Targe-geddon.

Dear Wife had it in mind to be at the local Target Tuesday morning 8:00 a.m. Why? The launch of their new Missoni line. She wanted to get a vase, and look at a cardigan. She'd heard there would be a lot of demand for this stuff, so she figured we'd stop by first thing, see what we thought, then hit the road.

As if.

The crowd wasn't huge--maybe 40 or so woment--hardly what you'd call a flash mob. The doors opened at 8:00, and by 8:02 (the time it took us to walk to the Missoni area) there was literally nothing left on the racks.

Now, I'm not against a good old-fashioned, fashion feeding frenzy, but there was something supremely cynical at work here: women were just grabbing as much as they could, stuffing it into their cart, and rushing to the next thing. There was no, "I need a 6 in that dress." Indiscriminate fistfuls were yanked from the racks; once stripped, the looters absconded. Everyone's cart looked like the above. All of it to be resold on Ebay?

Worse than this was the joylessness. These were hollow husks of humans, retail zombies with a naked "me-first" attitude that really jarred.  Nothing hip and beautiful about it. I used to like Missoni, but the whole scene left me with an ugly association.

That word was the take-away: U-G-L-Y. Ugly people, ugly manners, ugly impulse.

A sight to behold....