Ras does the shops, empty as, apparently

1. Best Buy: Entered store at 11:00 am. Nearly empty. Stocked to the gills with XBox 360s and every version of "Guitar Hero" from Guns N' Roses to The Chipmunks. At least three-thousand different models of hi-def screens on display but no one even perusing them. Walked around the store several times trying to avoid the desperate sales people, but to no avail. When I finally let one clipboard-clutching clerk corner me, we immediately got into a discussion as to how sales were this season. "Don't ask", was the reply.

2. Next stop, Circuit City, approximately 12:00 noon: If Best Buy was poorly populated, then Circuity City was an absolute ghost town. Not only was the store almost completely empty, but the redshirted retail Rickey's appeared startled that someone (me) actually stumbled into the store. Practically tripping over one-another to offer me assistance, the poor things seemed like children starving for attention. Again, store jammed floor-to-ceiling with gimcracks and geegaws. Prices slashed on virtually item in the store. Free financing for life, practically.

3. Then, it was off to the mall, approximately 1:00pm.: With there being only two more weekends of mall shopping left before XMas, I was sure that the mall would be filled with sheeps ready to spend, spend, spend. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Again, I was shocked at the near-total lack of lambs and the mall personnel all loitering around as if this was to be expected. I even entered that Nirvana of Consumerism--The Apple Store, and for the first time ever in my recollection, there were more tatooed-and-spiky-haired Apple reps than there were customers in the store.

4. At that point, I scurried out of the mall and just for fun stopped in a gigantic pawn shop on the way home Well, imagine my surprise when I saw that the pawn shop was offering thirty friggin' percent off of everything in the joint! Furthermore, the only people in the place (besides me) were those lined up trying to pawn everything from paint-sprayers to iPods. Needless to say, the pawn shop was already over-run with these items and they were turning away the downtrodden in droves.