You are the type of person who probably suffers from a lengthy list of phobias and neuroses. Family and friends have considered strapping you down to a chair on more than one occasion. Today, you are likely to spend a great deal of time flipping through mail order catalogs hoping to buy either a birthday greeting card for your grandmother or a coffee cup commemorating yesterday. Be on the lookout for rusty deck screws. You should consider shopping at stores or businesses beginning with the letter H, but do not buy any products with a serial number or product code containing the number 434688. Your preferred shopping venue is mail order catalogs. Your special symbol is the question mark (?).

As a Gray Skittery, you are ambivalent, indecisive, and uncertain. You are in a constant struggle between the forces of demand and supply, production and consumption, good and evil... and you're losing the battle. You have trouble making decisions and choosing from among the seemingly infinite number of options that you perpetually face. Your shopping experiences are inevitably confusing.

The decision NOT to do something (such as vote in an election) because the cost of taking the action is more than the expected benefit. The rational decision to refrain from an endeavor is a straightforward application of utility maximization and along with the related notion of rational ignorance, is a source of voter apathy and government inefficiency.

Complete Entry | Visit the WEB*pedia

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.
Tell me more...

Visit the PEDestrian's Guide

-- Claire Boothe Luce, diplomat, writer

User Feedback