This was a companion piece to “Lost in the Process”, and is the grey lamentation to compare to the other piece’s whimsy and dark humour. This is also one of my very few older pieces, which still manages to evoke almost the same emotions in me as it did on the very day I wrote it, although years of experience and hard lessons in the proverbial school of hard knocks hang heavy and ponderous between the person I was then, and the one I am now.

There is also a small reference in the piece to the old Guess Who song: “Sour Suite”, specifically the line that points out the difference between a house and a home. It just seemed to fit perfectly into the mood and tenor of the piece as I was writing it, and it was probably the moment that I not only understood, but I truly grokked what Burton Cummings had been trying to say.

True, there is indeed a great deal of youthful naïveté inherent in the piece, nevertheless, I feel that the emotional intension, right or wrong, still remains as straight-forward, and as true as it was originally intended to be.

The only bone of contention that some folks have had with it in the past is that they took it as some sort of hipster anti-Wal*Mart statement, as that was (and still is) quite a trendy thing to do, unlike for example, how Anti-Semitism, in these days of “Israeli Apartheid Week” now seems to be back in style after having been hopelessly gauche for almost sixty years (and yes, you are detecting sarcasm hard enough to cut diamonds).

With regards to Mall-Wart, I could just as easily have used the name of any other Leviathan-like multi-national. Name the names; it doesn’t matter. Hence, the reader should think of it exactly how I intended it at the time: merely as a symbol for any sort of mega-corporation that has a negative cachet amongst many people of the stereotypical “superultramegadeathcorp,” whether or not that characterisation is actually a fair one. Personally, I think Wal*Mart is big enough that they don’t really give a shit, although they did get in quite a hissy-fit at Sheryl Crow.

And one final note: The woods, the stream, and the sledding hill I talk about in this piece did indeed exist up until about 1989-1990, when they were bulldozed in the name of progress.