Convenience Stores are Gates to Hades

Did you know, in a country which is roughly the size of 0.55 Texases (or one Montana), there are 40,000 convenience stores. That's about two and a half times the amount in the U.S. and 4 for every 3 square miles of habitable land in Japan. On average, people here live within a couple hundred yards of one.

Seething evil for your convenience

You ask, "But, Brandon, why do you insinuate that they are monoliths of evil and destruction?"

Well, this close personal relationship with konbini as they're called here (that's a Japanese-ified and shortened pronunciation of "convenience store". Think "convenie...".) means that there's a much more dynamic dialog between customers and the store. These places actually make and receive many orders of food etc. within one day, adjusting to fit news, weather and lunar energies. The Washington Post chips in here and gives us a taste of what is offered:

You can buy fresh sushi and carbon offsets, pay income tax and change diapers, book airplane tickets and sip vodka coolers. There's hot soup, cold beer, fresh bread, clean toilets, french fries, earwax remover, spotless floors, and a broadband-empowered machine that will order home appliances, book concert tickets and sign you up for driver's ed.

All in about the space of a couple of your master bedrooms. And this is why they are evil. They almost invariably are much closer to you than a real store, and they almost invariably have what you're looking for, and they almost invariably have a crappier brand at twice the price. Yeah.

So, hypothetically say it's Sunday evening and your being a lazy blob of adipose on my couch watching The Fringe, season 2. Then suppose you get this brilliant idea, "chips!", go to the convenience store that's almost literally a hop, skip and jump away, and eat way too much of such idea.

Hypothetically, this all actually sounds pretty great; however, no. Just no.

As a matter of fact, each time I do this, I afterward feel like a booger that's been violently flung into a pit of oozing suck for a day or so. But somehow the memory of this wears off and the whole process begins again. It's a whole harmonic thing; I don't know why.

Hence, blame the convenience store for it's incessant conspiring of doom.

Anyway, since all this was pretty stupid, here's a video:

http://cdn.anyhub.net/thebest404pageever/swf/switch.swf