In which I descend into the lowest depths.....

Dear Readers,

Last night I did it. I walked into the belly of the best. I stared down the barrel of the gun. I faced my deepest taste-and-breeding fear, and it was as awful as I imagined it would be.

Yes, dear readers, I went to a Wal-Mart.

I hasten to add, right up front, that I did not buy anything. I tried to find a way to cost them something (like going to the bathroom) but I most decidedly did not buy anything.

My first impression was that it smelled like an old K-Mart, and looked like those discount stores you see in New Jersey on the approach to the George Washington Bridge.

Then there was the music. From the “home entertainment center” came a horrible mix of country and wal-mart grade Hip-Hop. It was like an eavesdrop into hell.

Finally, there were the people. If this is the future of America, and I’m suddenly very afraid it is, we are definitely not going to be anything that other countries have to worry about. A bigger bunch of slack-jawed yokels I have never seen. I can say with certainty that I was the handsomest, most intelligent, and most tasteful person in the establishment (but that’s always true, isn’t it?)

I should have listened to my mother, who told me in no uncertain terms “That’s where the trash shops. You don’t want to go there” for she was right: Scowling, ample-rumped women ignoring their screaming trashy children. Sour looking men, angry at their circumstances, glared at cans of motor oil. Groups of teenagers, undoubtedly heading towards premature parenthood, leering at each other in the music department.

The store seems to egg on this lowbrow behavior, by sadistically making frequent screechy announcements about how the “team” (i.e. employees – nothing good ever came from a company that calls it’s employees “team members, by the way) should be in “full frontal defense” and other inane sports terms. As we all know, in Our Better Stores employees are informed about store activities with a series of chimes, or perhaps a tasteful announcement, but I don’t think this “team” would be able to remember anything of such complexity.

But something good came of this misadventure. Just as I thought I’d reached my breaking point (somewhere in the home furnishings department) the cacophony stopped and there, blasted throughout the store, was the sound of a bagpipe playing “Amazing Grace”

I hate that song. And I hate bagpipes. And I really hate bagpipes playing “Amazing Grace”. And I hate Wal-Mart. Three things that I hate, all together, and I didn’t have an aneurysm.

It just proves Nietzsche right: That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger."