There Goes the Neighborhood

And I want
And I need
And I lust
Animal

-Def Leppard, "Animal"

Speaking of things that are out to destroy me, I would like to point out that since I have moved into this apartment, two stores have opened up directly across the street from me. One of these stores is a Magnolia-spinoff cupcake shop, and the others of these is a chocolate store which literally sells chocolate exclusively. That means every time I walk Perry, which is about 85 times a day, I step out of my apartment and am immediately confronted with two of the most delicious items known to mankind, namely buttercream cupcakes and very delicious chocolate. At first I thought it was some sort of 20/20 hidden camera experiment where they watched to see how many times I would go to the two stores and then surreptitiously weighed me when I stepped on a particular piece of the sidewalk that looked like concrete but was actually a scale.

However, I very soon realized that the cupcake store was pulling the same crap that Mrs. Fields and Cinnabon does at the mall, which is that the items themselves don't taste all that great, but they get people to eat their shit by spraying cookie and cinnabun scented perfume into powerful fans that are programmed to blast in peoples faces from 100 feet away and lure them into the store. The cupcake store has similarly been pumping cupcake perfume into my apartment, but once I realized this dastardly trick I was able to withstand the intoxicating perfume of cupcakes in the same way as Odysseus was able to withstand the song of the Sirens, by closing my window and holding my nose while walking by the store. I have been able to withstand the chocolate shop because I once got a peanut butter brownie there and let's just say the outcome was not ideal.