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Part 1: The Entrance Road That Hates You
Down a major highway or two and behind hill sits a parking lot bigger then most mansions. At one end sits a building that used to sell upscale yuppie stuff. It sits empty now having gone right the heck out of business. Which is odd. (You'll find out later).
At the other end of the lot is the bane of small towns across the nation.
Wal-Mart. The place that is trying to buy out the yellow happy face.
The building sits there like a giant trying to defecate.
Naturally, even entering the parking lot is an iffy proposition, with no less then two possible dead ends if you misjudge the right turns.
Once inside, the facade gets closer and closer. The left side usually has merchandise stacked up outside. Can we say 'shoplifiters paradise'? I saw a woman tossing an item from the outside stacks into her car. To make it even more pathetic, it was a five dollar kiddie pool.
The entrance to the lower intestine of consumerism has near a half a dozen odd doors. The ones on the far left, opposite of where most people usually come are the entrance doors.
There's also a hole in the facade. It's where the poor schulbs jam the carts through after uncaring shoppers leave them strewn around the parking lot.
Naturally, this little enclave is jammed to the gills with money making arcade games (one has a chant that sticks in your head the second you hear it) and rip off prize machines. I'm actually suprised they left room for the carts to get through.
To the left of the entrance way is bump of wall. Past that is a row of suprisingly inepensive soda machines. Which wouldn't be much of a problem except, well...
Coca-Cola owns three of the machines. Each machine has a raised picture on it. Put them in a row and it forms a coke bottle lying on it's side.
The coporate effort put into organizing that scares me.
And now, hold your noise because it's
Part 2: The ENTRANCE
On odd days there's an elderly member of America standing near the entrance, waiting to do god knows what. Kill you and sell your soul to some elder god?
To the immediate left is a dreary photo development place. I swear I've never seen this place open for business.
Next left (provided you haven't slipped and killed yourself on the gunk people track in) is a service desk, the entrance to the restrooms and a row of plants. And/or merchandise.
(The bathrooms are usually the cleanest spot in the store).
Animated Wal Mart chicks usually flit around behind the service desk.
They're not, if ever, helpful but you've gotta give them credit for their energy).
Many times, a row of (Econo Save Factory Second) Wal Mart shopping carts sit next to the service desk, filled to the brim with foreign made crap that would break if you sneezed on it.
To the right of all this sits the rusted, jammed mess of shopping carts waiting to attach themselves to some shoppers groin and swerve to the left because of bad wheels.
Past all this sits the (dum-da-dum) Rocket Cafe!
Designed to look like something out of Archie and staffed by hyper middle aged Chinese women, it offeres a large selection of fast food items, most of which are unavalible due to the fryer being out.
Is it a coincidence this cafe is located within spitting distance of the restooms? I say they nay! Normal human digestive systems reject Rocket Cafe food faster then a 26 year old modely turning down a homeless bum's fumbling attempt to ask her out.
And now hold onto your sanity, because we come to...
Part 3. The Rest Of The Store
Stuff to wear. Stuff to eat. Stuff to read. Stuff to sit at while reading and eating. Actually, that's probably giving more credit then is deserved. They do sell TVs. And school supplies. And pet supplies. Coincidence?
They did sell comics but they stopped. They do continue to carry a high amount of Black Hair Care magazines. *sigh*.
Frankly, there isn't much to the inside. Surly foreign speaking employees and a high amount of depressing social context.
Once I encountered a woman who bought up the entire bargain bin of Star Wars folders.
Probably to sell them ten bucks apiece at a flea market.
The only thing that stopped me from locking her in the milk freezer was her cute little son who probably had more brain cells then the rest of the family combined.
Let us leave the inside and take a look two football fields lengths away at...
Part 4: The New Additions
Despite the utter failure of the store sharing the parking lot with Wal Mart, somebody decided to build more crap! On the other side of the Entrance Road That Hates You, a lot of dirt was shoved to the side.
Some parking lot with more lights then an airport was slapped on. Some kind of intensely ugly building was built up. And off to the side. The distinctive shape of a Burger King.
Like we need that in the world. On the plus side, Burger King food tends to stay inside the digestive tract.
Well, that's it. We've come to the end of the exploration of the sentence that uses a lot of 'the's .
Target, at least, is clean.