Macy's clothing that has yet to be stolen

Several Battlefield Mall clothing stores have begun moving display racks into the main area of the mall in an attempt to stimulate the struggling shoplifting industry. The new location allows frustrated thieves to easily bypass anti-shoplifting mechanisms such as alarms and watchful employees.

As a result, the stores, including Macy’s, Maurice’s, and JCPenney, are seeing a dramatic influx of theft, primarily from rebellious teenagers and middle-aged housewives.

For many stores, this is not the first attempt at bolstering dwindling shoplifting numbers. Ted Warren, manager of Macy’s, has tried numerous times to increase his store’s theft record. In October 2007, he gave heavy wool coats to each customer who entered the store, hoping that the numerous pockets and general bulkiness would encourage shoplifting. Two months later, he instructed all employees to wear blindfolds and to, when asked, explain that they were “turning a blind eye on bargains.” When questioned further on that particular strategy, the 42 year old Warren explained, “It was a catchy phrase and it didn’t make any sense. For those reasons alone, I thought it was a brilliant marketing scheme.”

The outside-store approach has proven much more effective.

“We couldn’t have asked for better results,” said Warren, whose store has seen a 60% increase in theft. “At one point, I counted six shoplifters in an hour. One young woman even managed to steal a fully clothed mannequin without a single employee noticing!”

JCPenney moved approximately half of their inventory outside in order to gain the attention of shoplifters

Local shoplifters applaud the stores’ bold new direction.

“It was just getting so hard to steal anything – even something as small as this bracelet,” explained Shirley Reynolds, 37, as she stuffed a silver bracelet and five necklaces from JCPenney into a purse she stole from Macy’s earlier in the day. She and many other petty thieves blame the dwindling shoplifting workforce on recent advances in anti-theft technology, drastically reduced prices, and an over-saturation of unnecessary employees who do nothing but “stand there and stare at you until you’re too nervous to think straight.”

Now, Reynolds walks the makeshift aisles with renewed optimism and several hundred dollars worth of stolen merchandise.

“It’s such a relief that I don’t have to hide anymore,” she said with a smile before diving under a clothing rack when she noticed an employee approaching.

Others plan on implementing similar programs to draw shoplifters to their storefronts. Sears and Hot Topic have already announced that they will be moving clothing outside of their respective stores and are instructing employees who witness any strange customer behavior to “not worry about it” and, if necessary, “cheer them on.” Furthermore, mall video game store Gamestop plans on placing dozens of PlayStation 3 consoles throughout the mall and parking lot, with each successful thief receiving an extra Dualshock 3 controller.

If stores continue to see success, more programs could follow.

I finally got to see Drag Me to Hell on Friday. Being a big fan of the Evil Dead movies, my expectations were pretty high for Sam Raimi’s return to the horror genre. I must say, I was thoroughly impressed. It was a fun, campy movie that never took itself too seriously. The movie did flirt with some heavier issues, such as how far a supposedly “good” person will go in order to save one’s own life. The main character – played by my future wife, Alison Lohman – did an excellent job of tackling that moral quandary.

My only real complaint is that Raimi relied on musical cues for scares a little too often. Knowing his type of “horror” a little too well, I never jumped or got the least bit frightened (I can’t say the same for everyone else – more on that later). It’s not a big issue for me, though, because I can’t even remember the last time a horror movie genuinely frightened me. It was probably – and some people might make fun of me for this – the Blair Witch Project, many years ago. It was much more grounded in reality and felt like something that could actually happen to someone like me. I can’t say I enjoy watching those kind of movies too often anymore. These days, I tend to watch horror movies for some pure escapist fun, and that’s exactly what Drag Me to Hell brought to the table.

But enough about the movie. I need to rant for a while. I’ll keep it down to three paragraphs. I promise.

While I enjoyed the actual movie, I did not enjoy our fellow moviegoers. I suppose I should be a little more specific – I did not enjoy the neanderthals sitting behind us for the first 20 minutes of the movie. They showed up late and began talking almost immediately. They did not stop. One of them kept asking really stupid questions, like “Why does she know what the gypsy’s car looks like?” even though the character in question watched the gypsy get in her car not 30 seconds previously. And so on. My friends and I started getting pissed off, but we didn’t take any action.

