Kipworld

On Thursday, I was a good little capitalist doing my part to pull our nation’s economy back from the brink and I spent the day at the mall. Two malls actually.

The first was Old Orchard. Wait, now it’s called Westfield Shoppingtown. A town of shopping. I’m serious. I was walking around with 2 objectives: Medal of Honor for the Mac for my brother and a cigarette case for El for her to use as a wallet. Kuwie suggested getting her one engraved so I was looking for a Thing Remembered or something. Walked all around Westfield looking. Found nothing except a sarcastic EB employee who gleefully told me that the only Mac games he carried were the ones hiding as hybrid PC/Mac titles.

“And there are precious few of those!”

The lady at Marshall Fields looked at me as if I had asked, “Where may I purchase poison?” when I asked for a cigarette case. I had to explain that it was meant as a wallet.

“Come to think of it, do you have any metal wallets?”

More strange looks, saying, “Why do you come here and mess up my routine by asking for something we don’t have?”

So I undertook the 30 minute journey to Woodfield (man, do they just name shopping centers “n-field” where n is a word that signifies something natural?).

Pulled into the parking lot and was aboutto hide all the valuables like I do when I park at work when I realized that this was Woodfield. No one just walks to Woodfield; they drive.

Walked in and headed to the Apple Store. I got Medal of Honor (I was worried that they didn’t have it at first due to strange slphabetical placement of games). Then I drooled over a pen tablet for a bit, using Ink to recognize a jotted note (”Eat up Martha,” anyone?) and then to draw a quick comic. Realized that I need one of these bad boys if I’m going to do comptuer art. Started budgetting for one.

Then I hit Things Remembered (shouldn’t done this in the other order so that I could have played at the Apple Store while waiting for the engraving). The people working the register were the two most surly shopkeepers I’ve ever seen. Now, I usually feel for shopkeepers (there but for the grace of an NU degree go I, and even with it, I’m not so far away) and I try to make their lives easier with exact change and a minimum of fuss and bother but these two people deserved a course in customer service reinforced with electric shocks and prods. I swear, I waited in front of the cigarette case area for ages trying to get their attention (since I’d already narrowed the selection down). And since I wanted to make sure I got a nice one, I asked the one whofinally deigned to speak to me to see two. She grudgingly got them and sort of tossed them at me. I looked for a bit and then apologetically asked for one more. The look I got was withering.

I’d recount more but it’s just to painful. We got the rest of the order laid away and then I had to wait 2.5 hours for it to be done. I walked around but quickly grew bored of stores. I sat and read the last bit of The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith and dodged children running on the bench while waiting for their mother.

I went into a Halloween store and noted that all of the costumes had really silly people modelling said costume on the bag.

I went into another EB and listened to a kid tell his grandfather that he was $4.35 short for his computer game and that the grandfather had to pony up the cash. Later on, I saw the same kid pawing through Magic card binders in a gameshop, throwing them on the floor when he was done.

I walked by A&W and remembered the A&W in Malaysia that my dad always took us to when we visited.

I went into cell phone stores and pined after new phones until recalling Sugam’s words that as many cool features as his T68i has, it’s still just a phone. Felt better about my phone.

I’m only glad I left before the afterschool crowd got there.

This entry is much like an Ignatious Reilly bit from A Confederacy of Dunces, which I just reread. Yeek.

So, what’s this all about? Another bashing of mall culture? A comparison of an n-field shopping experience to the Wicker Park area?

Nah. My brother liked Medal of Honor (well, he hasn’t installed it yet, but you know. He’ll like it.). El was happily surprised by the case (she’d told me about it a couple of weeks ago, yay memory). In an age where there are few opportunities to hunt and gather, I guess braving the mall is the closest I can get to bringing home a fine kill.