Viva la Revolucion!

Yesterday as I was leaving the office I heard “Pssssst. Quiana, come here.” I walked back to the receptionist’s desk and she said, “No come behind my desk.” And there she showed me her…

… secret light up flip-flops. I was too excited. She told me she got them at Wal-Mart. And my tiny pitiful world shattered.

I HATE WalMart. HATE IT. There are only 2 in the Seattle area and they are both at least 40 minutes from my house. And it’s not the travel time. It is the chaos that bugs me. People everywhere, products mixed up, children screaming and touching me with greasy salty fry-fingers. And the people are the dregs of society: red-necks, ghetto mamas, scary soccer moms who look like hookers in Winnie the Pooh t-shirts, women with ten children and their own gravitational pull. Gack. I mean sometimes at Target you pass a good looking guy who even smells nice. At WalMart everyone smells like Cheetos and pleather.

But it just so happened that I already had plans to go to Ikea with my friend Monica (I HATE IKEA) (HATE HATE HATE IT) and since they are both in Renton I could combine my sorrows into one trip. I hate Ikea’s crowded chaos, unpronounceably named items, and fiendishly irritating radio-spokesman. Nasty twenty something couples guarding the furniture as though you might steal it, nose picking Gymboree children, women with cheekbones and arms like boiled chicken explaining to their children at great length why mommy doesn’t want them to stand on furniture with their shoes on: they are all standing IN THE ISLE. You know why you don’t stand on furniture with your shoes on, Junior? Because the furniture monster will come and eat all your shoes, including the pair your feet are in! He will gobble up your feet like gummi-bears and slurp down your shoe-laces like spaghetti.


Anyway, so I had low expectations for enjoying this excursion, but light-up flops and a new shoe storer were totally worth it. Actually, this time, Ikea was kind of fun- though it could have just been good company. In good spirits Mon and I headed towards WalMart. The one thing that I really like about WalMart is the dollar DVD bin. I collect old movies and old cartoons and they can often be found there.

So as soon as we had carefully examined every pair of flops we raided the dollar DVD bins. By far our best find was the cartoon version of the novel Animal Farm. It had the most darling little farm animals on the cover and was smack-dab in the middle of the children’s section, nestled between Betty-Boop and Bugs Bunny. I have this feeling that WalMart is probably one of the few places where nobody will notice George Orwell’s anti-Communist parable in the CHILDREN’S section.

Well, I hope the children who unknowingly pick this DVD like the part where the horsey gets sent to the glue factory so that the piggies can buy more liquor. That’s my favorite part.


Four legs, good! Two legs bad!!!