Back in Amerika without a doubt - some observations
it may be miami and spanish may be practically all you hear being spoken, but i'm back in the u.s.a., no doubt about it... i headed to the shopping mall across the street a couple of hours ago, just as it started raining... i got back a few minutes ago and it's still coming down, not heavy, but what i suspect is the kind of steady wind and big, fat tropical raindrops that are probably the norm around here...
a few observations...
we're all familiar with how shopping mall owners, ever on the lookout for more ways to turn a buck from their square footage, have leased the concourse space to hundreds of kiosks which are now so chock-a-block you can hardly make it from one end of the mall to the other... what i didn't snap to until today, is the changes in the very architecture and construction of the malls themselves... remember how mega-malls used to be massive architectural edifices in and of themselves, often on a grand theme like southern plantations, the forum in ancient rome, etc...? a lot of the existing ones are that way and some new ones are still being built that way, but, guess what...? mall developers have made the discovery that, basically, few people give a shit what the OUTSIDE of a mall looks like... patrons are busy finding a parking place so they can hotfoot it inside in pursuit of whatever they think will be the latest purchase to make themselves happy... so, as i realized today while WALKING (yes, that's what i said, WALKING) across the highway to the mall, the only two actual, identifiable BUILDINGS at this mall are the three anchor stores, macys on one end, sears on the other, and penney's in the middle... what connects them looks, from the outside, like nothing more than some type of quadruple-wide trailers towed in and stuck together... a heckuva deal, i must say, and undoubtedly a MUCH cheaper proposition for the developers... and, hell, the inside is nothing but connected boxes anyway, so throw in some plastic plants, a few skylights, and bright, come-hither lighting, and who's going to notice - or care...?
a second observation...
several commenters have noted the mccain banner at the top of the blog... i've been in argentina since it started appearing and i figured that the reason it hadn't shown up when i had the page open is that, given google's web crawler 'bots, it only appears when the ip address indicates that the viewer is actually in the united states... well, i guess i was right, cuz i got it NOW... < sigh >
and, last but not least, this bumper sticker, forwarded by a friend in macedonia who, in turn got it from a friend in the u.s., sure to be an instant classic...
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a few observations...
we're all familiar with how shopping mall owners, ever on the lookout for more ways to turn a buck from their square footage, have leased the concourse space to hundreds of kiosks which are now so chock-a-block you can hardly make it from one end of the mall to the other... what i didn't snap to until today, is the changes in the very architecture and construction of the malls themselves... remember how mega-malls used to be massive architectural edifices in and of themselves, often on a grand theme like southern plantations, the forum in ancient rome, etc...? a lot of the existing ones are that way and some new ones are still being built that way, but, guess what...? mall developers have made the discovery that, basically, few people give a shit what the OUTSIDE of a mall looks like... patrons are busy finding a parking place so they can hotfoot it inside in pursuit of whatever they think will be the latest purchase to make themselves happy... so, as i realized today while WALKING (yes, that's what i said, WALKING) across the highway to the mall, the only two actual, identifiable BUILDINGS at this mall are the three anchor stores, macys on one end, sears on the other, and penney's in the middle... what connects them looks, from the outside, like nothing more than some type of quadruple-wide trailers towed in and stuck together... a heckuva deal, i must say, and undoubtedly a MUCH cheaper proposition for the developers... and, hell, the inside is nothing but connected boxes anyway, so throw in some plastic plants, a few skylights, and bright, come-hither lighting, and who's going to notice - or care...?
a second observation...
several commenters have noted the mccain banner at the top of the blog... i've been in argentina since it started appearing and i figured that the reason it hadn't shown up when i had the page open is that, given google's web crawler 'bots, it only appears when the ip address indicates that the viewer is actually in the united states... well, i guess i was right, cuz i got it NOW... < sigh >
and, last but not least, this bumper sticker, forwarded by a friend in macedonia who, in turn got it from a friend in the u.s., sure to be an instant classic...
Labels: Argentina, Iraq, John McCain, Macedonia, Miami
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posted by profmarcus at
4/15/2007
