some sort of smell or essence or something hit me smack between my eyes – which promptly blurred and started to water. I don’t know if it was the smoke from burning Miscellaneous Meat Products coming from their hot dog stand, if it was ages of cigarette smoke still clinging to the walls and shelves, or if it was some caustic chemical fumes that had found their way into the ventilation system from the garden supplies. I’m inclined to believe the last option, considering that the farther back in the store I got (away from the hot dog stand and toward the garden supplies), the worse it got.

The result was that my typical leisurely cruising pace through the aisles of the stores sped up to just below a sprint. After all, I didn’t want people thinking I was getting misty-eyed over finding new He-Man toys on the shelves.

All right – so I shed a couple of tears of joy when I found the toys in a Blacksburg Target. That was months ago. I’m past weeping with joy and into gleeful euphoria now, thank you very much.

By the time I hit the electronics section, I was about to abandon ship and call off the trip as a total loss. My eyes were stinging pretty hard by then, and my nose had just started to run. Prices in general were in line with the Super Wal-Mart – the store was just skankier and more crowded with less room on and between the shelves. They didn’t even have the new Weird Al CD (although they had plenty of copies of “American Idol’s Greatest American Love Songs”).

Then I saw it.

Can I get a Hell Yeh?

So, yes. I escaped Pre-Super Wal-Mart with my sanity and health intact, carrying the glory of Adam West and Burt Ward’s Batman flick snug in a cheap plastic bag. My eyes cleared up the instant I hit the parking lot, and I knw that no matter how great the find was this time, I would never be back again.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2003 at 2:37 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.