[Mr. Mechanical]

Not because I particularly like Wal-Mart, in fact I quite despise it, but it's the only place that's open at this hour that sells those points cards for Xbox Live and I'd really like to buy Marathon 2: Durandal and get in on that shit like as soon as humanly possible.
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[EmX]

wal-mart is too generic to hate

[Hot Stott Bot]

EmX you can be my secondary so make sure to kill LOLMASTER before killing me.

[haircute]

[km]

Try living in a town where it's the main attraction.
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vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents; half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

So yeah I get there and all they've got are the 1600 point cards for $20, do they even sell 800 point cards? I ended up not getting anything because I only wanted to spend ten dollars, not twenty. Thanks, Wal-Mart, you failed again.
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[slipstream]

[Renfrew]

I just got back from Walmart. I bought a DVD rack and a battery for my Saturn.
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[haircute]

I had just been through some crazy shit with the hottest blonde I ever got my hands on and was feeling really regretful about the whole thing. Her boyfriend didn't like walking in on me putting on my underwear while she completely frenched me. I was really hamming it up with the moping and the drinking. I was out driving around town (not drunk!) smoking cigarettes and being oh so sad when I decided to go in to Wal-Mart. We have three Wal-Mart Super Stores or whatever here. There's one in West Topeka out near the mall and all the chain stores and restaurants. It has a Sam's Club next to it where me and Maiko took pictures of us hugging three foot packs of toilet paper to send home to her mom. This was the first time either of us had been in there. There is another one in South Topeka that has easy access to a highway that will take you to the one on the westside in case you just bought something with a bounced check and then need to return it for cash so you can get beer money. The final nail in the coffin is dead North from the dead center of this dismal town. It's a pothole filled road from the rusted and under construction blight of the capitol dome to the land of low prices and ugly cashiers. It's also the one closest to my house but this isn't about that one because that one is actually kind of nice. For a Wal-Mart.

The oldest Wal-Mart in town was built when I was in second grade.This Wal-Mart is the one this is about and is also the one on the westside of town. This was also the year The Simpson's made a splash on Fox. It was the year I first played Metal Gear and finally got over being scared by Rygar. My last Atari 2600 joystick finally quit working and my Dad couldn't find a replacement. And he even kind of knew a guy that worked at a Radio Shack.

It was a time of big change in Topeka, Kansas.

That Wal-Mart has been a fixture in my life for most of my life. The games I've bought from this Wal-Mart include (in no particular order):
Link's Adventure
Disgaea 2
Sin Episodes
D2:LoD
A core 360
A watch that had a zelda game on it (i lost it when i went to the peanut brittle factory in KC the same year Manuel Noriega finally pissed off Bush Sr).
Sonic 2
XCOM
morrowind
oblivion
dawn of sorrow
trauma center

But despite all the times I'd been there I had never been there past midnight and this leads in to my original point. I was driving around feeling like crap so I decided to go in to Wal-Mart to steal a copy of alpha centauri. I had bought the game once, lost the disc, and was unable to find a working copy from a variety of locations on the internet. I had paid once already was my logic.

I drove the wrong way down the parking lot because it was dark and wet outside and my eyesight is terrible. I eventually found a spot and walked slowly past a group of Real Mexican's standing outside near one of the pillars. They were smoking cigarettes which seemed really juvenile to me at the time even though I would start almost a year later around this time.

I walked over to the magazines and picked up the first game magazine I laid eyes on.This one had a preview for Disgaea by Nich Maragos. It was cool to see a GIA Alum working in print. I think his site tetsuoboushi.com was still up around this time. Either way, Disgaea sounded pretty tight to me so I made a mental note to tell my Mother that if she absolutely had to get me a birthday present could she PLEASE get me Disgaea? I walked around to check out the pillows because I was thinking about getting a new one. I looked at them but didn't touch. I wandered over to the videogame section and marveled at the fact that DOAX was still almost nearly full price. I mean, COME ON! While I thought about why that game was still priced so high I took a newly liberated disc out of an Alpha Centauri package and put it in my pocket. I didn't care anymore. I had just lost my reliable source of ass and wanted to lose myself in leading the Morganites to economic victory.

