apparently i missed the memo...

am i missing something here?

http://www.santasquartersno.com/upside-down-christmas-trees.html

lord of the flies...

ahhh... the ever so faint smell of outside, the sight and feeling of sunlight, the brisk of the cold allure of winter... it's that time again, the days of new a new video game system release when the herds of dorks flock to their local peddler of transistors and capactitors...

last week held the ever so sought after release of the sony playstation 3 (ps3) and the nintendo wii ("we")... what better time to enforce the principals of capitalism to be able to exploit the weak willed parent's of kids who get whatever they want during the holiday season (i admit it, i was one of them)...i remember when the xbox 360 came out, i wanted to wait in line for one to resell, but decided it probably wasn't worth it... i was wrong... and i won't be wronged again...

so out came capitalistic alex. what needed to come out was capitalistic - cut-throat - long distance runner alex. i had a bunch of vacation days that needed to be used up by the end of the year, so what better way to spend them then waiting for game systems... my first thought was to just wait 24 hours for the wii and resell that.. i didn't think the ps3 would flip for enough profit for the time put in, since the base price was $600. Who knew that people would pay upwards to $2500 - $3000+ in order to get their hands on this system...

so now i had set the PS3 on my sights.. only 400,000 in ALL of the US will be shipped and no more shipments until march.. simple supply and demand tell me... PS3 translates to $$$$$$$.. thank you captialism and your two wonderful intersecting lines... so i had set out determined to wait 24 hours for the ps3... too bad everyone else had the same idea, except for 24 hours, it was 48 - 72 hours... i suppose when you can make $1900 - $2400+ in profit for 2-3 days of work, it's more than worth it...

lines... lines... everywhere... every store i had called, they were getting 1 system, 6 systems, 4 systems... nothing ever more than 10.. un-fucking-jimmy-cracked-corn-believable.. Luckily the meijer by us was having a raffle to sit in a chair for 24 hours for the system... there was our chance... too bad they only had 4 of the 60GB versions and 2 20GB versions... 6?!?! damn you sony... determined to find somewhere where i could wait, i drove around at 1 in the morning on thursday (technically), looking for short lines... none.. none at all..

the next day at work, i continued to onslaught of calls to retailers asking, how many systems they had, how many people were in line, purchase rules... score... i found that the woodfield mall sony store was lining people up and the lady said no one in line... wtf?!?! i booked out of work the second i heard that and headed over to the woodfield mall... where to my astonishment was 1 other person sitting there... still in my work attire and very cold, i sat next to him... and began the wait...

the wait lasted about 30 minutes before the mall rent-a-cop-who-thinks-he-has-police-authority-but-in-reality-has-as-much-authority-as-my-written-sign-that-says-ps3-line-starts-here-has comes and yaddles at us that we can't line up until midnight...

oh yeah, that's going to really work well... i guess i'll just come back at midnight and casually walk up to line up.. yeah right.. in any case, i left, with full intentions of coming back at 10 - 11-ish and "loitering, but not loitering under the 'no-loitering' sign"... i was able to find out that a local target was having a raffle for 9 systems, so i had gone and tried that first... no damn luck at all... so continued to woodfield...

the parking lot was packed of course... with people just hanging around waiting for the bullshit midnight start gun to fire off to line up.. well the mall security was onto this and quickly tried with their 5-7 man crew to kick everyone out of the parking lot...

"the lot is closed and will reopen at 11:45, you need to leave", blared the megaphones...
"yes, at midnight, you will be able to line up" - mall man
"so, we just run up here at midnight? isn't that going to be chaos?" - me
"i don't know.. we're here just to make sure no one gets hurt" - mall man getting dumber
"well, if you do a raffle then no one would really get hurt... " - me
"sorry, it's not up to us. we just need to keep people safe" - mall man who now apparently doesn't understand the logic of how to keep people safe

as people prepared to leave, i was able to make my way into the closed mall.. luckily their were still some employees closing up, so i thought i would try to hang out in the mall until 11:45-ish...i even looked for spots where i thought i would be able to hide and wait it out, but decided against it.. i could see that the security crew were chasing people of the parking lot... hmmm.. ninja alex came into the picture..

i left the mall and ran back into my car, where i laid in the backseat, with a blanket over me and looked at my watch... 10:30... hmm... an hour and a half? simple... utilizing my camera phone i was able to peer out the windows and see what was going on... come 11:30.. people are everywhere.. driving into the parking lot, getting kicked out... i peek my head up and see tons of people hiding behind my blazer.. wtf!? this is my spot, find your own damn hide and seek spot...

