"...Round and round, like a hamster in a cage."

"Hey, look world, I'm no longer a mall-loving thirty something oddball. I'm a health-buff! Plus, what I'm doing isn't just healthy, it's AN ART!"

Why is it that I find mall walking particularly disturbing? Is it because it feels like an odd post yuppie, semi-hippie, gen-x justification for being a mallrat?

I'm thinking it's probably because I listened to too much Carlin in my youth.

Of course, the wikipedia entry I just linked to isn't the worst of it. Try googling up all the mall walking associations that have sprouted up. Trust me, you'll feel a shiver up your spine.

Here's what's truly grotesque about it: in the aforementioned wikipedia entry there's a line under "Advantages to mall owners" that says, "After walking, mall walkers may well stay on and shop the stores or patronize the mall's food court, increasing the traffic in the mall during what would otherwise be the very slow opening hour."

Can you feel the irony? Can you smell the pretension?

After showing off to the world that you're Mr/Ms Healthy, and that you've "burned some calories," you're fully willing to waste all of your hard work walking around the mall by eating fast-food garbage that you'd get at a food court.

What's worse, is that if you're really serious about it, and you're not a pretentious health loving yip, then you aren't really helping the mall out. That's because all you'd be buying from the food court is a small pack of prepackaged fruit salad. That, and imagine how your sweaty, smelly, sweat-sock infused, nasal-aura will affect the other mall patrons?

There are reasons why some people like to eat in a food court during the early morning, and sitting beside a fat sweaty slob in gym shorts isn't one of them.