I walked away from there and hovered near a used dvd bin. Almost everything was 4.99 or lower and it was just the most terrible stuff one could imagine. There was a balding man with longish hair poking through the dvds on the other side of the bin. Our hands met more than once and I felt disgusted just touching him. The first time it happened we were both reaching for a copy of Ernest Goes to Africa because, like the others, that is one I've never seen. I don't even think he was looking for anything. He just seemed to be turning the cases over themselves repeatedly and would only stop when our fingers brushed or hands collided.

By this time the stockers looked like they were in full swing. Loads of greasy people stalked up and down the aisles filling the empty spaces with quality goods at cut throat prices. In the frozen pizza aisle there was a pack of dirty little white kids standing near a huge sow. She was pushing a cart filled with WIC and VISION items while her pack of hungry mouths followed in her wake. I walked behind them because it felt like something out of a Daniel Clowes comic and I had just read an interview with him earlier that day. We (I thought of them as a whale pod and I was an intrepid nature photographer) were almost at the end of the aisle when I was about ready to give up and just turn around so I could get out of the store with my stolen Sid Meier game. I had resigned myself to smelling air that was faintly tainted with ass for nothing. No one said "aw shucks MA!" or "daddy says im the best kisser he knows!"

I was walking off when finally one of the little shits piped up.

"Hey, can we get what ever pizzas we want?"

His Mother stopped abruptly and the rolls of fat attached to her legs shook back and forth. This was absolutely offensive because this whale was wearing shorts. Anyway, Two-Ton Krystal stops to tell little Aiden (because all of these people have stripper names and give their kids names that strippers would give their kids) that "Yeah, pick up what ever you want cuz your brother ran off. he aint coming back so he dont count no more."

I think after hearing that a part of me died inside. It sounds really dramatic but my "heartache" was swallowed with this genuine sorrow for what I was seeing and for what I was hearing and for where I was and for why I was there. I looked at those people in front of me and felt awful. Easily disposable people buying easily disposable things from a company that can afford to easily dispose of things. Then as I started walking to my car I felt annoyed with myself for dismissing them so out of hand. Hell, I buy shit from this motherfucking store too! Not much difference between either of us as far as the store is concerned. Fucking hell, I was working at Walgreen's at the time and I probably made more than she saw in a month. If she had my job and could manage to wash her self with a towel on a stick once a week she could hold my job. We had this one crazy old trailer lady that worked there who would wear the most ridiculous shit on occasion. If this future bag lady could work at Walgreen's and I could work there then why wasn't she doing it?

The mind boggled and it didn't come up with any answers because it wasn't really asking anything.

I got to thinking about the brother that went and ran off. Where was this kid? Was he younger? Older? My age? Was he dead? Where had all of our lives gone wrong up to this point? Why was a slacker standing in a Wal-Mart looking at a family as if they were a zoo exhibit. At three a.m. Was I so detached? Was I so fucking removed from my fellow man that the only way I could interact with them was through the intense and sudden etiquette that is grocery shopping?

Still no answers so I lost this train of thought because it bored me and I then I considered the fact that both of us needed Wal-Mart tonight for different reasons. This lady needs it because not only does it have the cheapest shit in town it also lets her use her WIC and VISION cards. As crude and boorish as this lady might be, she clearly has some sort of affection for the rest of her living cunt snots since she is willing to stretch the free money instead of burn ASAP. I just wanted to be an indulgent asshole and steal a copy of Alpha Centauri.

I guess I never did really think about why she had her kids out at Wal-Mart that late night though. But that Wal-Mart has always been there for me when I need a game in a pinch. Can't say much for the others but fuck 'em.
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Get Wild and Tough!

[Mr. Mechanical]

That's an awesome story, haircute.
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[evnvnv]

that was excellent to read

haircute you are first class

[Krabjuice Gaiden]

I once went to a EB and bought Sin Episodes.

The guy asked me if I wanted to buy insurance in case my disk became damaged at one point.

