The Christmas Market: A Shopping for the Holidays Guide for the Paranoid

In which our Heroine discusses the Particulars of a Paranoid Shopping Experience. 

10 Things to Keep in Mind on Black Friday:

1.       You are under surveillance in every store you go into.  DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT with anyone.

2.       Every person you see is out to get you, even at 4 a.m.  That’s why all the items on your shopping list keeping getting snatched up just before you get to the isle. 

3.       Never look at the surveillance cameras stationed in the high corners of stores.  If you let the invisible “security guards” suspect that you know where they are, you will be probably be apprehended, or at least detained for a short while in some generic hallway you never knew existed before.

4.       While mall shopping, make sure you double back and traverse the whole length of the mall several times just to make sure that no one is following you. 

5.       If you selfishly take the time to try on a shirt that you spotted on a rack, please assume that there are tiny camouflaged cameras hidden in the light fixture above your head.

6.       All natural disasters wait to happen on the holidays or days when the unknowing public is out and about.  You should probably bring a life jacket, or at least a parachute. 

7.       The big man waiting at the door of Best Buy really works for the CIA as part of a specialized covert ops division.  Don’t let him hear your Russian/Afghani accent!  He will take you down.  The excessive fat on his torso conceals his guns.

8.       When you use your credit or debit card, you are immediately and automatically put “on the grid.”  Please understand that if you ever have to suddenly disappear from society, you are finished.  Toast.  Crispy, blackened toast. 

9.       If you had been wise enough to use cash instead of cards, you could have had the pleasure of carrying around hundreds of dollars on a cutpurse’s day of paradise.  AND you could have toted around numerous large bills—all of which hold a sophisticated tracking mechanism located just to the left of a former President’s trusting face.   

10.    Know that everything you buy gets scanned into a computer when you check out.  The government is clearly working with corporate giants to document every item you personally buy.  With this in mind, your only option is to buy a host of useless and irrelevant articles that you will never use or gift to anyone.  Don’t let this excessive and frivolous waste deter you from enjoying your Black Friday Shopping experience.  When I check other carts, I’m pretty sure everyone else is secretly doing it too. 

When on the Lower Ketchup Level

In which our Lady Looks at Things Aslant. 

                The post two days about me being on an operating table reminds me of a few of the ways I’ve seen the world from a new viewpoint lately.  The particular one mentioned in all it’s blogness two days ago was the interesting view of looking at things from the top of the gurney/operating table.  (As we previously learned, this is the position aliens use to run tests on human beings and one of the prime ways that they gain supremacy over the human race).  There are usually bright fluorescent lights over head that burn shapes into your cataracts so you can't see your doctor clearly, and the bed is inevitably uncomfortable.  Even worse is the strange angle from which you greet people in this position.   Just think, normally a person stands across in a position of equality from the other: two strong vertical lines able at any point to move how they will.  As seen from bed position, the nurses and doctors look literally down on you from above, their heads haloed by fluorescent glow.  Meanwhile, you lie prone in sleeping position—the most vulnerable of all poses.  Being wheeled around the hospital on a bed is bad too.  You end up coming against people for the first time in that utterly powerless position.  Maybe at that point you shouldn’t be surprised because you know you’re there in the first place because you are sick and therefore defenseless anyway.  (Either that, or you’ve been beamed up and are now residing on a spaceship—in which case you are still defenseless). It reminds me of the dentist’s office, except that all those pointy and scrapey tools jab into just your mouth rather than all over every other part of you.

                Not that the table on wheels is always terrible.  Your caretakers are usually kind and happy to say nice things.  Sometimes you get heated blankets thrown over you when you’re in shock.  Although even then my tangential brain waves wondered whether there was some giant blanket microwave oven in the linens closet.  Still wish I knew the answer to that. 

                Giant microwaves aside, the wheelchair is also an interesting place from which to look, especially when grocery shopping.  Suddenly you’re down on a new level.  Are there really different products down there, you might ask.  Yes.  Toys live down here, along with the most tooth-rotting of all candies—huge bags of them in one place, and strange combinations of toy and candy in another (Pez, etc…).  Meanwhile, back in the condiment isle, you realize you’ll never again reach the vinegar on the top shelf and are hereby relegated to a life of ketchup and mustard.  Grocery stores are no place for the wheelchair-bound (or for midgets).  And unless you’re willing to jump into one of those huge grocery cart cars, which rarely have fully-charged batteries and only have brakes on the left hand grip, you’ll have to use your lap as a grocery basket.  There’s nothing like balancing two boxes of cereal, really cold ice cream, cleaning supplies, tortillas, bananas, and a jug of milk on your lap as you wheel through the store.  But the best part by far is when you get to the counter to pay and have to apologize and explain to everyone around you that you are going to stand now so you can slide the card and pay as a feeble excuse for the miracle that you are suddenly able to stand whereas you could not do it before!  You know, people are never in awe, but only cynical at those moments.