Being observant is not a common skill anymore.

And so the lush panoply of urban life continues, watched with rapt wonder by your's truly, the tender-hearted employee brimming with the milk of human kindness.*

They still wander in. Those men with slightly glassy eyes and hollow affect to their features who insinuate themselves through the door, scanning the racks of movies and toys before directing their attention to me to inquire where the live women are.

With difficulty, sometimes extreme, I refrain from making the observation that they [women] walk amongst the population at large. Perhaps they would have noted a time or two those man-like creatures with rounded hips and pronounced pectoral structures which always scamper across the street at their approach or ready cans of pepper-spray in event of unavoidable contact. But I refrain, for these specimens possess a rude cunning to discern I may be mocking them. Sometimes it means they won't spend money here. That won't do. Can't have them leaving with even one cent more than I have to. Even if they do look so ridiculous scrunching up their faces in mimicry of sentience. It's almost like they think they're people.

Regretfully, it leaves me little recourse beyond schooling my features in an approximation of polite disappointment and an admission we, alas, do not have any live models or dancers on the premises. (A statement that in the grips of a certain humor tempts me sorely to make allusions to deceased models or dancers. An impulse I squash. For some reason it makes folks nervous and police agencies have myriad reasons not to have a sense of humor about it.) Normally they look crest-fallen and buy some magazines or leave, possibly to visit a furniture store in the hopes of spare strippers lost in the sofa cushions. Some will bob their heads with benevolent indulgence at what must be a genial simpleton manning the counter before looking in every corner as if in some forgotten, cob-webbed alcove will be some gateway to a Lucite, Lycra, and fish-net bedecked Narnia. The liar, the bitch, and scant wardrobe? I assure you, an exotic dancer is not something that an employee is likely to miss.

Frankly I'm baffled at these pilgrims of the platformed pole. The store bears little resemblance to a strip club. There is nothing to suggest lingerie modeling. I suppose we could, theoretically, be playing it avante garde to the hilt with conspicuous omission of "live girl" announcements where every other venue all but staples those words directly to one's retinas. Except, the idea is criminally moronic and we're not that type of business. Perhaps I should not be so surprised. People who can miss a brightly colored banner declaiming "Arcade" scant feet away from their nose are perfectly capable of receiving limericks in Welsh from Atlantis in their Spagetti-O's. Why not argue with the clerk about the existence of a mythical sign announcing exotic dancers for twenty minutes?

Who knows though. Maybe they know something I don't. Maybe there's some sort of underground stripper rail-road smuggling nubile, yet underdressed, waifs from the frigid latitudes of Canada to be tagged and released back into the wilds of Brazil.

* Translation: The flood of human vomit continues to flow by in a gutter of habitual discourtesy, aggressive stupidity, and self-importance toward the storm drain of mediocre senescence and masturbatory delusions of how special and vibrant they once were. As for myself? Well, let's just say the need for ideals waxes even as my tolerance for idealists wanes.