AT A TARGET STORE NEAR YOU
                    (C)1998 Alan M. Schwartz

We commence by noting emporium Target is pronounced by proper 
people as "Tar-shjay'" lest their peers surmise they are shopping 
through an immense pile of sorted rejects from upscale marts.  
Affected French promenades a certain jeu d'esprit whether in dog 
excrement-dotted Paris or sullen stinking Quebec.  We could pay 
$74.99 for a pair of athletic shoes at Footlocker, or buy the 
same $24.99 pair of sneakers at Target.  "Tar-shjay" it is!

If your thing is short, obese, swarthy, greasy-haired Mexican 
females sporting brutally plucked eyebrows and gang tattoos, each 
trailed by a small plague of their juvenile spawn, then Target is 
your sea of happiness.  Asians will not downscale below Fedco, 
whose interminable hordes echo a casting call for "The Good 
Earth."  Target is also a magnet for White trash teenagers who 
wish to purchase, as opposed to cruising a mall.  Goods are goods 
and the prices are right.  I enjoy walking amidst sloshing thighs 
and anorexic females whom malnutrition, recreational drug abuse, 
and American zero-goal education have rendered amusingly defective.  
Call it Schadenfreude, jackbooted Lutherans projecting panzers' 
Fahrvergnuegen going arm-in-arm with the Frogs.

My sweetie and I braved the bumper car parking lot and entered 
our local Target (remember: Tar-shjay!).  After ferreting the 
sneakers and before assaulting checkout lines wherein pimply 
minimum wage teenagers engaged in a constant struggle scanning 
bar codes, we strolled.  We admired pierced and ringed navels, 
perforated and threaded ears, the occasional bored and reamed 
nasal septum, and males incapable of retaining the waist of their 
pants to contain the waist of their underpants.  This is very 
fashionable if paradise is paying your mobile home rent by the 
fifth of the month.

We marveled at a panoply of wispy drooping moustaches on moms and 
daughters, immense flaccid bat wing upper arms, and bellies like 
sagging bass drums bumping along baby strollers consumed to 
incipient failure by heavy use.  The ethnic celebration of La 
Raza is a binary state - pregnant or seeking impregnation, Christ 
be praised.  Catholicism's most powerful recruitment is death, 
endlessly realized in this life or hedged against a problematic 
next one.  The yawning maw is ever hungry for canon fodder, 
aiming guided missals and celebrating its walking wounded.  Kewl!  
Self-righteous suffering is good for my soul.  The Wicked Witch 
of the West died for Uncle Al's sins.  

Chewing gum and razors, philodendrons as house plants, and 
bedding recycled from hamster nesting shavings offer sparse 
diversion.  We saved the best for last.  My Linda and her 
floating 38Ds (if there is a God, He has enviable fetishes) 
ushered me into the lingerie section.  Something about a 34A 
requires green sequins and garish affectation suited to moose 
gagging.  No joy was anywhere, just rows of circus costumes for 
micromastic women with big butts.  Suddenly, WHAMMO!, I was 
struck dumb.

The one fundamental of rude Americana grievously deficient in 
Southern California is the Southern good ol' boy.  Irvine is 
Bubba-free.  Neither Confederate flag nor rifle rack graces any 
pickup truck here.  No Sunday morning is decorated by packs of 
rednecks chewing raw turnip and singing seven second cheek 
slapper arias in counterpoint.  Nevertheless, in the Target (Tar-
shjay!) lingerie section, in a genuinely spacious display...

Camouflage lingerie!  HOT DAMN!  Ultra-bikini panties plus 
perilously loose and brief tops in sundry unadorned incarnations 
were offered in swamp green camo, pale forest mottled camo, and 
Desert Storm white camo.  Heat rose within me and sweat rivulets 
cascaded into my collar.  I knew a lady Marine once, and even 
(especially!) when her platoon went brush-cut for purposes of 
proficiently parading morale... WHOA!

The racks were full.  I doubt even a single ensemble had been 
sold.  Didn't these women ever go hunting?  

I was rescued from the Abyss by my woman.  I was pulled away from 
inevitable damnation by a stronger love.  We made our way past 
the graduate from Target College and his ineptly wielded laser 
bar code scanner, sneaker boxes in hand.  We surmounted the auto 
insurance challenge of the parking lot and made our way home.  
Later that evening I was prepared to be contrite, but that was 
not to be the extent of my atonement, not by a long shot.

Confronted by a statuesque odalisque in stilt heels hardly 
contained within oak bark camo lingerie, the penitent man kneels, 
and looks up - WoW! - and goes down, and...  That is my Linda - 
always on target!  (and no silly Tar-shjay about it.)