#279: The Maxxy's® Mannequin Shoplifter Subduing Syndicate

     As should come to no surprise, the North American turkey-human repast for interspecies peace took another grizzly turn this twelvemonth. Maintain your faith. There's always next year. In other tragic tidings, I realize that as the doorsteps of moonlit occidental suburbia were scuffled with zealous trick-or-treaters' wily white Converses on October 31st, the blog was laid embarrassingly bare. However, at the turn of the month, so was my scorched neighborhood slope, so my surroundings weren't exactly in my favor.

(Actor's portrayal. Mind the watermarks.)

      However, as my frenzied fickle pinballing from hotel-to-hotel has ceased and the smoke fumes are almost finished waging war on my nostrils, my ducks are finally in some semblance of a row. So, without further ado, a post one sluggish sooty month in the making: the Maxxy's® Mannequin Shoplifter Subduing Syndicate! Mannequins do not deserve your trust. Those blank faces. Those glossy, gangly extremities. That posh, modernist attire that makes them look like charter school performance artists. My skin crawls at the thought. However, while a phobia of all dapper nightmare models lining aisles across the globe wouldn't get you much besides a two-fer bundle on public panic attacks, at an infamous outlet in the JC-Verse, it could save your life, limb, and everything in-between. Keep your hands to yourselves and selectively on the shelves, because at Maxxy's Retail Surplus Superstore Co. Inc.®, it's you against them. Seriously, we're talking about five-and-dime fascism now, make no mistake. These sleek chain-store Chekists are the uncanny kin of tense anti-shoplifter opprobrium, and are tasked with mincing every five-finger discount down to the proverbial knuckle. You'd be living a kiosk-side facade if you assumed that those stuffy Windsor ties don't become whips, those necklaces nunchakus, and those pocket squares throwing stars on a dime. And don't even get me started on the break rooms. Programmed with a virtual archive of noir interrogation scenes and Chokehold Encyclopedia for the Self-Starter: Volumes 1-6, your typical Maxxy's® Mannequin is a kunoichi in a cardigan--and if one so much as catches you suspiciously crossing their tees, you can bet your britches they'll dot your eyes. No questions asked. No reasons given.

(That particular kick is dubbed the "Half-Off." Half off of what precisely is case-by-case.)