Friday at the Freakshow

I went to the mall last Friday. As usual some of the oddest creatures and sub-creatures on earth were there. It's unfortunate that there's not a camera or three installed in the mall at the hot spots. A well-placed camera could create a cable TV sensation.

As I strolled the main thoroughfare I was repeatedly accosted by almost every little booth operator, which is normal. One was selling fake "bling". Fake bling is just like real "bling", except that it's lighter and has less gold content than the average Toyota engine. Hugely grotesque articles of fake jewelry were on display. Necklaces made in the shape and size of a log chain with massive Mercedes emblems and whatnot as ornaments adorned the shelves. Seriously, if you're planning on decorating the White House Christmas tree, this is the place to shop. Next was the Cell Phone Emporium. This booth has anything and everything for your cell phone. Unfortunately, they're all Chinese knockoffs. Covers and cases of the lowest possible quality are in abundance here, as well as adolescent shopkeepers who talk more on their cell phones than sell items. It's hard to determine if this is because the items or the sales people are of such low quality. They get a lot of lookers, and a few people even buy an item or two. Chances are this is Darwin at work. The blind can't really see what they're buying, and the items are in plastic wrap which is just a little thicker than the items. Had the Darwinian blind people stopped at the Contacts and Eyeglasses booth first, the Chinese cell phone booth would no doubt go broke.

Another real hotspot is the Starbucks coffee shop. Let's face it; coffee is a winning item to sell. At Starbucks prices, you are virtually assured that only the rich shop there. There's nothing to steal, so you don't have to worry that people have dropped by your stall to get their Christmas shoplifting done early. This has to be a plus from a corporate standpoint. I fear that Starbucks has priced themselves out of the coffee market however. There is a practical limit to what you can charge for coffee, and Starbucks has exceeded that limit since it opened.

Several body-art pavilions dot the main drag through the mall and several of the side passages. Body art is something that I understand only on a basic level. I understand ladies' earrings. I understand tattoos; I even like them in moderation. Of course, if you look like the first place winner for the "most body area covered in tattoos" from Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum, you might have gone over the top. The same can be said for piercings.

Piercings are a little confusing to me. I'm not talking about the standard earrings here. I'm not even talking about a brow ring or small nose stud. These things are a little unusual, and if tastefully done can be attractive on the right person. I'm talking freak show quality piercings -- taken to the extreme, and usually beyond. This is the subject of today's blog.

I noticed a fairly young lady at one of the more goth looking hardcore piercing palaces towards the back of the mall. She had very clearly dyed jet black hair. When I say black, I mean black. Pitch black. So black it makes your eyes hurt. Black like 50 feet inside the event horizon of our Galaxy's black hole. The complete absence of light black. My favorite shade of black, as a matter of fact; so of course I took immediate notice.

She turned a bit and I got a better view... and the world stopped as I went from a glance to a full on stare.

She had a few piercings. Not the brow, or the little nose stud you see almost every day these days... oh, no. She had a torus ring through the middle of her nose, hanging down so far she could grab it with her teeth -- which is what she was doing when I began staring. Both eyebrows were littered with piercings of gradually increasing sizes. Right on the bridge of the nose, just below where the eyebrows meet on someone with a mono-brow, was another quite large torus ring.

A wide variety of earrings adorned her somewhat undersized ears, and I am uncertain if the intent was to distract you from their size, or to make them look bigger. The earlobes were reserved for a quite different piercing; I'm sure you know already where this is going. Quarter sized disks were jammed in those otherwise diminutive earlobes. The earlobes were stretched to the snapping point, and you could almost hear them screaming.

Her left breast had an enormous, bolt-sized piercing through the nipple. You might wonder how I know that. I assure you I don't have X-ray vision. However, her Metallica t-shirt, which was slashed from the arm pit to the band at the bottom of the shirt, left little to the imagination. In fact, you didn't just catch a peek at the goods due to that shirt, but the edge of the slashed area had gotten hung on the bolt or lug nut or whatever the hell it was jammed in her otherwise mosquito-bite-like breast. If the intent there was to distract one from the size of that breast, or to make it look larger, then it was a failed attempt.

Just about then either she felt me staring at her, or some inner sixth-sense alerted her to my presence...

She whirled around, looked me right in the eye, and said, "What are you staring at?"

To which I replied the only way I could:

"I don't know... I really don't know."