mauled in wa

I always seem to end up at the maul during Christmas time, unintentionally, completely innocently, like a little goat led to the butcher shop.

"What mall" the reader may ask, even though I'm sure there's not a reader out there who doesn't know that the geographical locations of shopping malls only supply a distinction without a difference.

With fear and trembling, I followed my hot mama into a large box named "Macy's," where all the apparel and merchandise bore a strange device engraved somewhere upon them in late Anglo-American hieroglyphics: CALVIN KLEIN. I'm not sure what it means, but I know it confers a distinction with a difference, namely the juiced-up amount of money you have to shell out for the whatever-it-is.

I can't tell you the number of beautiful young women I saw in that place, working as salesgirls and dressed in the most outlandish, Martian-looking getups you ever saw. Is this some weird abnormality peculiar to big mall stores? You never see any customers in Starbucks dressed even remotely as weirdly.

I'm never going to the mall again, but I'll probably end up in one against my will, next Christmas season.