Finals week is here, seemingly coming out of nowhere to catch everyone off guard. This is probably my last post of the semester, which is an important landmark, I know. I know none of you have the internet at home and it will be virtually impossible for you to access the site until late January. In all seriousness though, I won’t be running the site the same way next semester. I’ll be going on with the Towerlight and getting an official weekly column (or at least thats the plan at the moment), so I’ll probably cut back my writing to just that. I’ll still post the articles here, and of course they’ll run in the Towerlight. With the extra time, I want to “pursue other projects.” I’m brainstorming on ideas for a site similar to this, but with a more global appeal. Let’s face it, no one outside of Towson students or people that know me personally has any reason to read this. I want to write about something bigger, but I don’t know what yet.

In honor of this manufactured occasion, I want to clean out the site and start fresh. What I mean by that is that I am going to post some of the drafts and dead end articles that I’ve started over the last couple of months. These are all things that, for whatever reason, I wasn’t able to do anything with. I started with what I thought was a good idea, wrote a funny sentence or two, and then completely submarined. Without further ado, here are some of my favorite dead ends, raw, unedited, and unfinished:

—————-

“If I’m old enough to go to war, I should be old enough to drink!”

You’ve heard it/said it/agreed with it before. It’s a pretty heated debate, with people under 21 arguing their side passionately while people over 21 read the paper and drink coffee or whatever it is that they do.

I had a similar argument in a class of mine. My group was discussing whether you should have to be 18 or 21 to be a police officer. Then there’s strip clubs, where you have to be 18 to strip, 18 to spectate, 21 to drink, and over 40 to get any attention.

All of this made me wonder, what are the differences between an 18 year old and a 21 year old? Are there any? Who would win in a fight?

——————–

Almost everyone I know is a self-identified procrastinator. No one will ever tell you that they are very prompt and deliberate.

Most people who claim to be procrastinators are, in fact, lying. The most diligent people I know will be the ones freaking out about an exam they have in two weeks, that they’ve “put off studying for.” Please, I’ve never even heard of studying for an exam more than two days in advance, and I count the day of the exam as a day.

Procrastination is both a vice and a virtue. It can screw you badly if you’re not careful, but it has some perks that no one seems to ever talk about.

The pressure of an approaching deadline will light a fire under your ass like nothing else. Screw outlines and proofreading, toss aside the flashcards, and just wing it. You sort of become possessed, and by the time you’re done with the assignment you can’t remember anything. You have no idea what your paper says because you only read it once, and you can’t remember any of the questions from the test… let alone how you answered them. When you get the graded copy back it’s like Christmas. You get to see your grade, yeah, but you will also be amazed at how much you knew at 4am the day you turned it in.

—————

If you keep up with my site, you’ll probably find that the one aspect of being a college student I don’t touch on very often is going to class. That’s because going to class is boring. I mean, sure, I could write up some sarcastic bulleted list of ways to make class more fun. Off the top of my head, though, I can’t think of anything that won’t get you thrown out of the classroom or cause you to fail out of college. While I have, in previous entries, advocated underage drinking, binge drinking, assault and battery, Vicodin, insurance fraud, and evading the law, I can’t in good conscience promote poor study habits. I can’t even bring myself to joke about it.

—————-

In one of my classes this week we are doing individual presentations. It doesn’t matter what class it is, but the rubric for the presentation specifically says “3-5 minutes.” I went the first day and kept my presentation within the time limit, and you know what? I got an A. Everyone after me happened to choose a topic that apparently moves them to tears, and proceeded to ramble on for 15 minutes extra about irrelevant nonsense. So today I went to that class for the sole purpose of listening to these presentations. We should have gotten through everyone and been let out of class early, but because people are inconsiderate, we stayed the whole time and will end up running over a day or two. I know this isn’t an isolated incident or a problem of mine alone.

One of my favorite Facebook groups is “Keep Your Fucking Hand Down in Lecture and Shut Up, No One Cares.” This really doesn’t require any elaboration because I’m sure just reading that sentence has enraged most of you. I know I am already starting to get angry. People who ask questions, repeat shit just to clarify, request elaboration, or tell stupid anecdotes in class are just part of one subset of annoying ass people in class. There are other people who deserve groups dedicated to hating them, too.

