The Future Is Now And It Weighs Five Hundred Pounds

This is the story of how one woman with a cell phone turned a simple shopping trip into a big weird thing for the employees of WinCo, and bought some vegetables and ramen. And a few canned goods. And pepperoni, and grits.

I love to do photo store tours. The best one I did was way back in the old days on my blog Paul Because 'Paul' is a nice name. That store no longer exists. But it sold pig faces.  It literally sold pig faces.

So with a hearty Hi Ho and three Gabapentin onboard, we leap into the present, and HOLY CRAP here we are, just like magic, right inside the doors of WinCo Foods! 

WOW     

I would have taken a picture of the outside but it was raining. 

Why did I choose WinCo?  Because it sells the cheapest groceries in town. I always shop here first.

Note the surveillance camera - kind of an egg-shaped half black, half white thingy hanging down top center. They are all over the store.  Do I care?  No. I'm not stealing. I'm not decompensating.  I'm not naked. I am taking pictures...for science. 

As it turns out, WinCo, a store that will literally let whole families come in and eat cheese shreds out of the dairy case, and not turn a hair, was not at all happy about me taking pictures for science. But onward!

Like I said, unapologetically grim. Well-lit, though. They give you a plastic shopping cart. It too is unapologetically grim. HA is what I say to that. And here are all your heavily tattooed working-class people trying to save a buck, and hopefully getting ready to do a little comparison shopping.  

In WinCo, you better go in with a strategy. Yes, there's bargains - good ones - but there's a lot of blatant chicanery too. Right off the bat, the worst, cheesiest, most dishonest thing about WinCo is their store brands. 

Here ^^^  is the store brand of canned soup. A buck twenty-one is on the low side in these here parts. Aha, a bargain, you think.  But if you thought a little more, you'd read the ingredients - and note the weight - and compare that to...

...your basic McDougals Cream of Spider Monkey for a buck seventy-seven.  Same weight. But vastly different in quality. All soups are not created equal. They don't all come from the same factory. In this case you need to pay for that quality and not just go by price. PARTICULARLY when it comes to the WinCo store brand, kids.

Simply put,  Winco's house brand is GARBAGE. And this you'll find with most of the Winco store brand products - they either blow, or they're short-weighted, or both.  

Here's another example of how hard they work you at WinCo: 

Here we have a whole raw chicken in a plastic bag.  And Mr. Chicken (or Ms.) costs 1.38 a pound today, which is a little high for a whole raw chicken in a plastic bag.  Well then, you might say,  I'll  get a rotisserie chicken instead. Screw cooking. 

Hey look!  There's a roasted chicken in a bag!  And it costs...5.98.   -but OK, OK fine, you pay for convenience!

Except that this chicken weighs one pound and thirteen ounces.  

Look at this ridiculous thing.

This is a baby chicken. It is practically foetal. 

....aaaaaaaaaaand this is where I picked up an observer.  WinCo's security call code is 'Meat Section, all Service, line one'. I heard that go out, had time to wonder what was going on, and then realized that I was what was going on when a guy popped out from the back and began to follow me around. And was not at all cool about it. 

Yup.  They called a storewide code on me!

It's kind of an honor.

I decided to take a picture of my shopping basket and then act like I was talking on my phone. Trying to give the impression that I was shopping for someone, you see. Perfectly reasonable. Not a spy sent from Hagens to price-check your starved little rotisserie chickens, or whatever you think I'm doing, WinCo. Geeze.  

So here ^^^ is my shopping so far!  Lots of fresh veggies jammed into the baby seat up there, and a big ol' thing of ramen.  

I do love WinCo for produce. They have the best selection in town except for the Food Co-Op, and you don't have to pay inflated hippie prices either. HA is what I say to hippie prices.     

Now I'm going to digress. And I'm going to do it badly, with lots of side tangents. OK.  This vvv is a picture of the Breakfast Cereal aisle. Just Breakfast Cereals here.  Those huge silver tubes sticking up?  Are filled with vampires. Maybe not. I don't know.   

To the extreme right of shot there are the cereals that can, at a stretch, be described as all-grain. (You can see the things of oatmeal along the bottom. It's a narrow little strip going up from those.) Everything else, literally as far as the eye can see on both sides of this aisle, are sugar cereals. 

This aisle is as long as one city block. No shit.

Now at the very end you can see a big ol' sign that says BULK.  And right underneath that 'Bulk' sign is...

OH YIKES look at this  ^^^  jacked-up picture of the Rice Krispies elfie guys. What happened to them?  They used to be so robust! Now they look like haunted K-pop anorectics. 

OK I'm getting sidetracked. Still, though. WTF, Kellog.

Now here we are finally in the bulk section. And I'm getting sidetracked again.  

I am a huge fan of the WinCo bulk foods section, and if you have a WinCo in your town, you should be too. It is always fresh, usually pretty clean,  and they have an incredible selection.  For spices, definitely. The baking selection is phenomenal.  It's all Bobs' Red Mill products!! HELL YEAH BOBS RED MILL MILWAUKIE yeaaaaaah GO OREGON WOOT WOOT WOOT

They even have twirly rainbow noodles! I always get some.   The good thing about bulk pasta is, even if a little boogery kid has been rooting around in the bin, you have to boil pasta, so you probably won't get a boogery little kid disease from it.

Just purse your lips and whistle, that's the thing!   

So anyway. On with the rant, with a side of surveillance!

The Bulk Foods section means candy in bulk, too. And here right below the 'Bulk' sign at the very end of the Yellow Brick Sugar Cereal Aisle of Valhalla...we find this vvv

Bulk candy.  This display ^^^ is nine feet tall. No banana for scale. Bananas aren't that tall. Anyway this  ^^^ is a nine foot tall wall of candy.  And I have just passed through another aisle in the Bulk Food section to reach this edifice. It is this aisle vvvv which is all candy.

