Christmas Cheer!

It's that special time of the year again! A time when you curse yourself for putting off Christmas shopping until the final stretch. However, this year I came prepared with a plan.

In one hearty swoop, I managed to crank out all my shopping in a single day last week, cruising from store to store early in the day while the commoners were stuck at work. I did so while avoiding shopping malls, big-box stores and one-day-sales, as my limited patience is rarely able to tolerate hoards of stupid, aggressive, cheap people. It's a weakness that I have.

There was only one minor snag in my plan... My dad wanted an Eagles CD that they only sell at Wal-Mart. Well, let me tell you, I wasn't about to brave the waters of pre-Christmas Wal-Mart, so I devised a scheme so brilliant that I surprised even myself... I'd order it online! I even selected the 2-3 day delivery, despite an additional charge of $9.

So a week later, the damn thing finally arrived at my humble abode.

Yeah, not too pretty. Upon closer inspection, I found that the CD case was beat to hell, certainly beyond gift-giving standards. Without time to ship it back, I was left with no other choice but...

That's right, I had to delve into Wal-Mart five days before Christmas. How was it? To quote Hieronymous Bosch, something like this. Yeah, not too pretty.

After a twenty minute wait in the returns line, a mean old lady told me that I could exchange it, but I'd have to go grab the other copy. Oh, and she might not be there when I returned.

Granted, I should have figured this step out ahead of time, but now I was left to wander the labyrinth of always low prices in search of this CD. It was brutal.

After circling the store twice, finding a goddamn smiley face around every corner, I was unable to find the home entertainment section. That's when I discovered that there's an upstairs as well.

After retrieving an untainted copy of the CD, I finally got back to the returns counter, only to find that the line had grown exponentially.

It took me half an hour to get through this damn line, only to find that the woman I'd left the damaged CD with had gone home, and they had to dig to find where she'd left it, as they didn't trust me at my word.

After almost an hour and a half, I finally scrounged my way out of that God-forsaken vortex of savings. As I walked out the doors, I was ready to pop one of those damn smiley faces right in the eye. I hate that place.

Which brings me to my point. I figure that the owners of Wal-Mart know how awful shopping there is. Their employees are disgruntled and their shoppers are disgruntled. The solution? Don't let people remember how much the place sucks! Cover everything in gigantic smiley faces. "We're not a bad company! Look at that giant smiley face over there... we make people happy!" It's like if you kicked some guy in the nuts while telling him that you two should grab a beer sometime.

This counter-intuitive marketing is all too common these days in this country, but the real sad part is that politicians have picked up on this strategy. Take the No Child Left Behind Act. Sure, it hurts all the schools that really need help, leaving plenty of children behind, but how could you vote against something with that name? What about the children??

Or how about the Patriot Act? "What, you won't vote for the Patriot Act? Why, that's unpatriotic!" And let's not forget Operation Iraqi Freedom. What a noble mission that was (is).

The bottom line? Yeah, something might suck. Wal-Mart sucks. The Patriot Act sucks. Jimmy Fallon sucks. But as long as people keep getting told that it's good, then... well... isn't it?

Maybe I should just hop on the bandwagon and quit bitching. After all, everybody thinks that since I work in television, I must be rich. That's hardly true, but to be honest, I don't see any imminent need to correct them. Hey, if that's what they want to think, who am I to confirm or deny their beliefs?

This is the kind of shit that you're forced to ponder when you have to kill 1 1/2 hours inside Wal-Mart. Let this be a lesson to you.