People Who Nod in Agreement: The occasional “oh, I get it,” nod is acceptable but some people take the reasonable nod and just shit all over it. Your professor doesn’t need you to advertise your agreement while he’s telling the class about how he got stuck in traffic. He’s probably not even looking at you because he knows eye contact will lead to you asking a question. Here’s a hint for people who do this: Every time you feel the urge to nod in class, shove a thumbtack in your eye instead. If you still want to nod after that then go ahead.

People Who Bring Laptops to Class and DON’T Use Them to Play Games: God damnit. I hate it when I look over at someone on a laptop and the only application open is a plain old Word document. I’ll often scan the task bar to see if Minesweeper is hiding out in the background somewhere. If it isn’t, then that person sucks. Look, asshole, if you’re going to distract me with your technology, at least make it interesting. Play solitaire, read the news, hell throw some porn up there. You wouldn’t like it if I brought an old-style typewriter to class to take notes with. That would be annoying as shit. And not the least bit entertaining.

People Who “Make an Entrance”: Dramatically removing your sunglasses, rapping along with your iPod, and talking loudly on your cell phone should all qualify you for immediate removal from class and possibly the human race.

People Who Are “The Unofficial Tech Guy”: There’s always that one kid in class who thinks he is MacGyver, and when the VCR won’t work properly he steps up to the plate to fix it. I mean, hey, if you know what you’re doing then by all means fix it. But 9 times out of 10 this person doesn’t fix a damn thing.

—————-

Good luck on your finals. I’ll still be writing over winter break, but for formalities sake, see you next semester.

We’ve all done them. We’ve all hated them.

My three least favorite words to hear in the classroom are “write a paper,” provided they aren’t followed by a clear explanation. My second least favorite words to hear in the classroom are “get into groups.” It doesn’t matter what follows that; there is nothing good at the end of that sentence. But that’s really neither here not there.

I can write a paper if you give me… I don’t know… a topic. I’ll even take some rough guidelines, or a sample subject. Opening up an entire semester’s worth of discussion and readings and telling me to “form a thesis” is the least helpful thing a teacher can do.

The question and answer sessions following these assignments are always hysterical. It’s obvious to everyone but the teacher that no one has any idea what to do. To the professor, though, it couldn’t be more clear. I think these discussions might be more helpful if that one kid didn’t always finish half of his paper the day it was assigned. He’ll put his hand up in the middle of a “what the fuck” question and ask the teacher to critique his thesis and if he should focus more on the 17th century Irish literature as a separate entity or if he should examine its impact on modern authors, particularly in regards to the early women’s movement and first wave feminism.

Great, now everyone else looks retarded. Thanks. I’m still trying to figure out if the pages have to be numbered and you’re already looking for proofreaders. Don’t look at me. I hate you.

The best is when you turn the paper in, get a sub-par grade, and are offered the chance to rewrite it. This is especially awesome when you STILL don’t know what you’re supposed to be writing about. The comments never help. Circling random sentences in red ink and adding a question mark, putting tiny check marks next to words that seem to please you, and scribbling illegible notes in your microscopic handwriting doesn’t help me make revisions. I shouldn’t need The Rosetta Stone to understand where I went wrong.

I’m tempted to sit and crank out papers on random topics all day long; eventually one of them is going to be satisfactory. Or I could get an infinite number of monkeys to bang indiscriminately on typewriters, and in 7 billion years I’ll have a masterpiece. It’s minus 10 points per day it’s late, so that’s…. the end of my college career as I know it.

From Yahoo! News (whole article):

Two hugs equals two days of detention for 13-year-old Megan Coulter. The eighth-grader was punished for violating a school policy banning public displays of affection when she hugged two friends Friday.

 
Wow. Remember middle school rules? They seem retarded now that we’re older, but at the time we had to put up with some serious bullshit.
 
Remember when you had to ask permission to go to the bathroom? Couldn’t wear a hat inside? Couldn’t drink a soda in class? And that isn’t even the half of it.
 
