I've been browsing through these colorful pamphlets I picked up from a rack in the lobby of a Holiday Inn Express. Wow, every part of this country has so many options for fun and personal improvement, it's truly astonishing. Even ostensibly "boring" areas, like the Midwest for instance. I've narrowed it down, I'm either going shopping at the outlet mall or I'm going on spiritual retreat. The whitewater rafting isn't for me, and that Ye Olde Steamboat Ride just looks sort of pointless. The mud baths spa would simply embarrass me.

The outlet mall brochure promises huge savings on brand name merchandise, but I don't know, to me outlet malls always seemed like scams, like duty free shops. Besides, if I can't find anything I'd want to wear at a real Eddie Bauer, what possible chance do I have pawing over last season's unsellable leftovers with a bunch of pushy housewives? And they always have so many stores I don't care about, like Pacific Sunwear, Dress Barn, and Maidenform. Who the hell thought up the name Dress Barn anyway? Who decided that women would want to shop for clothes at a place that likened them to cows or other beasts of burden? The other thing that makes me lean toward the retreat is my miserable life of spiritual impoverishment and existential agony. So, on the one hand, no real savings and poor selection and on the other hand, the slim hope of an escape or respite from grinding despair and a life of benumbed indifference to joy, beauty, and love. So the choice is clear. Outlet mall.