From the San Jose Tattletale Business and Crime section:

(ERP) Pandemonium erupted yesterday at the local Wal Mart when the store ran out of motorized shopping scooters. It started when two large, middle-aged women attempted to grab the last remaining electric cart. Store greeter Norville Jacsktolovitch, a retired chemical engineer from Du Pont, attempted to step between the two angry women and he was pummeled into unconsciousness by both potential shoppers. In an amazing turn of events, the two women moved from fighting over the scooter to attacking poor Norville. Francis Fenderhoover, 57, put the greeter into a half-Nelson as her nemesis from two minutes earlier, 53-year-old Lillian Kravitz stomped the man and locked him, using two very large and muscular legs, into a scissor-hold.

Meanwhile, Reverend Foltschhwimber of the Methodist Church, hoping to catch a sale on crappie lures, was pinned between two of the store's electric scooters as he rounded an aisle in Sporting Goods. The reverend, apparently focusing on fishing lures and not the motorized traffic ahead, was run over by a former catalogue salesman and a diabetic postal clerk. This caused scooter traffic to back up from Sporting Goods all the way to Health and Beauty Aids. Reverend Foltschhwimber's wife, Julie, pushing the couple's twins in a walk-behind shopping cart, was boxed-in by the gridlock and was unable to escape the four-wheeled fiasco to check on her husband's condition.

The traffic tie-up disrupted normal check-out activities, and all of that resulted in the shortage of shopper scooters, according to sources close to Wal Mart management. The Tattletale has learned that Wal Mart will soon change store policy, allowing ambulatory, average-sized, healthy people to shop only after 9:30pm on Tuesdays and every other Thursday. Store officials are also considering putting in wider lanes, center stripes and traffic signals at the ends of aisles.

A.P., you put alot of effort into that article. Good job. Next time, try to inject a banjo into the story!

Now we know why WalMart retail sales are down!!

The melee moved from the sporting goods section to the produce aisle when Paris Hilton showed up to serve a portion of her community service by hosing down the jicamas and acorn squash.

In the interest of boosting profits, Wal-Mart is studying a plan to sell tickets and allow fans to bring coolers for spectator shopping. The plan would involve putting in banking turns and seeking corporate sponsorship banners in its aisles, along with a pit row for motorized shopping cart users to be held when the yellow flag goes up. These improvements are projected to be funded by the savings Wal-Mart has accrued by discontinuing the costly process of having prosecutors collect their hot checks.

All of which begs the question that AP and Scott and even our trumpeter friend in SA fear to ask, which is why so many seemingly healthy people use the scooters to shop at HEB and Walmart. I see them walk, nee dash, from their cars into the store in the rain, then jump in that scooter. So you know it is not an ambulatory problem.

And you would think that those weighing over 300 Pounds who use the scooters could really use the exercise, barring any other health problem.

And my final question is, does AP use a scooter when he shops for Rachel Ray magazines and books? And if he does use a scooter, does he bring his banjo along and serenade the shoppers?

Scott, why are you picking on Paris? That poor child has enough to worry about, what with a possible jail stay in an un-color coordinated outfit.

And more importantly, how will she drink alcohol if she is in jail? Riddle me this...

Thank you, GG for recognizing the purpose of the rant. It is almost, (almost) laughable, watching greying, gargantuan river-dwellers drive to a parking lot in jacked-up, camo-painted Dodges, park across two spaces, blow their noses between two fingers into the wind, run over to a piece of paper on the ground, hoping to find a ten dollar bill or a lotto ticket, then jog into the store, looking for a freshly-charged scooter so they can cruise for chicks in the lingerie section.

And no, I don't use one while shopping for Racheal Ray items. I always do that online, where I can email comments to my favorite chef anonymously, especially now that I know how hard it is to prove it's me doing it, thanks to the thread earlier today.

But what about Paris Hilton and her impending jail stay? Will she be celled with brutish females? Will she be in the semi-celebrity section, with all the failed actresses and musicians that undoubtedly line the streets of Hollywood like so many scooters at the wal-mart once their batteries run dead?

How can we, as an American people, forget her cinematic contributions to our society?