Corporate Thanksgiving (or, my inner Native American)

When I was at work tonight, I had a strange allegorical epiphany. Me, we, us... the staff of this well-known chain bookstore, we're bonafide Native Americans. Red [polyester] Indians as it were (gosh, I'm funny.)

We were welcoming to the new settlers, new people. We embraced changes and adapted ourselves and our ways (those in which we'd become very settled) in the name of harmony and the greater good. The immigrants, the settlers were all full of smiles and promises of things being better, more positive; a future we could all enjoy.

There was the promise of us sitting down and sharing turkey together; a 10% discount on hardware.

They raped our land and defaced our realm. Everywhere, gawdy purple signs screaming that they've arrived as we indigenous folk are pushed to one side. Super Mario edges out Oscar Wilde and builds a fucking strip mall over a multimedia burial ground. Neon signs that don't match but command the most attention, video games and mindless entertainment spattered all over the walls like the blood of hundreds of thousands of authors. Austen, Hugo, Orwell, Burgess... all slaughtered at the hands of Sonic the Hedgehog. Money grabbing. Opportunist. They bulldozered our forest and filled it with Tetris towerblocks (for the Nintendo Wii, of course.)

Layer upon layer of tacky gimmicks are slapped down like the strata in sedimentary rock until the original format and form has almost disappeared entirely. Compressed and pushed down, literature becomes an outcast in its own country, it's own domain.

They call it progress.

I see this new development, and it just looks like someone has defecated in the middle of my place of work. Stupid, white Europeans ruined the North American continent, just like stupid, mindless 'gamers' are ruining my bookshop.