Miscellaneous Musings, Fort Mojave, Gold Mines, and Head Hopping

What do all of these things have in common?  Well, they have a lot to do with my trip to Arizona for the Thanksgiving holiday.

In a nutshell, my wife, son and I drove to Fort Mojave, Arizona to have Thanksgiving at my aunt and uncle's house.  We stayed there for a few days, ate until we had to bring in the wheelbarrows to roll us out the door, and had an over all good time.  Arizona's not the place for me (too hot for most of the year), but it's such a nice change form the miserable city of San Diego I live in.

My wife and I went to Walmart on Thanksgiving night just to laugh at the crowds.  We were lucky enough to find a parking spot just as someone pulled out.  The lot was filled to capacity.  We went in.  My jaw dropped.  There were DVD displays right at the get go, all of them except one had signs advertising that they were five bucks a pop like that was a screaming deal.  That's the regular price.  There are always five dollar DVD bins at Walmart.  The one exception was a $1.99 display, which was indeed a good deal, but if you ask me, they were pulling the 'ol bait and switch, fooling the masses into thinking five clams was a good deal.  People were pulling DVDs out of there like they were going out of style. 

At this point, I closed my eyes and listened, and I could hear, faintly, the familiar bah, bah, bah-ing of sheeple.  We were herded in like cattle and I was began to feel unease set in.  I used to be violently claustrophobic, and crowds like this one tend to bring that horrible feeling of anxiety on in waves.  But back to the herds, because there were quite literally herds of people waiting for several displays that were covered by tarps, each of them with a price advertised above of 5, 10, 20, and 30 dollars, yet no one could see what was beneath the tarps.  Could have been steaming piles of dog shit and yet they lined up.  Could have been a chopping block and a man with an axe and a leather mask, and yet they lined up.  Aisles of food were closed off with caution tape behind which were the sheeple waiting for 40" flat screen televisions.  A Walmart imp-ployee was giving the herds a sticker with a number (they must have forgot the branding irons at home).  I told my wife that Walmart could have constructed a cliff that led into a pit of lava, told the sheeple that there were 40" flat screens on the other side and watched them all leap to their death like lemmings.  If I hadn't been so disgusted I would have stuck around to watch the heard let loose as the tarps were pulled from the merchandise.

As we waded through the crazed people all shoving electronics, DVDs, video games, overpriced cheap blanket sets and anything with an "advertised" price into their shopping carts like the stuffing in the turkey they had eaten only hours before, I was only pleased when I realized that I was going to walk out of there and leave it all behind while these foolish sheeple would have to wait in another line just to pay for their goods.  We passed the lines as we left the store and the bah, bah, bah-ing turned into "are you in line?", "is this the line?", "she just cut in front of me!", "where's the line?", and such.

On a lighter not, my wife and I went into a town called Nelson to see a gold mine.  It was a great tour.  I learned a lot about how gold was mined at the turn of the century.  Real old west stuff: murder, crooked sheriffs, lowering donkeys in the caverns, cowboys and Indians.  There's a lot of history in Nelson, and they're doing a great job of preserving it.  Up the road a bit is Penis Valley... Well, that's not the official name, but if you go there you'll know why it has been dubbed as such.  Rock formations straight out of an HR Giger painting.  Got a good laugh.

Now, onto the head hopping I mention in the title.  It's something I'll have to open up a discussion about on a forum at some point in the future.  I'm current;y reading Rick Hautala's novel Moon Walker and I can't help but notice the abundant head hopping.  I know it was written that way on purpose, but I've been taught that head hopping is evil and should never be done, yet that is the way this book is written.  It doesn't bother me at all.  I think it works rather well, but I have to wonder what all those people who advocate against head hopping would think if they were to--or have--read this book.  What makes it work is that Rick is consistent, and I suppose it's an omniscient point of view, but I can't help but wonder what the consensus is about this style of writing.  I'm half way through.  It's a good book and it's getting better and better.  I'm a very slow reader and I usually have my nose in three or four books at one time, but I'll post a review of Moon Walker when I'm finished.

That's all for now.  Hope all my American brothers and sisters had a great Thanksgiving.

Cheers!