Note: This was originally contributed to my blog on MySpace, prior to creating seriously bad-ass website you are viewing now. Yes, I had a MySpace account. No, I’m not a child molester.
No, I don’t want to be your friend.
Commentary follows:
Blog. What a crappy word. I mean, if you’re going to pour your heart and soul onto the Internet, why not come up with something that doesn’t sound like something that broke on a household appliance? “Honey? Can you come here a second? The blog went out on the dishwasher again!!”
So here it is. I’ve always enjoyed writing, but I’ve never really taken the time to make it so easily accessed by the mindless heathens of the Internet. Half of me feels like, being 30 and slightly disconnected from the instant message and L33t sp3aK generation, that I really have no business doing this. The other half of me is bored. And I’ve been drinking… so you know where this is going, right??
Let’s see. Hmm. I went to the grocery store yesterday for the first time in about a month. The decision wasn’t driven so much by a lack of food… rather, it was driven by the fact that I was out of deodorant. Now, as any good bachelor would tell you, we’ll eat just about anything that’s left in the fridge no matter how horrible the combination. I was left with some stale Goldfish, some expired milk, some Jello pudding, and a bottle of mustard — a fulfilling snack in my book — but a guy has to draw the line somewhere. The call of returning to acceptable human hygiene had come, and I had to do something about it…
As I entered the store, it occurred to me — fresh food is a pretty damn good idea. I mean, look at this… fresh vegetables, fruit, healthy snacks, and quickly prepared meals abound… but let’s be serious for a moment. I ain’t gunna cook. My brain can imagine a whole slew of vegetables and meats prepared with spices and olive oil, but by the time I build the patience to actually dirty one of my clean pans I’d sooner have gone to Schlotsky’s and just pretended I made it myself…
… so I was off, to the beer isle. A twelve pack of Sam Adams hit the bottom of my basket [clink!]… which led to the next logical craving: chips. And salsa. And some peanuts and maybe a some — oh, shit, they’ve got my favorite flavor of German beer… yeah, Paulaner Oktoberfest is the shit [clink!]… and, wait, where was I? A block of cheese. I fuckin’ love cheese. Why the hell don’t they put the cheese next to the beer?
While on the cheese isle I noticed that they had a very fine spread of summer sausages. Now there’s a good idea. Meat, in a vacuum sealed package, ready to stab with a knife and consume like my cave-dwelling ancestors. No pots. No pans. No cleaning up. No bullshit coming between me and my beer drinking time. Very few foods can claim such low-maintenance goodness if you stop and think about it. Pickles, olives… popcorn… Snackwell cookies… I mean, shit, that’s all I can think of…
Next I was off to the hygeine section for the product that drove me there to begin with: deodorant. You know, I remember the days when buying deoderant was a pretty straightforward thing. You had the stick or the spray… and if you were a chick, maybe the roll-on. Nowadays you’ve got 42 different choices. Scented. Unscented. Sport. Powercaps. The ‘strip’. The metrosexual special. For fuck’s sake… I mean, capitalism is great and all, but do I really have to be an informed consumer just to stop stinking?? If they’d have had a brand called “Stink-Away” I’d have popped it in the basket and headed for the checkout line…
… which, by the way, is way too fucking complicated as well. You used to have the regular lane and the express lane. Now you have the regular lane, the express lane (under 15 items), the express lane (under ten items), and the weird, confusing, back-talking “do it yourself” lane where you get to fight with a computer over putting your groceries in the bag properly. “Please place the item in the bag.” “That item is not the correct weight for the item scanned” (happens when you scan a tube of toothpaste for $0.79 and dump a $6.59 six-pack of beer into your bag). “Bitch, please, you don’t know shit about good wine!” (happens when you try to buy a bottle of wine over $12).
… and all that fun (after filling my basket with other random alcoholic goodies) only cost me $59. What’s funny is the fact that they put $5 tear-off charity coupons next to the register. $5 to help the homeless shelter? Shee-it. If you’d have seen my fridge before I got here, you’d have started a fund for me…
G’night, all…
— Bingo