Ah, Thanksgiving. The time for gorging ourselves*, bantering with relatives, watching and maybe playing football, and shopping (unless one can avoid it). In preparation for the upcoming holiday (we need to bring the pumpkin pie) and the pending move-in to our house (which has been under renovation since May and we’ve been out with the in-laws since July), GorT and wife were doing various shopping outings over the last week. The discussion a few nights ago turned to the worse parking lots (in our area – a lovely north-western suburb of Washington, DC).

Number one on the list: Cabin John Mall in Potomac (Bethesda), MD. Quite possibly the worst parking lot I’ve ever been in. EVER. I think people (who aren’t shielded in their Cavaliers, War Wagons or other Gormogon vehicles) automatically lose 50 IQ points upon turning into the lot. The aisles are narrow and some are one-way. The locals can be too lazy to actually look for an open spot, and instead park along the well-marked firelanes and hashed-off areas at the end of the aisles (making for easy turning radii). Sigh.
Number Two on the list: Any Costco parking lot. I’ll offer up the one in Sterling, Virginia. Must….get….400 lbs…of…..paper….products…..oh, wait, there are other people driving near me, maybe I’d better pay attention.
Number Three on the list: Congressional Shopping Center in Rockville, MD. In general, the parking lot is laid out well and the aisles are well-spaced. However, there are obviously too many shiny objects in the windows of the merchants around the edge causing drivers to get distracted…”Hey, look, Whole Foods has canteloupe in big baskets out front”…screeeeech. If you can’t tell by the map link for this, the whole area is a parking lot…including Rockville Pike, the main thoroughfare for this area. It’s about 20 miles of 3-lane divided roads past numerous strip malls, fast food establishments and various other merchants plying their wares. It is a place to avoid unless needed, and that better be at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday in August to avoid the traffic. Of course, the local government’s planning board has allowed massive growth on the road without any significant improvement to the road infrastructure.

Shop. Eat. But for God’s sake, be careful and be sane in the parking lot.

* – a coworker exclaimed at our Thanksgiving lunch that this is why it’s great to be an American – “I can gorge myself and it’s normal”.

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.