Wednesday, September 5th, 2007
Cold Sad World: Mall of Horror

In this fast growing consumer driven world, the time honored traditions of old have given way to new practices. For example, once upon a time a starry-eyed young boy would be indoctrinated into his budding puberty with a loving talk from his father. These days we have internet porn, to help damage this child at a crucial time in his development. Or perhaps, in a previous era, arriving college freshmen would be given a tour around the campus, helping to familiarize themselves with the school and to meet new and exciting people. These days we pack all these kids on a bus and send them on a field trip to the mall.

Out with the old, in with the new I guess.

Therefore, me and familiar North Nowhere compatriot Eugene Judas, set out to document these changing times. As official representatives of the real internet, we ventured forth with camera in hand, to see if any shred of humanity lingered in these halls. We call this one...

MALL OF HORROR

Weak of heart, please leave the internet now.

Our trip began as every good trip to the mall should, with a friendly visit to our local game and comic store. Here we see that Seth, owner of X9 Games and personal friend of mine, has never held a camera in his giant man paws, forcing him to hold the thing at an angle only explored by the most talented of myspace users. I promptly ripped the camera from his hands to which he was most sad.

I would later make it up to him by giving him this promotional wrestling postcard for him to play with. Some jock asshat was handing them out oblivious to the scores of discarded copies that littered around his feet. If you zoom in you can see the one scantily clad wrestling chick surrounded by a bunch of extremely musclebound bodybuilders. She's in no danger though, unless one of their repressed homosexual urges should explode forth and kill the whole lot of them.

Here a doo-wop group sings... hell I don't know, Jessie's Girl or something. Didn't white people used to do cool stuff once in awhile? Like race hotrods or write punk music? This finger-snapping, toe-tapping throwback to yesteryear just makes me wonder what's happened to our generation. Eugene remarked something similar and almost got beat up by one of these guys. And by "beat up" I mean "challenged to a snap off."

For those of you who have never been to the Hampshire Mall, let me tell you something. It sucks. Inbetween the few recognizable stores you might want to consider stopping by (Target, Best Buy, Gamestop) as well as the shitty food court, shittier arcade, game store and movie theatre, there is nothing else in the mall. Oh, there are stores sure, but for the most part none of them last beyond a fucking month because they are so goddamn stupid and short sighted. Here we see "Walousi's Emporium" a store that sells little other than decorative crystals and unicorn miniatures. Previous to this it was a hip hop clothing store that only sold the ten MLB jersey's they had out front on a coat rack. This is in addition to the countless other stores that go out of business, like Tom's Gifts (only sold porcelain dog statues) Anne's Tailoring (who the fuck goes to a tailor these days?) and the X-Zone (because I couldn't just play Halo at my own house).

Anyhow, this was the only night I've ever seen anyone inside this place, for the sole fact that some random DJ had offered to set up if he could just hand out his business card. So yeah, I took a picture. Way to go man.

Gamestop sucks now that they fired all the cool people (like me and Eugene) and hired asshats like these instead. In any case at least I stole some cool shit before I left. Here we see somebody buying something from the first wave of retarded Halo merchandise that is sure to overflow around the time the game comes out. Would you like a preorder with that?

I don't know if you guys do the same, but me and Eugene make it a hobby to check the Western Massachusetts craigslist personals and see if there's any good ones. You'll usually find the regular "I'm a 45 year old bald man, will you spank me with a length of rubber tubing" type post, but on occasion you find a gem. Case in point, I've seen at least five or six "Missed Connections" personals talking about the curly haired guy at Target all these single women are looking to bone. I think it's this guy. When I told him about it he immediately tried to cover his face before I could snap a pic. Sorry buddy, but the lonely internet widows of the world want your junk. You can't escape.

What the fuck? More Doo-wop? Even worse they were doing "Let's Get Retarded" by the Black-eyed Peas. The only reprieve to this sad act was the african-american male on the left, who turned to his friend every twenty seconds with a "What the hell are these white people doing?" look on his face.

Todd the lovable janitor would later find $20 lying around on the floor, somewhere near Eugene's misplaced virginity. Smile boy, you've earned it.

Umass for life dawg. After this picture was taken me and the Minuteman downed a couple of 40s and rode up on some redcoat fools. They never knew what hit em'

Jesus fucking christ you guys, it's a fucking mall. Are you paying $150,000 a semester so you can shop at Hot Topic at 11:47pm? By the looks of it the answer is a resounding "Hell yes."

Thank god at least Best Buy was immune to this lunacy.

Who wants a futon!? This scraggily hag was handing out flyers, her few remaining teeth peering out at these poor kids. Come to think of it, this is really just the modern day equivelent of a gypsy, exchanging the kidnapping of children for BARGAIN DISCOUNT PRICES.

Again, why do all these kids have such a raging boner for Target? It's the fucking mall you- oh shit, Red Bull is on sale.

Even the dead end of the mall is populated! What the fuck is this world coming to!?

So the radio station had a prize wheel and Eugene was being a huge baby and wouldn't spin the damn thing for god knows what reason (He said he hated stages, which is retarded because it's not a fucking stage, it's the tiny raised pavilion they stick Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny for pictures every year). I told him I was going to kick him out of my clubhouse if he didn't fucking spin it so he finally took the cock out of his mouth and went for it.

"I'm a winner"

Yeah, he fucking won. He was trying to be all cool and jaded about it like "I don't even care that I won, I'm so above this" but when he saw the Meat Puppets tickets he lost his shit and started shreaking like a twelve year old girl. Way to go buddy.

In conclusion, fuck everyone. Who the fuck are you and what are you doing at the mall? Also to the group of four girls who looked all horrified when I handed you my business card, sorry. Me and Eugene ended up working instead of going to a Meat Puppets concert so fuck us as well.

Well, I guess we'll see you next time kids. For another horrible adventure.