Then the first fight scene started and the morons went freaking ballistic. They started screaming commands at the screen. “Drive away!” “Kick her!” “Kick her NOW!!” They screamed and wailed whenever just about anything happened. What should have been a very fun fight scene turned into a rage-fest for me.

After the scene ended, we decided we couldn’t take anymore and moved down to a different part of the theater. We could still hear their distant voices every once in a while, but it was quiet for the most part. And the movie became much, much, much more enjoyable.

See? Three paragraphs.

My mom walks into her bathroom to wash her hands. Upon finishing, she looks over at her bathtub. She then looks at me. Sporting a confused look, she asks “why doesn’t your bathtub look like mine?”

Not sure what she’s talking about, I look at her funny and reply “what do you mean? They’re pretty much the same. What’s different about yours?”

My mom looks at the tub, then at me again. She then replies, in a very serious tone, “it’s clean.”

And that is how I got zinged by my own mother yesterday.

Hi.

I have not posted in quite some time.

That being said, I have not forgotten about my blog.

Eventually, I will write a substantial post about something.

Eventually.

Some of you have probably heard me gush over a little game called Braid, which was released last year on Xbox Live Arcade. Well, it’s now available for PC, so you people without a 360 no longer have an excuse not to play it. There’s even a free demo you can download if you’re still skeptical. Give it a try! If you’re a fan of old school 2D side scrollers, devious puzzles, time manipulation, and stories that make you think, I think you’ll have a lot of fun with Braid.

I read some very sad news this week. Andy Hallett, better known to Angel fans as the green skinned, karaoke singing Lorne, passed away on Sunday battling heart problems for several years. He was only 33 years old.

When Hallett first showed up as Lorne at the beginning of Angel’s second season, I must admit that I was slightly horrified. Why would a serious, dark show like Angel start featuring such a silly character? I quickly learned, though, that Lorne was just what the show needed: a light hearted, optimistic character to balance the gloomy nature of the series (and the increasingly sulky Angel). I even learned to like the musical numbers, as Hallett was obviously a natural singer. When he finally became a regular in season 5, I was absolutely thrilled. I always felt that the Lorne-less episodes were lacking something special.

I could say more, but it really all boils down to this: Andy Hallett, you are awesome and you will be missed.

There seems to be a growing trend at work to include “thank you” or some variation thereof in the e-mail signature instead of the actual body. My guess is that people are doing so because of the extreme difficulty of typing “thank you” manually. I mean, it’s… geez, how many letters is that? It’s certainly beyond my ability to even fashion a guess. I’m only a math minor, for crying out loud!

The phrase also includes some of the trickiest to find letters on a traditional keyboard, such as T and, God forbid, A. Don’t get me started about how hard it is to find the A. I sometimes just skip typing tht letter ltogether in order to sve time nd snity. And if you’re using one of those fancy ergonomic keyboards, you might as well forget it – there’s no way you’ll be able to find all of the necessary letters on that thing. It just ain’t gonna happen.

I suppose one could, as an alternative, type “thanks” or even “TY” in order, but they are also quite difficult to type, due to the fact that they mostly use a subset of the letters in “thank you.” Plus, the S in “thanks” adds an extra challenge – I’ve never even heard of that letter! How is anyone expected to fully grasp the English language if people keep making up random letters along the way? As for the “TY,” how do you even make the little letters big like that, anyway? Sorcery, I say!

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m exaggerating a bit here. I’ll try to be a little serious from here on out. Don’t get me wrong; I do understand that adding some form of “thank you” to your predefined signature saves the time of typing it over and over and guarantees that you won’t forget it in an e-mail if it’s needed. However, I feel that simply dumping it into your signature is wrong.

One problem I see concerns e-mails that do not require any sort of thanks at the end. If you’re not directly asking for something or, well, thanking someone for something, there should not be a thanks at the end of the message. There is no need to thank me for reading your notification e-mail about a server being down or letting me know where we’re going for lunch.