I know a lot of you can probably relate to this… At my middle school we had 35 minute lunch periods. The first 15 minutes were devoted to the Assistant Principal rambling on about policy and other stupid crap. We were not allowed to talk during this time, only to eat in silence. After the daily rhetoric, we had about 10 minutes where we could eat and talk freely. Of course, we had to stay seated at all times. Moving to a different table was forbidden, and sitting with another class was a serious offense. Oh and also if things got too loud, the AP would grab the mic again, tell us to shut up, and cut our “talk time” short. The last 10 minutes of lunch were essentially the same as the first 15. Sit in silence, quietly finish your lunch and dispose of all trash, and wait for your class to be called to exit the cafeteria. Talking at any time except the designated 10 minutes would result in detention. Changing tables, detention. Making eye contact with the AP, detention.  There was actually a wall in the middle of the lunch room where you would have to stand if you misbehaved, right in front of the whole school, for everyone to see. You’d stand there until the end of lunch, unable to finish eating.
 
In the morning, when we first got to school, we had to wait outside - rain or shine, warm or cold. They seriously would not let anyone into the building until precisely the minute homeroom started. If you pulled in front of my school in the morning, you would see 300 kids standing outside in little groups. If you wandered into a different grade’s designated waiting area, detention. A lot of kids got dropped off pretty early because of their parents’ work schedules, so it wasn’t uncommon for kids to be forced to wait outside for a good half an hour before school started. In the winter, this sucked.
 
We had lockers in middle school, just like we did in high school. The only difference was that, in middle school, we literally were not allowed to use them. I have absolutely no idea where my locker was, what it looked like, and definitely no idea what the combination was. I didn’t know then either because I couldn’t use it. We had to carry our lunches, coats, and all of our books with us all day. There were a few designated times when we were allowed to go to our lockers but I know we couldn’t before school or at lunch. That was detention. I guess it was only after school that we could use them. Anything we put in there had to stay for at least 24 hours.
 
My middle school had a program known as the Ingenuity Project. It was basically the “smart-kids track.” It emphasized math and science, and was meant to prepare you for those courses at the high school level. As bad as the school administrators were, the people that ran Ingenuity were a thousand times worse. When I was in sixth grade, Ingenuity had a policy that if you received below an 80 in a class, it was considered failing. So, yes, a C was failing. By the time I left they had raised it to 85, so that anything less than pure perfection was bordering on unacceptable. A great job was no longer great, it was expected. A good job was grounds for removal from the program. A poor job was 30 lashes.
 
And they wonder why 8th graders fuck with their teachers non-stop, pull the fire alarm every other week, and generally act like ignorant little shits. It’s probably because after 3 years of that Nazi horseshit, you go insane and want to kill everyone in the school.

I know I rag on Towson constantly, often with tongue firmly in cheek. I’m honestly surprised the administration hasn’t sent me a cease and desist order yet. If I ever run into Bob Caret in a dark alley, things might not end well for me. The truth is, though, that it’s very easy to find things you don’t like about something and then exploit them. Sarcasm, annoyance, and blind rage (as much as I sometimes enjoy them) are easy. Optimism; now that takes a little more effort.
 
Towson has been catching a lot of flack lately. It seems like everyone has some sort of issue with the campus, the town, or especially the administration. While a lot of the complaints are legitimate, I think the good aspects of Towson as a whole get overshadowed. So here is something I’ve been meaning to write for a long time; my favorite things about Towson.
 
I love that Towson’s Safe Ride is the police. Does anyone else think that’s awesome? The cops can be beating you down with a billy club as you run from a party one minute and be chauffeuring you home the next.
 
I love Starvin’ Student deals at Jerry’s Subs and Pizza. Monday night is $5 large pizza night. Wednesday night is $4 cheese steak night. I find it sort of ironic that these kinds of great deals can be found in such close proximity to the college bookstore. That’s like building an elementary school next to a strip club.
 
I love the “Uptown” bar scene. I’m not old enough to actually go, but so far I’ve thoroughly enjoyed watching the drunk traffic to and from the strip. I’ve learned that anyone standing outside a bar talking on a cell phone is invariably arguing with a significant other, and that my front yard is the perfect place to throw down in an alcohol induced fisticuffs.
 
I love the trumpet playing guy. He’s everything you could want in a homeless man; he’s not pushy, he provides a valuable service, and he’s not pretending to need bus fare or cigarette money. It really makes a big difference in the atmosphere, having his trumpet liven up the air. His throaty singing voice, although startling to unsuspecting pedestrians, is crazy and awesome.
 
I love how everyone and their mother knows what J. Friendly’s is REALLY about.
 
I love the pizza from The Den. I don’t care if it’s floppy and rubbery, it tastes amazing.
 
