Found In the Woods

This is a new one for me, folks. The term Mall Ninja describes someone who takes tactical (ie. SWAT) and military gear too seriously and yet has no real need for the stuff. One might envision a nerdy, overweight guy browsing internet sites and catalogs for body armor and tricked-out gun parts so they can build an arsenal and appear to be technically knowledgeable, yet the McDonalds uniform and Twinkies give it all away.

Reported this morning on BoingBoing, someone has set up a shrine to the mall ninja of mall nijas, Gecko45. Read all you need to know here. IF you liked that, you will love THIS. I was laughing so hard, I didn’t know what hit me. Here are some quotes from the discussion on “you might be a mall ninja IF…”:

You own a Glock 9mm and dozens of mags, and the only magazines that are not 33 rounders are the ones that came with the gun, and you have no clue were you put them.

You walk in Home Depot a look at a piece of tile, or sheet metal and say, ” you know if I wrap that in enough duct tape, it will make a good trauma plate.”

You think swinging down from the top of your garage on a rope qualifies as repelling.

You clamp 2 40 round mags together to equalize the center of gravity on your AR. It’s currently front heavy with the rail, lights, lazers,Eotech,and Eotech mangifier.

Every T-shirt in your closet has some form of the words… “police” “swat” “special forces” etc…. And the only uniform you ever wore is from McDonalds

I’ve had issues with Home Depot for ages. The place ran Hechingers out of town in the DC metro area years ago and now has the same issues Hechinger’s had when it closed its doors. What it doesn’t have that Hechingers did have is local roots. But now HD is plagued by bad customer service, inaccurate inventory, poor quality inventory, lack of knowledgeable staff, messy stores and a host of other issues. The whole “show me your receipt on the way out or you can’t leave” practice that many superstores practice now is something that has always irritated me. It never seemed right, to be treated like a criminal, and I highly doubt that it really prevents much theft. I mean, you’ve just come through the register, you’ve got a bag, what do they think I’m doing? Being accused guilty before proven guilty goes against so many tenets of our societal foundations yet like sheep we follow these corporate mongrels’ rules without a peep.

This guy got detained by DCPD for not showing his receipt and wrote a letter to the CEO of HD to complain. It’s well written and it struck a note with me because on many occasions have experienced several of the things on his list of complaints.

http://www.mattashburn.com/index.php/2008/02/27/why-ill-no-longer-shop-at-dcs-home-depot/

When are they going to learn? Hopefully now.

Shepard Fairey (of Andre The Giant has a Posse fame) has done a nice poster to show his support for pres. candidate Barack Obama. Good stuff.