wow

I went to the mall today, and it's been a while since I've been in one. I'm not talking about your big box strip mall with the Office Depot and K-Mart on each corner, I'm talking about a real mall, filled with pre-teen girls waiting in line to buy the latest skanky clothing from one of 12 identical clothing stores (with different names), and kiosks peddling cell phones staffed by sketchy looking teenagers in ties.

It's been a while since I've wandered through a shopping mall, and for the first time, I was in awe. So many brightly lit stores selling so much useless stuff for a kings ransom. There was a store that sold nothing but designer bean bag chairs (leopard skin bean bag chair: $150), a store that sold gadgets (motorized corkscrew: $39.95...or your very own personal air purifer necklace: $24.95), body jewelery carts in the middle of the walkways (get your ears pierced free with every gold earring purchase), a couple of stores that sold only body lotion and soap, countless clothing stores that all sell identical-looking clothes under different brands, and food stands with names that, I guess, were meant to be funny at one time.

Now for all you that think I'm completely naive, all I have to say is that the mall hasn't changed much since I was in high school many years back. Except back then, the gadget stores sold funky foam mattresses and massage chairs (those things are in the back of the store now relegated to obscurity). I guess some things never change.