You are the type of person who ambles through life with no apparent care in the world, but you get the job done. Family and friends seem to be really, really stressed out most of the time. Today, you are likely to spend a great deal of time searching the newspaper want ads trying to buy either a black duffle bag with velcro closures or any book written by Isaac Asimov. Be on the lookout for spoiled cheese hiding under your bed hatching conspiracies against humanity. You should consider shopping at stores or businesses beginning with the letter C, but do not buy any products with a serial number or product code containing the number 511246. Your preferred shopping venue is department stores. Your special symbol is the at sign (@).

As a Blue Placidola, you are easy-going and even-tempered, calm and composed. For you, the hectic pace of a crowded shopping mall during the holiday rush is nothing, it's little more than a tranquil stroll in the park. Life is good. Life goes on. Why worry. You are a happy shopper and you seldom fret over trivial details of a market exchange, in part because you are astute enough to get moderately low prices and relatively good deals.

The four common market structures, perfect competition, monopoly, monopolistic competition, and oligopoly, can be viewed as a continuum based on (1) differences in the number of firms in a market, (2) the relative size of each firm, and thus (3) the market control of each firm. Perfect competition lies at one end and monopoly at the other. Monopolistic competition is close to perfect competition and oligopoly is near monopoly. The essence of the continuum is that monopolistic competition blends into oligopoly, with no clear-cut line of separation.

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Our pedestrian's jaunt through the economy is not, unfortunately, an unrestrained shopping spree for confectioneries, spark plug tools, and Houston, Texas. We have other important errands to run. At the moment we need to hike over to Shady Valley's exclusive provider of cable television services, the Merciless Monolithic Media Masters Cable Television Company, Inc., to inquire about a mysterious fee that appeared last month's bill.

The good news is that the Merciless Monolithic Media Masters (the 4M people) Cable office is a mere 2 miles (3 kilometers for the metrically inclined) from the Shady Valley Central Town Sprawling Hills Shopping Mall. A hop, skip, and a moderately long jump later, our excursion through the economy takes us to the front door of the 4M Cable Television Company where I hope to discover why last month's cable bill included a $3,569 charge for something called "The Vacation Channel." I didn't even know I had a vacation channel. (But, I'm sure it's a great channel, and if I don't have it, then I will certainly subscribe. Please don't disconnect me.)

Of course, because this an afternoon workday, the doors of the 4M office are locked. I can almost make out, through the expensive stained glass windows, what appears to be several Merciless Monolithic Media Masters Cable Television employees, with champaign bottles in hand, dancing on expensive mahogany desks. Let's not disturb them. As they say in the cable business, an upset worker is a disconnected customer.
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