Christmas, Don't Get Me Started
I'm looking for dog-walking boots, the kind that can trudge through anything, so I've been frequenting malls. I want to buy something made in Canada, but it's difficult. Mostly because we don't make boots. They're all made in China. Even Sorels. And there is no way in frozen hell that I'm going to pay more than $10 for a pair of winter boots made in China. I just can't do it. If retailers are going to price stuff made in China as if it's made here, they can go fuck themselves up the ass with any number of pointy objects made in China and I'll go without boots altogether.
And call me a bad Canadian, but I won't buy Toe Warmers. They may be made in Canada, but they're so fugly I wouldn't buy them for my dog. Although, I'd buy them for my mother. But she doesn't care anymore about fugly. She's too worried about staying alive so long that she can't afford the ever rising rent of her senior's residence. My dog's only saving grace is his good looks. I don't know what my mother's saving grace is, but I can't see that Toe Warmers would make much difference either way if she's living in a cardboard box in the middle of some road in Northern Ontario.
But back to the mall. This year, there seems to be a determination by retailers to repel people who don't enjoy treacly affected schmaltzy schlock with their muzak. I mean, my gawd, I was in Sears, which looks like an autistic monkey designed the new layout, desperately trying to like the fugly Candian-made Toe Warmers, on sale for just under $100, when my stomach started to heave at the latest rock carol that followed right on the shitheels of a grotesquely retro version of Here Comes Santa Claus by Barbra Streisand. And that followed on Celine Dion (who sounds increasingly like Ethel Merman to my damaged ear) yellsinging at us all to be grateful for something or other at this time of year.
Grateful? Fuck you, Celine! I You live in L.A.
Seriously, I thought I was going to puke. It was that sickening. Literally. I almost had Christmasick all over Sears. Which probably would have improved the decor, quite frankly, but since Sears is clearly sticking pretty close to last season's "WHO GIVES A SHIT ANYMORE JUST THROW CRAP ANYWHERE LIKE WE DO WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" theme, I held back and headed for the closest exit - by climbing over heaps of merchandise and, I think, a few dead bodies. Staff or customers, it was hard to tell but if you're missing anybody around the Christmas mowdown this year, you might want to check Sears.
And once home from the mall you're not safe from a commercial Christmas either because, of course, if you turn on the tv, 'tis the season for syrupy sappy only 2 weeks left to buy love Christmas COMMERCIALS! The most offensive one so far that I've seen involves a bunch of dancing GAP kids dressed up in winter garb that, having just been to the GAP at the mall, I know is ALL MADE IN CHINA! And those little Chinese kids making the duds aren't exactly going for employee of the month stickers, if you catch my drift. Why shop at the GAP anymore anyway when you can buy the same crap cheaper at Old Navy and even cheaper by chopping up an old table cloth and stapling it back together in box shapes?
But back to the season to be jolly. It almost makes me hate little passersby, holding daddy's hand, with their gimme, gimme, gimme or I won't love you forever, won't like you for always, as long as I'm living my baby you won't be - unless you buy me more Christmas presents than Mommy - and I already peeked in the closet and SHE BOUGHT ME A PONY!
Seriously, no kidding, I overheard a little girl walking through the mall with her dad listing in the most ear curdlingly cloying way what she wanted for Christmas that I just wanted to scream at them both, "Ohferchristmassake! Your consumerism is destroying our habitat! Thanks to you, we're all going to bake to death under a merciless desert sun! Run to Sears! We can build a new habitat under the piles of abandoned merchandise!"
But then I would have been the crazy one, which I've learned from past revolts hither and yon is not the position one wants to be in if one wants to be taken seriously, as opposed to into custody.
So, anyway, Santa? All I want for Christmas is a pair of size 7 Canadian made dog walking boots that cost less than $100 and aren't Toe Warmers. And see what you can do about topping up my Mom's pension. Failing that, maybe you could spot her a pair of Toe Warmers that wouldn't fugle up a cardboard box foyer.
