Thursday, June 22, 2006

My name is K, and I am an addict

My Mom sent me the LA Times from last Sunday.

Remain calm now. I'd been in Oklahoma over a year now. Sure I miss my family, friends, and food stuffs that can only be found in the city limits of a large, multi-cultural metropolis.

But it was only a newspaper. What harm could it do?

Granted, it was the LA Times, which is not always known to present both sides of the story, but for the most part, the majority of the paper was harmless babble, classifieds, feature stories of ladies who lunch while nursing their twins, and dogs that no longer bite after intensive therapy with a trained canine psychotherapist.

Then, innocently tucked away into the Sports section was the doom in newsprint that haunts my waking moments and torments my nocturnal nightmares.

The Fry's ad.

8 full color pages of it.

17" LCD monitors on sale for $129 (after a $90 mail-in rebate). 100 count spindles of DVD-R's for $19.99. iPod accessories to fill the largest of grocery shopping carts. Flat screen TV's, CD's, DVD's, vid games, hard drives, soft drives, medium-soft drives, newspaper drives, warm summer drives with the top down and the radio on.

You name it, Fry's has it. An electronic geeks wonderland of consumerism and 20-year credit card debt.

Dallas would be my closest Fry's location.

A 4-hour drive seems a small price to pay to satisfy my need for an e-ticket ride to geekeyland.

2 comments:

Gary said...

You must have had good experiences there.

Not me.

The rascals had a price tag on a 17" flat screen monitor that happened to be the same price as on the 15" monitor. When I chose the 17" (duh) for the same price, the employee took the price tag from the display, and disappeared. After waiting 15 minutes (stupid written on my forehead), I spoke to the department manager. He accused me of putting the wrong price tag on the display.

Haven't been to a Fry's since.
Now Best Buy, that's different story. I left Fry's and drove across town to BB, told them my story, and they marked a better 17" flat screen down to the 'advertised' price of the Fry's unit, thus making a customer for life.

OKDad said...

Well, I never said I bought anything from Fry's - recently.

I just love to look and compare.

I've had several iffy purchases at Fry's in the past. Enough to know what and what not to buy there.

Candy bars, books, magazines, dvds -- consumables are just fine.

Anything with an on/off switch or factory warranty - beware.

Their ads are so inviting, however.