I love the hippies that congregate outside Brick Street and organize hippie rallies and play hippie songs on their hippie guitars. Of course, I don’t love them enough to join their causes, but still.
 
I love Tigerfest and Homecoming. For my money, nothing beats getting drunk with the sun still high in the sky. Towson has just the right amount of students to make events like this work. At a huge school, there are just too many people to have a centralized celebration without it turning into a full scale riot. At a small school, not enough people will show up to make it worth while. Towson’s population is just big enough for a few rowdy drunkards to throw beer cans at the police, but not so big that they need to respond with tear gas and German Shephards.
 
I love that Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs fame) and Stacy Kiebler (former Baltimore Ravens’ cheerleader, former WWE Diva, and current long-legged goddess) are Towson alumni.
 
I love that, with a few minor exceptions, Towson is very centralized. Sure that means crowds, but it also means that you can move between buildings quickly. You never see anybody riding a bike around campus, and for good reason. It’s completely unnecessary and they would probably ride over someone’s feet and face plant.
 
I love campus-wide wireless internet. No matter what building I am in, I can stop listening to what the teacher is saying at any time and start reading The Onion instead. I can play addicting online games. I can do my taxes. I can even update my website. Now I just have to buy that film that goes over your monitor so people to the side of you can’t see your screen. Then I could even look at porn.
 
———————
 
I kind of liked hearing from people about their favorite horror movie antagonists. So, if you have something to add I’d love to hear about it. What’s your favorite thing about Towson?

Most of you already know that I live in a house off campus. For those of you that don’t, I live in a house off campus. The cool thing about my house is that the rent is cheap and I rarely get bothered by the landlord or neighbors. The bad thing is that the house itself was constructed with roughly the same quality standards as a doll house.
 
Granted, we throw a lot of parties here and there is a constant stream of people coming and going. We’re rough on the place, but we’re not exactly hosting UFC fights every weekend. Some of the damage to the house is understandable but some of it is completely absurd.
 
I should have known what to expect after my first day living here. The day that I moved in, the refrigerator door broke off as I was unpacking my first round of groceries. I popped it back in place and held it there with a cereal box supporting the bottom. The landlord, begrudgingly, came out to fix it the next day. That would be the last thing he would ever fix in this house.
 
A few days after I moved in, I threw myself a housewarming party. At this point there was nothing in the house except for a long table for beerpong, a couch, and an air mattress in my room. And beer in the fridge. The next morning, I discovered the cabinet/mirror in the bathroom had come out of the wall and was hanging perilously by electrical wires. I have no idea how that happened, but I figured it would be an easy fix. I tried to screw it back in but found that the holes had been stripped. Fine. I tried to nail the damn thing back in place. I must have pounded in seven or eight different nails before I realized that there isn’t actually a stud behind the mirror. That means there was never anything to screw into and the thing had been holding onto empty drywall the entire time. After letting it hang for a few days, I disconnected the entire thing and took it down. It is still sitting on my hallway floor to this day.
 
The next thing to go was the front door handle. Again, I have no fucking idea how these things happen, but one day the front door knob decided to unscrew itself and hang by a thread. It was back door entry only (in a non-sexual way) for a few days until my rommate figured out how to fix it.
 
My bedroom door also fell victim to whatever bizarre curse is responsible for all of this. Someone bumped into it one night, causing the top hinge to rip completely out of the wall. My door was left leaning away from the frame at a 20 degree angle or so. Again, the screws just stripped right out and there was no screwing them back in. I left my door like this for a good five months. I just fixed it yesterday, as a matter of fact. And by fixed I mean temporarily jury-rigged.
 
A few weeks ago our toilet handle snapped off. Like everything else in the house, it didn’t just come off in a clean fashion, but rather was completely destroyed. I replaced it with an industrial strength, metal, bad-ass motherfucker of a toilet handle. I see this as a victory because now our toilet is better than ever.
 
There are a few swollen floor boards in our dining room. We’re not talking “slightly beveled,” swollen, we’re talking “you will trip over this and die if you’re not careful,” swollen. The peak of the swelling is a good two to three inches higher than the rest of the floor. I contribute this to a geographical fault underneath the house. It remains unfixed.
 
I just listed all of this crap, and I still feel like I’m missing something. Unbelievable.
 
