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Wednesday 10 December 2008

Christmas shopping

I went Christmas shopping this afternoon. Well, it's really more an exercise in note-taking. I wonder quite how despiriting it must be for the manager of a bookshop to see me, writing down what to get later on from Amazon at a better price, but still. If it bothered them that much, they'd not make their wares so expensive.

Nevertheless, the credit crunch did make for some (shock horror) actual real life bargains, including some offers in HMV which would have been scarcely bettered by just thieving it. In fact, their hateful doorway alarm seemed to keep going off of its own free will today, so that would have been a viable option. The weary staff, ears bleeding, would probably just wave you on. However, Immanuel Kant was, sadly, right about morality and I left the store without having stolen a single thing.

The upshot of all this is that I'm about to go and make Amazon a bit richer and, from a position of not knowing what I wanted for Christmas, I now have a list of about half a dozen items, several of which I simply cannot imagine living my life beyond December 26th without being in the possession of. Curse it all.

Despite this, the range of stuff available was, as has been typical of the past few years, crap. I made sure not to delve too deeply into any of the "comedy" books, knowing with a soul-crushing certainty that I'll have plenty of time to leaf through the bloody things from Boxing Day. Worst of all was a book called 101 Books To Read Before You Die. Yes, that's right. For Christmas, I got you a book outlining the fact that you are a pleb. Good heavens.

All in all, I'm now starting to feel a bit more festive. I think that all shopping trips should take place in the last hour of daylight, for one thing. Coming out of a shop to find it's now dark outside distinctly helps make you feel like you've left no stone left unturned and, therefore, like less of a fink when you end up buying shit presents for your parents. Also, everyone else seemed to be much more panicked and repulsively ugly than me, which can only help bolster one's mood. I ate three mince pies when I got back home.

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