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NEWLY UPDATED! (1.25.05)

I just had a fabulous night on the town with Messrs. Fleaboy and Hobart and Miss Hollyce herself. It began like every other night of carousing and rambunctiousness: in a chat room. It was decided upon (apparently before I even entered the chat) that we would exercise our right to walk into various stores at the mall, buy nothing, and harass unsuspecting mall-goers such as Fleaboy's brother, Fleathing, whom Fleaboy and I ran into early in our excursion as we predatorially circled the food court in waiting for Hollyce and Byrne. Fleathing's appearance has changed dramatically since the last time I saw him; his portrait as depicted by his brother on CB is accurate in all qualities but height. I was surprised to discover that Fleathing is actually taller by an inch or two than his older brother. Also his hair was much longer and less his natural color. He was with a dark, curly haired girl easily the shortest of the four of us. They were rifling through a calendar stand when Fleaboy noticed them and said, "Brother!" while shoving me aside. I'm still not sure why he did that because as soon as I was hidden behind the lithograms of puppies and swimsuit models, he walked up to his brother and asked him why he had chosen the same mall to go to on a Saturday night. Apparently he and his female companion had been driving and just decided to go to the mall in an impulse which, Fleaboy pointed out, lacked the carefully planned agenda he had created on the internet and which, I refrained from mentioning, was already thrown off by the fact that Hollyce and Byrne were late. After the brothers' subtely feudal conversation ended, we walked a few more circuits of the food court assigning names and occupations to randomly selected people dining there.

Eventually we stopped walking and waited near the calendar racks after Fleathing had gone. Hollyce and Byrne showed up shortly after, and we began our trek through the mall. We started out in the recently opened Sony Styles store which was clearly created to compete with the Apple store's ever-increasing popularity one floor above. I must admit that there were some very nice pieces of technology in broader range than Apple's in the Sony showroom. Flatscreen/LCD/HDTV/Plasma TV sets�it seems almost insulting to call them TVs; I believe it's actually appropriate to call them entertainment centers or modules� showed various pop artists singing on stage and, in another corner, the most famous clips of seasons one through three of Seinfeld.

After the Sony lost its style, we moved on to the Brookstone store where I seated myself in The Throne of Great Pleasure which massaged my back for a euphoric five minutes before I realized that my friends were getting tired of watching the masseuse-chair massage my back. I sat up and began poking around the store for high powered lasers, coffee makers, and barbeque equipment which can handle the most complicated mathematical equations involved in grilling brats. Eventually Brookstone also lost its appeal and we moved on to the next store.

We walked into thet Discovery Channel Store where I was immediately drawn to a colorful, glowing, bubbling, fogging night light. When Byrne pulled me away from it, I noticed that the Discovery Health Channel was making a visit to the store too. They had set up camp towards the back of the store and were doing unspeakable things with scales and cheap, hand-held video game looking modules behind their mysterious curtains. Hollyce said she'd line up if I did so she, Fleaboy and I got stepped into the "walk ins" line and were handed a waiver which I made Byrne read to make sure I wasn't signing myself up to be a mail order bride. Luckily I wasn't selling any tangible part of myself and they couldn't have my soul, because I'm still not sure who has that right now. After filling out the papers I was lead behind one of the curtains where I was weighed (134 lbs) and then shoved off and told to go to the website to start my new exercise regimen. Then I was told to hold Tiger Electronicesque gadget which would miraculously indicate my Body Mass Index (20, if I remember correctly and I probably don't) and total body fat (12.5). I pinned my pedometer onto my belt before we left the store and found some little brat jumping around on the show boats in the middle of the mall. Hollyce said something about that being wrong and decided to tell the security guard standing in plain view of the truant. I quickly planned a preemptive salivary strike on the lad and dashed up the escalator (which had no affect on the pedometer for whatever reason) to get to the railing under which he would soon be smote by a great glob of.....but alas, he had gotten off the boat by the time I reached the second floor.

Hollyce rode the escalator up to where we were standing and told us that she had established a relationship with the guard by chatting about the football game (which nearly every store we walked into was broadcasting on the radio) and then informed him that his duty as a guard was to prevent children such as the one dancing on the boat from dancing on the boats.

"You mean those kids?" he asked, pointing to me, Fleaboy, and Byrne as we went up the escalator.

"No, the one who's on the boat."

By that point, however, the kid had gotten down and Hollyce just left the guard to cotinue entertaining feelings of nostalgia as he remembered the good old days when you could get everything at the corner store and watched as the Discovery Chanel Store was robbed blind. We were ambling around the second floor when the Apple store's gleaming, sterile logo caught my eye and I said louder than I had intended, "Ooo! The Apple Store! Let's go in there. I want to see the iPod Shuffle." One of the workers came over as we walked in and asked, "Did I hear someone say they wanted to see the Shuffle?" I told her that that was me and she pulled a Shuffle off of the lanyard around her neck and showed us all of it's neatest features. I was surprised at first that it didn't have a screen, but then realized that this Apple's cheap model. I was also hit with the realization that it was called the iPod Shuffle because it was on perpetual shuffle mode because it didn't have a screen. I'm a quick one. From what I saw of it, the Shuffle is just a very expensive flash drive that can hold a mere 300ish songs. It's price is considerably lower than anything else Apple has to offer, but it's still the typical Apple rip-off we've all come to know and love. I actually do love it, though. Anyway before leaving, I made sure to open up Safari on one of the new iMacs and make CB a bookmark on the toolbar� an easy catch even for the unobservant who might wander into the store, such as our friend the security guard.

We walked out of the Apple Store and into the Abercrombie across the way. I was surprised that Fleaboy actually wanted to go in to sample their cologne. Byrne went along with it too, but Hollyce obstinately refused. I don't blame her; I know that lots of people hate A&F simply because it's A&F and that's fine. We eventually did coax her in, but as soon as she walked in, some of her friends from school said hello from outside. I don't think she was too happy about being caught in an Abercrombie store, but I think she'll outlive the shame.

I've been working on this post for a while, but it's now been too long and I've forgotten parts of what happened after this point, so you'll just have to live with this.