{"id":19498,"date":"2018-11-23T23:27:54","date_gmt":"2018-11-24T07:27:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unwisdom.org\/chadspace\/?p=19498"},"modified":"2019-02-14T06:38:54","modified_gmt":"2019-02-14T14:38:54","slug":"shop-till-you-drop-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/unwisdom.org\/chadspace\/?p=19498","title":{"rendered":"Shop Till You Drop (Or Not)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I stopped by Best Buy this afternoon as I was out grocery shopping (I really needed avocados) to see what sort of embarrassing high jinks were afoot. I had to park in the gravel lot next to the store because there wasn’t space anywhere else. After going inside, I strolled up and down the aisles and decided I would try to be a good American (i.e. consumer-retard) and buy anything and everything that was of interest to me. <\/p>\n

As expected, the environment was hectic and triggered a flashback from many years ago: I was living in San Francisco and travelling north to Redding on Christmas Eve so I could spend the holiday with friends and family. I am not very good at buying gifts and put this chore off till the last minute—I was naive and figured I would just quickly drop by a Target somewhere in the Bay Area and grab a few board games and some wrapping paper. It was Christmas Eve, after all, and there couldn’t possibly be very many people out shopping. What a tremendous error in judgment! The store was a zoo, people were in a frenzy, and there was merchandise strewn across every aisle. This was a jarring realization for me: I figured there would be a few weirdos still out shopping, but had no clue there would be enough to fill a store. It was at this time that I began to understand why some people don’t like Christmas.<\/p>\n

\"Crowded<\/a><\/p>\n

I spent at least 30 minutes walking through Best Buy, looking for worthwhile purchases and simultaneously soaking in the frenetic energy of the people around me. In that time, I covered most of the store, and only ended up grabbing the following items:<\/p>\n