A bigger, more personal problem I see with having thank you messages as part of signatures is that I believe doing so causes the thank you to lose all meaning. It never had any meaning in the first place, really. You’re not thanking someone directly if it’s just part of your e-mail template. It’s like having a conversation with someone and ending it, not by verbally thanking them for their time, but by holding up a mangled, frequently used sign that says “thank you.” It just doesn’t seem right.

Think about it. How hard is it to type “thanks a lot!” or “thanks for all your help!” when you really are genuinely thankful to someone? I think it should be a requirement to put your fingers on the keyboard and type out a little note of thanks at the end of an e-mail if the recipient deserves it. You can even simply type “thanks” sometimes, but try to mix it up a little – don’t just type the same boring message on there all the time. Make it seem like you really mean it! It’ll make the recipient feel all warm and fuzzy.

Thanks,

Hal

I am now settled into my new swingin’ bachelor pad! Well, it’s not exactly swingin’ just yet; I need a little more time on that one, but it does have potential. Compared to the two bedroom apartment I’ve been sharing for the past couple of years, this one bedroom pad is surprisingly enormous. I’ve actually got most of my stuff in the living room right now. That’s a bit of a foreign concept for me, since the only place that was really “mine” in the old apartment was my tiny bedroom. My new bedroom is so big that it’s pretty barren at the moment. Bed and a TV; that’s about it. Maybe I can turn it into some sort of laboratory for secret and morally ambiguous experiments. Or I could build a fort out of my moving boxes. Tough choice, that.

I’ve gotta admit, part of me is a little sad to be living alone again. One great thing about sharing an apartment is that you very rarely get lonely. I had gotten so used to having someone else around that I pretty much immediately started feeling lonely after everyone left yesterday. It’s the same feeling I had three and a half years ago when I moved out of my parents’ house into my very first solo apartment. I guess it’s just the result of such a sudden change. Now that a day has passed and I’m settled in, I’m feeling much more comfortable and relaxed. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that I have Brisco this time to keep me company.

Wow, two big paragraphs and I haven’t even gotten to what I originally planned to write about. I’m beginning to remember why I decided to not post in my blog very often…

So. Epic Moving Day. It is called that because I was moving and it was epic. Clever, huh? Since this is the first time I’ve really had to do a serious move (I didn’t have anything when I moved out of my parents and the other time I moved, it was to an apartment 50 feet away), I was a little worried about how it would go. Luckily, tons of friends volunteered to help out of the goodness of their hearts because I promised them a free lunch.

Epic Moving Day started, for me, at 6:30 AM. I awoke to pouring rain. After getting soaked taking the dog outside, I drove down to IHOP to meet some of my friends for breakfast. It went surprisingly well, especially considering the fact that two of my friends had a disastrous experience the last time they were there.

After breakfast, we went to the local U-Haul, picked up the truck I had rented, and headed to my soon-to-be old apartment. It had stopped raining while we were eating (thank goodness), but the forecast promised more rain to come, followed by unseasonably late snow. (I really know how to pick moving days, don’t I?) Needless to say, we were in a bit of a hurry. It took two trips and a small fleet of vehicles – nerds on parade, as Matt so aptly called it – to get all my stuff moved. The transfer had a rather high success rate, with only two things visibly broken. I fear for my desktop computer, though, because somebody didn’t close the moving truck’s door when it started pouring down rain again! Oh well, I never use it anyway. 

Meanwhile, Brisco was freaking out. He apparently thought that I was packing up all of my belongings and abandoning him. We made the first trip to my new apartment without him, and Nicki called me halfway and said that Brisco was wailing like someone was ripping his heart out. Upon our return, Jason took the initiative and calmed Brisco down. We also decided to take him with us on subsequent trips so he wouldn’t feel so alone in the empty apartment. It apparently worked, as he’s been doing really well ever since.

We had one serious close call when someone decided to run outside into the rain, waving Nicki’s Sex and the City box set around and claiming it was mine. After snatching it back from him, I of course fumbled and dropped it into the wet grass. Luckily, nothing appeared to be damaged and I put it back in its place as quickly as humanly possible. If Nicki had been there when it happened, our friend Brandon would likely be missing at least one appendage right now. 