You have a pretty simple choice, really. Live in a normal place and don’t throw parties, and you won’t have to deal with home improvement. But if you want cheap rent and lots of alcohol, you’re going to have to be ready for this kind of thing. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

I have a really bad habit of eating way too much fast food. I’m not so much concerned about the fact that it’s not healthy, although that’s true, because 90% of the time I eat out it’s at Subway. Of course, it’s not as good for you when you get the 12″ and add a ton of mayonnaise and cheese. But it is still a moral victory because its Subway and Subway is healthy.
 
My addiction to eating out means that I am terrible at finishing food that is already in my fridge. Things go bad, get freezer burned, or just sit forever. My hierarchy for finishing food basically goes from Easiest to Cook to Most Effort Involved. First to go are frozen pizzas. Tuna sandwiches follow shortly after. Then I eat at Subway five days in a row until I can’t afford it anymore and am forced to make real food.
 
Anyways all of this is leading to something pretty disgusting. A week or two ago (probably closer to two) my roommate and I went grocery shopping and I thought it would be a good idea to get fresh strawberries. They were delicious for a day and then they sat in the fridge until last night. I made a frozen pizza for dinner and, on a whim, grabbed the strawberries to go with it. I took my meal out to the living room, flicked off the lights, and started watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre 4 On Demand.
 
The pizza was delicious, but the strawberries were a little off. Nothing too bad, they just tasted a bit sour. I figured they were “on the way out.” About halfway through the terrible, terrible movie, I gave up and went to bed. I left the strawberries sitting out because I am lazy. When I woke up today I saw what I had been eating. I was mortified. Have a look, if you dare.
 

 
How did I not notice the thick patch of fuzz? I don’t know, it was dark. Leave me alone. If I die from some horrible stomach virus you’ll know what happened.

I went out last night, to a certain apartment complex that will remain nameless. At 11:30pm, I parked in an ambiguously valid visitor’s parking spot. When I came outside to drive home, at around 3:30am, my car was gone. It had been towed.
 
I just have one question. Who tows cars in the middle of the night? Are you kidding? There’s no reason to tow someone that late unless they are physically blocking traffic or if the car is a bomb. My parking job may have been suspect but it was pretty harmless.
 
I wandered the parking lot like a lost child for a good ten minutes before admitting to myself that my car was actually gone. That’s a weird feeling, when your car isn’t where you remember leaving it. You start questioning yourself. Am I drunk? Am I retarded? Did I win some sort of sweepstakes where they replaced my car with a nicer one?
 
Unfortunately I wasn’t drunk, I’m not retarded, and most disappointing of all, I didn’t win shit. I caught a ride home with a friend and spent the rest of the night screaming into my pillow like a teenage girl until I fell asleep.
 
The next day another friend was nice enough to drive me to the impound lot to retrieve my car. If I had gotten there twenty minutes later, I would have missed my last chance until Monday to get my car back. That was a close one.
 
There’s something about the towing business that sets off your primal instincts and makes you fucking angry. As soon as we rolled up to the lot, I started to get extremely bitter at their audacity. They had a big tow truck blocking the lot so you can’t just hop in your car and drive away. Who they fuck do they think they are? Even their driveway pissed me off. Don’t ask me why, it was just infuriating.
 
I walked into the lot and saw my car sitting there, surrounded on three sides by other towed cars. I took a lap around it, hoping that they had caused some body damage that I could sue them for. Sadly, it was in-tact. I opened the door and retrieved my wallet, which I had left inside.
 
A giant sign on the main building said “Please go to window.” There was a couple in line in front of me at “the window.” They were arguing over some stupid irrelevant dribble, trying to haggle price with these people over some auto-body work they had done. All I could see through the foggy bullet-proof glass was a hand inside the booth waving around a piece of paper and pointing at certain parts of it. I just want my goddamn car back, just pay your bill and go home, assholes. Eventually they came to some sort of agreement and the payment process began. Their credit card machine must have been from 1947 because from the time the woman handed her card through the window to the time she moved her fat ass out of the way was at least another five minutes. That’s not even dial-up speed, that’s like telegraph speed. They should have sent a carrier pigeon instead. Or maybe they should have just carved her receipt into a stone tablet. That would have been a pretty efficient way to waste more of my time.
 
