Disjunctive foxfire

I'll post the continuation to 'Artefactual coattail' either tonight or tomorrow. But this post will be concerned with something a bit more strange.

This morning, at 12:00 AM, I was bored. So, I decided to go to Walmart. Why? Who knows. Maybe it was the subliminal messaging of the advertisement on the nearby table saying that Walmart was open 24 hours a day. Maybe I have impulsive store-visiting urges. Or maybe it was just so I could write a blog post about it. Regardless, the rest of my family decided they wanted to go to Walmart in the middle of the night as well, so we got in the car and drove to Walmart.

Now, what follows next might not be surprising to those of you who routinely shop at midnight. Or those of you who routinely shop at all. Yet it certainly surprised me. Because, when we got there, not only was it pretty busy, it was packed. That is, we had trouble finding a parking spot. At 12:00 AM!

Then, assuming 1 person per car (which probably shouldn't be true but oddly enough, is probably really close), there were over 100 people in the store. At midnight. This struck me as a bit strange. Perhaps it shouldn't. But it was confirmed when we entered the store. Walmarts are generally big, so it wasn't packed like the Tokyo subway. But there were a lot of people, everywhere. And probably at least 100.

Now, I do realize that today is Christmas Eve Eve. So it is pretty close to Christmas, and people need to do their Christmas shopping. Yet, do they not have time to do it during the day? Do the inherently very evil corporations and businesses work the general populace of Toronto so hard that the only time they have left for shopping is at midnight? Are humans slowly becoming nocturnal (going to Walmart at midnight is something I probably would have done this summer, when my schedule comprised of waking up at 8:00 PM and going to bed at 10 AM)? Or rather, is there a popular belief that at midnight the store will be less packed and thus it will be easier to shop?

The third is the most likely but probably the worst logical reason. Enslaved and nocturnal people are justified enough in going to Walmart at whatever time fits their convenience. The third case, however, consists of people that go to Walmart at a time that does not fit their convenience at all, for the reason that it does not fit their convenience (and the convenience of others) at all.

Now it would be quite ironic if, like the story where all the rabbits in the overpopulated rabbit hole move to the empty rabbit hole making the empty hole overpopulated, everyone decided to go to Walmart at midnight and it was empty during the day. Unfortunately, common sense tells us that most people do not go to Walmart at midnight and thus it is also considerably packed (considerably more so than at midnight) during the day. However, fewer workers also work at midnight so there are fewer cashiers - so you're still going to have to wait in line a while. While I was there, I decided to pick up Pokemon Diamond, and ended up having to wait 10 minutes in line.

Of course, since I don't go shopping very much, there are probably tons of flaws in my analysis above. It seems mainly correct to me however.

Onto the subject of games. Assassin's Creed, which I borrowed from a friend, does look amazing but the gameplay does suck, just like the reviews said. It sort of has a Grand Theft Auto feel, but they should have expanded on this a lot more instead of making me do essentially the same missions over and over again. The city designers are amazing though - too bad the missions don't let you use that to the fullest extent possible.

Pokemon Diamond is a Pokemon game - i.e. don't expect anything else. It is fun though =). It was very annoying though, since when I got to the first battle with my rival, I had forgotten to go to the Pokemon center and got soundly beaten. Turning off the DS in anger, only then I realized that Diamond had no autosave. So that means I'll have to start from the beginning again =( (luckily I didn't get too far). The autosave in practically all console games might have spoiled me, but I do think they should have put it in the latest Pokemon.

I took a picture of the parking lot at Walmart at 1:00 AM on my phone, as I was leaving. I'll post it some time later.

-squid out