Deals

Deals, deals, deals, deals, deals, deals, deals, deals, deals, deals, deals, deals, deals, deals, deals, deals, deals, deals, deals, deals, deals, deals -- I can't contain myself. Can you believe the deals‽  (That's an interrobang I'm so excited.)

On the other hand, fuck this Day of Box.  Sure I've considered wandering into Best Buy in my pajamas and knifing another human being for first dibs on a mildly discounted Blu-ray device, but have since quickly reconsidered. On any other day, a sane man would surrender double the retail price to escape a horde that size.  This is a harangue of people who actually smell like commodity fetishism.  (It's a mélange of turkey and body odor.)

But then I reconsidered again.  I buckled my jeans and set forth into the quiet mid-holiday streets.  Thanks to a meaningless combination of forces, I only needed a light jacket.  With countable footsteps I headed straight, like a lemming, to Yonge and Dundas; the Eaton Centre.  I was looking for deals.

But there were only people, as lost as me, with handfuls of credit cards to stuff deep into the heart-shaped holes in their chests.

If a mall is a temple, then today it holds its holiest mass.  A rabble buffaloed by tradition and deceit.  And I'm not just talking Frankenscence and Myrrh.  These are people in search of a break.  Or a self-awarded trophy for shopping.  Or an object they don't need.  They are people possibly drunk on eggnog or "holiday spirit" --  a temporary psychosis associated with the end of the year.

An economics professor I had described the phenomenon thus: "That's Capitalism, folks!" But I think that's far too accurate.  The message to walk away with is this: a true deal wouldn't be this obvious.