I was like.

STEAM \o/
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{V}_{^w^}_{V}

[Mr. Mechanical]

Okay I just remembered Pac-Man CE so that would have been $20 worth spending right there for those two games. Too bad I've already lent some of the money to my mom, so now it'll be like a week before I'm able to buy a card. I did download the trial game for Durandal and played the first level a bit. Good stuff, I look forward to unlocking the rest of the game.
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[Rud31]

walmart blows.

and sucks.
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My Hawt Blog Vita Games

THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS

[Mr. Mechanical]

Yeah, it's like physically impossible but it somehow manages to do it without creating some sort of paradox from which nothing can escape.

Or, just maybe, it already has...


DUN DUN DUNNNNNN
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[Cryo]

[Mr. Mechanical]

It swallows the souls of poor, small town Americans into its hungry, gaping maw.
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[taidan]

I used to work at wal-mart.

It was kind of fun, for reasons entirely not kosher.

[The Drunken Samurai]

i like walmart.

they sell cheap suits and jimi hendrix tshirts now.
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[Six]

i once ran into someone i knew in a wal-mart late at night.

in a different country. no joke! pretty much the weirdest random encounter i've ever had.

[Maztorre]

christ, what an awesome piece of americana haircute

[Renfrew]

Once, late one night, one of my friends ran into one of my other friends buying nothing but a pack of oreos and a season of Seinfeld.
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[GalaxyHead]

[dessgeega]

mr. mech do you have marathon yet
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[Corinth]

[Mr. Mechanical]

[dessgeega]

pac-man is pretty amazing.

mr. mech we should play marathon deathmatch. we should have a marathon of marathon deathmatch.
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[psiga]

Until I was 12, I used to live in a small town of about 4,500. There was a general store and a biker bar on the outskirts -- I do not remember any restaurant or other markets to speak of. If you wanted food, you basically had to leave town or get it from a local farm. Our Wal-Mart sprang up in the city over from us. Because I was homeschooled, it was kosher to stay up as late as I wanted; because I lived in the desert, it was easier to run errands at night when the temperature was lower; Wal-Mart was the easiest place to go to during the late hours.

Indeed, the creepy and disappointing-on-a-human-level people tend to roam the aisles in those hours. My mother and I could never tell if we counted among them, perhaps hoping that the fact that we were questioning it was enough to ensure that we were not.

I don't have any late night Wal-Mart tales to speak of, but can relay a Wal-Mart game section story: Lemmings was coming out soon, but this was before the age of pre-orders, when you still had to wander around asking clerks if a game was out yet. Upon asking a Wal-Mart electronics section clerk if they had the game in stock, the old guy replied, "Lemons? We ain't got any Lemons." It wasn't even worth correcting him.

Anyway, yeah: bravo, Haircute. Glad that your story's in General, so it won't be slain by the axe.
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[Isfet]

i went to Binghamton University for undergrad and the only (well-known) 24-hour stores to be found were either Wal-Mart or Wegman's. now, at first there was a sort of novelty to Wal-Mart. coming from the Long Island/NYC region (along with 80% of all Binghamton students), Wal-Mart just wasn't something i was used to seeing.

so at first it ends up being sort of the freshman year thing to do. "yes, i could go buy some boca burgers at 2am, why not. also, we need paper towels."

but really, the more i discovered about the company, the less i went there. now i flat-out refuse to go to any of them (how self-righteous of me). there have been a few popping up now around LI/NYC, and their presence is probably only going to increase. but that might be a result of the decline places like K-Mart, Marshall's and other similar stores that could be found here initially.

[Mr. Mechanical]

[haircute]

My sister used to date this Thai fellow who thoroughly enjoyed Wal-Mart. My family had a Thai exchange student living with us for a year and she loved to wander Wal-Mart. Taking my old friend Maiko to Wal-Mart for the first time was also pretty hilarious. She became a big fan after that. Her Mother and Aunt insisted on a trip there before they left to go back home.

Wal-Mart seems to entrance all the azns in my life.
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Get Wild and Tough!