all i could hear under the blankets were the sounds of blaring sirens, the yellow rotating lights and megaphone telling everyone to get out of the lot...

come 11:40-ish herd of people were wandering around the parking lot... defiant little bitches we all were, especially when thousands of dollars are at stake.... it proved to be too much for the mall x-men that they punished us with - "fine don't listen, you now can't come into the lot until sometime after midnight..."

when that didn't work, they punished us with - "come back at 6:00 am, the parking lot will re-open at 6 am... you all wouldn't listen, so now you can't line up till 6, go home!"

i walk out of the car, and approach the mall man... umm, isn't the same thing going to happen at 6 am? i don't know, he replied... at this point, i just couldn't berieve it... and rather than continue talking to him, i walked over to an 2004 eclipse and started having a much more meaningful conversation with it...

the idea then crossed my mind of just hiding in my car until 6 am... could i do it? would i do it? reasoning came in and i figured it would be the same situation, so instead i went home and got about 4 hours of sleep...

when i re-arrived at the mall, the police had shown up to help control the parking lot... it was a scene out of braveheart at about 5:30 am, with about 200-300 people lined up across the road and parking lot all getting ready to run for their freedom... i had worn large warm boots and decided to run home to put my running shoes on.. after returning yet again, i parked and looked for side entrances or a way for me to sneak closer to the line up spot... i eventually came across an area covered by a couple trees where 3-4 other people were waiting..

this would be my start point.. i looked across the way, and scores of people were arriving by the minute... come 6:00am, there would be a dash for freedom, for life, for $$$$... it was about 5:55am and you could tell everyone was ansy... there was no official clock, not start gun, no green light... it was just mall security thinking the honor system would work, uncorruptable by greed...

now this is a large parking lot.. the distance from where everyone is to the door has to be about .10 - .20 of a mile... i figured i would be able to make it, since short distances aren't too bad for me... i stretched out and warmed up for my 6:00 am dash... at about 5:56, everyone see's a body start darting towards the line...in a fraction of a second i hear the mall megaphone blare, "stop!" but it was too late.. the march of the pigs was on...
i booked it as fast as i could.. racing the marathon of people... cars were plowing through the parking lot at 40-60 mph... i had a great start, was ahead of everyone in my group and saw my chance to be if not first, in ps3 obtainable status... the funny thing was i saw people who did sleep in their cars hidden as they popped out when i ran past them... hopping curbs, and making my way to the line, i was getting winded...

as i reached my destination, so did about 50-75 other people.... all at the same time.. we all arrived at the same time as magnets and bodies started slamming up and becoming sardines... not only was i out of breath, i was getting smashed... people were swearing, picking out anyone in front of them and calling them cutters... cutters were.. well.. cutting.. arms and hands were being pushed out of the way to try to get closer to the front... we had all amassed into a tumorous pile of capitalistic bastards looking to make that easy dollar... i swear i had probably 8 people in me at some point.. there was no way around it...

if i had to describe it, it was like being up front in that nin concert, only with people who didn't like you, and would take your balls if they had the chance...i just stood there.. catching my breath, and flowing with the crowd.. i've learned from concerts that it is an entire waste of energy to fight back... i was probably about 15 people back in this clump... but as time passed, i somehow ended up getting pooped out further and further back...

security was trying to tell us to get in a single file line... yeah right... that's almost as good as lining up at 6:00 am in a foot race... no one budged... eventually i got picked out by a cop since i had been pushed to far back.. my journey had ended..

i think i was more in shock in observing the attitude, selling out of people, cut-throat, fuck you mentatility everyone had. it was every man for himself... i was just in awe and the tangible ps3 disappeared from my thoughts and all i could have was the intagible thoughts of the dark side of man... i couldn't stop watching and listening...

it was ugly.. one of the most ugliest things i had ever seen.. it was the epidemy of greed looking to make that earnest buck... people were arguing, fighting, pushing and shoving.. i couldn't believe it, or maybe i could, but just didn't want to.. i stayed quite the whole entire time, too tired to care.. i had given it a shot, if i get one, then i get one... otherwise, oh well..

i saw bodies get pushed off the curb into the street, near fist fights breaking out... arguing and screaming all for this system... the hyde-istic nature of man came out and it was ugly... i had found the lord of the flies that day and it was exactly as golding had described it... savage.

some of the many reasons why i chose you...

Not only do you know what the code to contra is, or that you offer to stay in a meijer for 24 straight hours, sitting in a chair with 5 other strangers in order to get me a PS3, you camp out on a circuit city sidewalk with me for 8 hours in the bitter snowy laced night cold so that we could get a wii.

god i love you...