Surely T'is the Season

it felt cold around here with temperatures dipping into the lower 70 degrees the past few days. It's probably the reason I noticed little room size heaters being sold at the hardware store. Are room size heaters sold year round? Perhaps, but you never notice them on the store shelves until winter arrives, it's not like Xmas trees. They're there but your eyes or radar don't make them out by the same token that $1.50 polish hot dogs sold at Costco don't pop in your mind unless you're hungry at the moment even though you drove by the store earlier during the same day without note.

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in other news, strangely I haven't seen any Ala Wai ducks lately. They're usually flying around in formation above the canal.

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in world news, if the passing of "Dear Leader" brings democracy to North Koreans, "20 million citizens who basically missed out on the 20th century," economically speaking, the blessing in disguise, er, disguised as bliss, might eventually spell disaster for the South Korean economy. The North Koreans will work for peanuts manufacturing the same products that South Korea churns out. For example, $5 for an 8 hour day is astronomical wages to North Koreans on a good day. That's just an arbitrary figure but I'm sure that factory workers in the South make much more than $5 a day and thus how will the South compete with the Northerners in this market scenario. With a Free North Korea, the threat from north of the border moves from nuclear to one of economic, and possibly the same fate awaits South Korea that befell Taiwan after global outsourcing in that region of the world shifted to China to the mutual exclusion of the Taiwanese.

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went shopping at Long's Drugs (CVS). As such, this is a public service bulletin that the mania has commenced at the stores. It's more probably last minute shopping for normal household items because people want to avoid running out of stuff this holiday weekend. Save the elbowing for Monday's sale on gift wrapping paper. Take a pic of the wrapping paper and blog about it. What title would so fit a post so appropriately about discounted Xmas wrapping paper? The parking lot was filled while cars were taxiing in line bumper-to-bumper waiting for a stall to open up while the drivers exuded so much holiday spirit that they musta thought Santa knows. For example, somebody honked in anger, and the adversarial party honked back with even more thump. Perhaps they were fighting over who should be the one to run over the Xmas grinch. Mind you, this was only 2pm. It's Tuesday isn't it, the 20th? Obviously time is of essence. The salvation army worker manning the red kettle was ringing her bell with the regular non-stop rythme. Btw, aren't they suppose to wear a red suit, she wasn't. Good luck to her anyways. No, she wasn't a celebrity bell ringer or the mayor. Just an hourly worker. President Obama would never dare drop a coin in the salvation army kettle because true to form the republicans would jump all over the gesture characterizing it as a craven campaign promotion. Amazingly, inside Long's the atmosphere was very subdued. The consensus being I'll stay and shop for hours just so nobody gets my parking stall. I didn't mean myself. I exited as soon as I was done.