The mass influx of denim-clad academic acolytes to this jerkwater burg signals the start of the Fall semester once again. I've seen a few people I know walking around, and I can't help but notice the looks I get suggesting that people had thought I graduated. Not yet, kids- I'll be leaching off the state until December. In the meantime, I have plenty of projects to keep my busy, many of which will be documented online.

The last couple of times I've been to Best Buy, I've noticed an alarming trend in the music section. The employees are getting agressive now. It used to be that they'd troll the aisles and make their presense known now and again, similar to sharks off the coast of Hawaii. For some reason, they're now in full-on South-African-great-white mode, aggressively pouncing on anything in or near their territory. The first time it happened, I was digging through the middle of the alphabet in the rock/pop section. A blueshirt came up to me and asked me if I needed help finding anything. I said no without looking up, thus upholding my end of the social contract to at least the minimal standard. He pressed the matter, asking me what I was looking for, and I said I didn't know. He then asked me what kind of music I'm into, as if the Metalica-fan circa '93 hair/beard combo wasn't at least a clue. I'm pretty good at blocking out people I don't want to deal with, but this one actually tripped my old "don't talk to strangers" reflex. I looked up at him, said "lots of kinds," and moved away from him.

The second incident in recent memory was a week ago. I was looking for the Metric album that got a good writeup in the New Yorker, when someone came up behind me and said "hey, how 'ya doing?" Students had been filtering back in all week, and I figured I would see somebody I knew in public at some point, so I stood up and turned around to see a complete (albeit cute and female) stranger standing there in a BSU shirt. It threw me off, as her nametag was partially concealed by her hair. The faux-familiarity seemed presumptuous, and I gave her a weird look, as I was genuinely thrown off by her manner. I walked out of the store a little mad about this. The guy at the independently-owned Villiage Green didn't bug me when I ultimately bought the CD I was looking for in the first place. I like owning physical media, but iTunes and Amazon don't take the piss out of me when I purchase online.