At a small, dusty Target store, I pay for a candy bar with a 20 dollar bill, and the cashier doesn't have change but she rings me up and takes the money anyway. What about my change? Can I give back the candy bar? Can I go to another register? She shrugs. The manager is unsympathetic, and so are all the other customers: one jaded New York type tells me, "You oughta be prepared to lose twenty bucks every time you hand over your money." I keep arguing but it's just not gonna happen... and now I can't give back the candy anyway, because at some point in my agitation I got hungry and took a bite.

This bothers me so much that when I wake up and hit the alarm snoozer, I tell myself "Enough about Target - it's not real money - I just wanna sleep" and then I'm back arguing about it with someone else for the next five minutes, THREE TIMES.

Because surely it's important to keep poking the raw nerve, and even more important to raise a bunch of money so we can keep the bad dream alive forever:

9/11 ads ask where you heard the news

I wonder if the bit at the end was meant to be a touching detail, or if it's the reporter slyly deflating the whole thing: the ad agency guy was in a hotel in L.A. when he heard the news! Who would've guessed? Oh, the humanity!

Via Americablog, who has a nice suggestion for another poster...