I fear for our country

Today is Saturday, February 26th and today is the day I realized that our country is screwed. I’m sure you are all asking “Ira, why is this the day you have come to this realization.” Well, I’ll tell you.

My day started out just great as my beloved SU basketball team beat our arch rivals the Georgetown Hoyas. As I write this let me tell you that Georgetown still sucks…but I digress. After the game, I went over to Costco on Route 10 in East Hanover. Now Saturdays at Costco can be a bit crazy but today was beyond anything I’d seen at any shopping center or shopping mall, even during the holiday shopping season. Parking spots were rare and you could barely get down the lanes in the parking lot.

After waiting for some crazy Asian woman to pull out of her spot (dragging her shopping cart on her bumper…no joke), I managed to get a spot, walked towards the store and I could see that there was a huge line extending the full width of the front. Now I’m starting to wonder “what are they giving away?” As I entered the store, I realized that the line was not for people who were shopping but were there for some other purpose. When I walked into Costco, I asked the greeter what was going on.  She told me….are you ready…it was a book signing by that world famous author….here it comes….and TV star….are you sure you’re ready for this….for the book “A Shore Thing” by Nicole Polizzi, a.k.a. Snooki from The Jersey Shore. Holy shit….you have got to be kidding me!  Mass insanity at Costco because Snooki is there signing her book.  Hell, I was shocked to find out she could read let alone write.

But it gets worse and this is actually my major cause for concern.  It was the type of people that decided that Snooki was worth the wait. To say these folks were white trash would be giving white trash a bad name.  I hadn’t seen a crowd like this since Linda and I took the kids to Hershey Park 13 or 14 years ago and that crowd looked like they were attending an Arkansas trailer park convention. I saw one woman who bought 3 of Snooki’s book and my first reaction was “damn woman, get some teeth instead.” Actually that was my second reaction after realizing that the woman was going to read anything at all.  Most of this crowd was downright fugly and scary and I’m thinking “man, we are so screwed.” Not only do people consider Snooki a TV star and not only are people willing to wait hours to have them sign her book and not only do many of these people look like they have just crawled out from under a rock in a trailer park and not only should these folks be spending my their money on personal hygiene or clothes that actually fit…well…I think I’m out of ands but (still got one or two buts left) I will tell you that I’m exaggerating but just a little and that’s the situation (get it?).