There's only one thing I hate more than liars...

[wulfgarmnk]

... and that's thieves. Today after school I had to go straight to work, and for those that may not know, work is at the new Best Buy in Lacey. I worked from Noon to 6:30. At around 2:00 PM a rather old man walked into the store with a red backpack, which he held in his left hand, and not on his back. I gave him the normal talk, asked how his day

Comments

[eternal_quester]

That is ridiculously crazy. I was halfway expecting a high-speed car chase to be required for things to be resolved. Alas, in a dramatic sense I'm disappointed, but that's still a really cool story. Did they ever catch the guys?

[wulfgarmnk]

Unfortunately we didn't catch them. Criminals do tend to return to the scene of a crime, so I'm really looking forward to a left hook enacted with extreme prejudice to the old man's bushy brow. I'm pretty sure all the Best Buys in the area are aware of them, they won't be getting anything else from us.

[drake_black]

You should invest in a NooB cannon...more easily known to the world as a 12 ga. shotgun. And just get in the back of a truck weraing hillbilly clothes and clean the gun. And everybody who goes by just say "Dont be stealin nothin now ya hear?". I promise that you wont have any more thieves.

[thehintguy]

Wow, that's a really interesting story! Too bad you couldn't nail that guy in the bathroom... that would've been sweet to give him a Swirley in the urinal or something.

[katie_lady25]

Way to be on top of things though. At least you get the pride of knowing you kept those hooligans from stealing crap under your watch. Still sucks they made off at the other stores. jerks.

[consciousdefect]

Nothing compares to the feeling of elation, of burdens being lifted and constraints escaped, that I feel when I walk out of a store with their products in my pockets. In a world where everything already belongs to someone else, where I am expected to sell away my life at work in order to get the money to pay for the minimum I need to survive, where I am surrounded by forces beyond my control or comprehension that obviously are not concerned about my needs or welfare, it is a way to carve out a little piece of the world for myself-to act back upon a world that acts so much upon me. It is an entirely different sensation than the one I feel when I buy something. When I pay for something, I'm making a trade; I'm offering the money that I bought with my labor, my time, and my creativity for a product or service that the corporation wouldn't share with me under any other circumstances. In a sense, we have a relationship based on violence: we negotiate an exchange not according to our respect or concern for each other, but according to the

[consciousdefect]

The shoplifter wins her prize by taking risks, not by exchanging a piece of her life for it. Life for her is not something that must be sold away for seven or eight dollars an hour in return for survival; it is something that is hers because she takes it for herself, because she lays claim to it. In stark contrast to the law-abiding consumer, the means by which she acquires goods is as exciting as the goods themselves; and this means is also, in many ways, more praiseworthy. Shoplifting is a refusal of the exchange economy. It is a denial that people deserve to eat, live, and die based on how effectively they are able to exchange their labor and capital with others. It is a denial that a monetary value can be ascribed to everything, that having a piece of delicious chocolate in your mouth is worth exactly fifty cents or that an hour of one person's life can really be worth ten dollars more than that of another person. It is a refusal to accept the capitalist system, in which workers have to buy back the products of their own labor at

[consciousdefect]

Today's commercials, billboards, even the floor-layouts and product displays in stores are designed by psychologists to manipulate potential consumers into purchasing products. Corporations carry out extensive advertising campaigns to insinuate their exhortations to consumption into every mind, and even work to make their products into status symbols that people from some walks of society eventually must own in order to be accorded respect. Faced with this kind of manipulation, the law-abiding consumer has two choices: either to come up with the money to purchase these products by selling his life away as a wage laborer, or to go without and possibly invite public ridicule as well as private frustration. The shoplifter creates a third choice of her own: she takes the products she has been conditioned to desire without paying for them, so the corporations themselves must pay for all of their propagandizing and mind control tactics. Shoplifting is the most effective protest against all these objectionable attributes of modern

[consciousdefect]

Shoplifting is more than a way to survive in the cutthroat competition of the "free market" and protest corporate injustices. It is also a different kind of orientation to the world and to life. The shoplifter makes do with an environment that has been conquered by capitalism and industry, where there is no longer a natural world from which to gather resources and everything has become private property, without accepting it or the absurd way of life it entails. She takes her life into her own hands by applying an ancient method to the problem of modern survival: she lives by urban hunting and gathering. In this way she is able to live much as her distant ancestors did before the world was subjugated by technology, imperialism, and the irrational demands of the "free" market; and she can find the same challenges and rewards in her work, rewards that are lost to the rest of us today. For her, the world is as dangerous and as exciting as it was to prehistoric humanity: every day she is in new situations, confronting new risks, living by