But that wasn’t the end of the Shalantics. I told Brandon to not move the overflowing container of golf balls I had found during my years at the Greens. I discovered that he did not listen to me when I was driving the truck to my new apartment and constantly hearing *thud…thud…thudthudthud* coming from the back of the truck. Upon reaching my new apartment, I ordered Brandon to pick them up and take them upstairs. He did so without hesitation, and proceeded to dump them into my bathtub and fill it full of water.

After the golf balls were extracted from the bathtub, I left with a couple of the crew to return the moving truck. In doing so, I left Brandon in my new apartment without my direct supervision. Big mistake! When I returned, I noticed that the golf ball container was suddenly only half full. The other half, I soon discovered, was strategically hidden throughout my apartment. There were golf balls in my cupboards, in my toilet paper, in my windows, and various other places golf balls shouldn’t be. There were also, I discovered after everyone left and I was standing barefoot on my bed to hang a poster, a few golf balls under the sheets. A few very painful golf balls.

So, I brutally murdered Brandon and the rest of us headed to Applebees for lunch. IT WAS THE MOST EXPENSIVE LUNCH I HAVE EVER PAID FOR and that is all I have to say about that.

The rest of the afternoon was spent unpacking and listening to the horrific sounds of Rock Band 2 coming from the other room. Sadly, I was too busy to join in on the fun, but it was quite entertaining to simply listen to their antics.

That’s about it. We got pretty wet, but at least we finished long before it started snowing. I don’t know how I could’ve done it without all the help I had.

You may have noticed that I’ve been posting on this blog less frequently lately. The reason for this is that I have, in fact, been posting on this blog less frequently lately. Why? Well, I recently rediscovered the greatness of Facebook and, as a result, have been directing more of my attention toward keeping that updated. Add in the increased activity on my Twitter account, and I’ve got a pretty full plate of things to keep updated. I also continue to have plenty of family issues to deal with, which doesn’t leave a lot of time for blogging.

So, from this point forward, I’ve decided to only post in this blog if I have something of value and decent length to write about. Everyday stuff, links, and stupid one-liners can go on Twitter or Facebook. Long winded stories, reviews, or anything else I can stretch out into a post will go here. I never was a fan of (or very good at) writing “Dear Diary” entries anyway – mine always seem too disjointed and silly. Focusing on one topic for the entire post is much more my style.

Okay…now that that’s out of the way, it’s time to go find something to write about!

I actually finished reading The Hero of Ages a couple of weeks ago and just recently realized that I never wrote a blog post about it. Since I posted impressions of the first two books, I feel I should do the same for the third and final installment. 

Don’t let my lack of enthusiasm fool you – I loved the book and thought it was a very fitting end to the trilogy. While the second book focused primarily on character development, The Hero of Ages centered on the looming apocalypse brought on by the events of the first book. Almost all lingering questions were answered and all of the main characters received some form of closure. A couple of them were rather controversial, but I thought they were pretty ballsy moves on Sanderson’s part. The guy isn’t afraid to give his characters fitting endings, regardless of how depressing they may be.

One thing in particular Sanderson excels at are plot twists. Things are never as they seem in this series. It’s really all up in the air until the final chapters, when the truth is finally revealed. And, unlike some other series out there *cough24cough*, the plot twists actually make sense in the end. However, the book almost became a little too twisty near the end, which is the only reason I managed to guess the biggest twist in the series. I never would have even suspected it if Sanderson hadn’t already established himself as such a devious writer.

While everything is wrapped up nicely, I recently read that Sanderson is considering writing a second trilogy set in the same world, but far into the future. I’m not sure if I like the idea; while I love these books and think Sanderson is a fantastic writer, I feel that he should close the door on the Mistborn series. Its current ending is just too fitting and too final to warrant a sequel series.

The bottom line here is that if you’re a fan of epic fantasy and are itching for a series that is (1) fast paced (2) full of twists and (3) actually completed, you can’t go wrong with the Mistborn trilogy.

Now, if Sanderson would only finish Book 12 of The Wheel of Time…