As I was waiting, one of the mechanics/tow-truck drivers/giant douchebags asked me what I was there for and if I needed help. Was he actually being polite to me? How dare you, sir. How dare you. I’m not in the mood for pleasantries.
 
When my turn to approach the window finally came, I realized why the other people took so long. The guy in the booth had to be 100 years old. He didn’t even look like a real old man; he looked like an actor in old-man makeup. His face was covered in moles and liver spots, and his glasses were almost as thick as the bullet-proof glass that was stopping me from punching him. He told me that I owed him $220. I was thinking it would be more like $150, but what could I do. No matter what they charged, it would have been too much. Even if it was free, they still would have owed me for ruining my day. I gave him my credit card, and as he was running it I read a second sign to my right. “Contents of vehicles must not be removed until payment is received.” Too late, I already got my wallet out. Losers.
 
The two mechanics on duty started doing their little jigsaw puzzle thing, to free up my car so I could leave. There was a brief window where the tow truck blocking the entrance was moved and my car had a straight shot. I thought about making a dramatic escape, but then I realized that I had already paid. Foiled again.
 
Old Man Winter was kind enough to give me a receipt denoting how badly I had been boned. Thanks man. I guess I’ll hold onto it in case I want to return my tow-job, or perhaps exchange it for a good old fashioned eye-gouging. As soon as he handed the slip of paper to me I turned and walked away. He might have just destroyed my budget for the next three months, but I didn’t say “thank you.” I clearly win.
 
The worst part of this whole thing is that, when your car gets towed, you spend all this money… and you get literally nothing in return. Absolutely nothing. In fact you also lose valuable time from your day. I think they should offer some sort of consolation package, even if it’s just a Twix and a Vicodin. That way when you get home you can at least say, “Well that was the most expensive Twix I’ve ever eaten.” But you won’t care because you’ll be fucked up on Vicodin.

People are pissed. Towson University is undergoing massive changes from head to toe. Great things are in store for future students, but current students are suffering in the meantime. Parking is a mess, campus is overrun with construction, and the President of the University is blogging. How did it come to this?
 
“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” That’s what people always tell me when I dump nuclear waste into the ocean. But it’s pretty good advice and I think it applies here as well. I certainly don’t want to be “a part of the problem,” so here are some brainstorms that might help make campus life a little easier for you in this time of crisis.
 
Full Story »

My First Parking Ticket, Part I
My First Parking Ticket, Part II: Resurrection
My First Parking Ticket, Part III: Vengeance
My First Parking Ticket, Part IV: Mind Games
———————-
 
My ongoing battle for vehicular liberation has hit a setback. The last update I gave you on the struggle showed Towson Parking Enforcement sneaking into the “the spot” while I was out and squatting on it (as shown here). If I was smart, I would have bailed and cut my losses. Quit while you’re ahead, that’s the smart thing. Well, I’m an idiot and as soon as they left I reclaimed what I thought was rightfully mine. Obviously a bad move.
 

The next day, I walked out to my car to once again find Parking Enforcement camped out right next to me. The same woman that I had seen before was sitting on a ledge to the side of my car, making notes about something on a clipboard. I didn’t aknowledge her, of course. As I got closer to my car I could see that the meter was flashing a red “Expired”. I also spotted a little piece of paper under my windshield wiper. Suppressing the urge to throw a cinderblock through the woman’s windshield, I calmly collected the ticket and drove off. Another $18 fine that could have been avoided if Towson didn’t suck so badly.
 

That makes twice now that I’ve been boned, figuratively. Surprisingly, though, I’m not that mad. I had a good run at that meter, and for as much trouble as I have gone through, I bet the last few weeks have been even more stressful for Towson Parking Enforcement. When you do the math, I’m getting a pretty good deal. Two $18 tickets in a little over a month is better than paying for a parking permit anywhere. Maybe now we can put this whole saga to rest. Of course, I’ll still be checking back to see if the meter breaks again…

My roommate, his girlfriend, her roommate, and I all took a trip tonight to Party City. His girlfriend wanted to exchange a costume she had bought earlier, and I tagged along to take a look at the selection.
 
If you have ever been to the Party City on York Road (by Panera), you know how poorly run it is and should probably just stop reading now. By the time we finally got out of there we were affectionately calling it the “Giant Shop of Horrors,” which is appropriate on so many levels.
 
Full Story »