And here we have one of five endcaps in the Bulk Food section. Solid candy.

Oh look.I just turned around and here we have carriers vvv in the middle of the aisle. Twin carriers filled with...what?

CANDY.

^^^^ about that picture:  That guy in the black hoodie center top is the one who came out of the back with a shopping basket and was following me around keeping an eye on me. Man, I had to get a shot of him.  This poor dude. 

OK he turned aside like he was pretending to look at the coffee so I whipped around and took this shot real quick 

vvvvv

Here on these stackers we have yet  more candy  - and in the double carriers just behind it too!       

So what do we have. Hmm. I didn't get pictures of it all because I was pretty distracted by this point. But it comes down to something like this:

One vast aisle filled with sugar cereals.

Two rows, front and back, full of candy.  

All along the back wall, another row. 

A row of double carriers four stacks long. So eight carriers.

Five end caps, all candy.  

One random stack of upside-down candy

Another double carrier behind that. 

I didn't bother getting more pictures of all the random shelf-hangers full of candy scattered all over the store . 

I'm not even counting the two floor-to-ceiling rows of cookies, crackers and chips. 

Or the wall of freezers stocked with ice cream.

Or the huge aisle that's a full city block long and floor the ceiling pop.

 Come on! We wonder why Americans are obese? 

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So I am wandering around in WinCo and I am being observed by 'The Meat Department'.   OK then. I'll....shop, dammit.  Except I don't have much more shopping to do. I got my twirly noodles and have moved on.

As long as I'm near the poultry coolers, I'll take a shot of the giant turkeys.

Now I'm really wishing I had a banana for scale because these things are freakishly huge.  And frozen solid. Like boulders. (That bin is clean; that's just frost.)

This is the smallest turkey in this bin and it's almost twenty one pounds, the size of a one-year-old kid. My daughter was walking already when she was that size. This turkey was too...somewhere in Harbin.

So here I am in the checkout line with my groceries, me and all the other heavily tattooed people. 

Now WinCo is a bargain mart, so yeah, you get the occasional freak job, and yeah, there's roving mutant families; that's anywhere lately. It's not Wal-Mart bad - I refuse to shop there - but it can get lively. Today, I am the lively. Well, I am a little bit of the larger lively. The checkout manager (to my rear, I just passed him) gave me the fisheye and talked into a phone as I pulled into this line, so I smiled....

...then I looked straight up and smiled again and took another picture of their surveillance camera.  

Dammit, I was in a mood by now. Feeling kind of devil may care. Go ahead. I dare you to haul me into the back. Do it. C'mon. 

But they didn't. You know why?

Me either. 

BUT WE HAD FUN, DIDN'T WE?

Really, that's it. I bought a few groceries and took a few pictures, and got followed around by store security. 

Isn't the first time. Won't be the last.

Birdy Birdy Birdy Birdy Birdy Birdy Birdy Birdy Birdy Lingerie

It is a BIRDYPALOOZA out here at the El Apartmento. This morning I had to whip out the Roger Tory Peterson again to identify all the LBJ's out here - and no, sadly, I do not mean our 36th president. Imagine that, though. Lynden Baines Johnson out here in his suit, picking at crap in the snow. It tickles my fancy, let me tell you. No, I mean Little Brown Jobs, which, sadly, is not a double entendre, but IS the name savvy birdwatchers give to the numerous little brown rascals out picking at crap in the snow. I mean bird-rascals, not crackheads or the chick who used to live upstairs. Keep up. 

 This is some random guy. It's not president Johnson. President Johnson is dead.   

Most birdies are in their winter plumage, and most winter birdies are small and brown and quick, and pick at tiny little crap, which makes them really hard to identify, so you have to use binoculars and have your Roger Tory Peterson nearby because those species identifiers are pretty subtle and those birdies don't hang around. They go doink doink doink doink doink just about constantly.  I don't know what their major malfunction is.  I think these birdies drink a lot of coffee. Like way too much coffee.  

Go to any drive-through coffee joint and you'll see hundreds of birdies out picking at crap in the parking lot, and I suspect it's discarded coffee grounds, or maybe ants*, but I want to believe it's discarded coffee grounds, and that the birdies, over the years, got to liking them real well, and now threaten the barristas with Alfred Hitchcock scenarios until they heave out a basket of spent grounds to satisfy the cravings of the flock. Imagine it. Hundreds of tiny birdies hurling themselves at a lone Peek-A-Brew lingerie hut, the screaming, scantily-clad barristas crouched helplessly before the onslaught, when suddenly a window breaks and the first ominous peeping is heard within.

I WANT MY VENTI ITALIANO BETH     

Have you ever been to a lingerie java hut?  It's like almost like patronizing a strip joint, only you get espresso too, and if you're willing to tip they show you a tit, or a little neck, which is awesome. Not that I have ever visited the one out by Lakeway Fred Meyers.  

Here we have something to wake up to that is much safer than patronizing a lingerie java hut being menaced by tiny birdies:

Toxicsocial - Britney Spears X Slipknot [MASHUP] (youtube.com)

Face it. This is danceable as hell. Go ahead and shake that ass. Or whatever you feel like shaking. In fact, let's ALL get up and dance!  You can wear your old smelly robe if you want! You can even eat a sandwich!

Speaking of djent, now that Ned Beatty's dead, the boys in the holler have time on their hands. Did you remember to worship Les Claypool today? 

Slipknot - Psychosocial (Banjo cover ft. Leo Moracchioli) (youtube.com)

Beats the fuck out of facing hordes of caffeine addicted birds in your crotchless undies now doesn't it. 

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*It's ants. 

People accidentally drop their chichi espresso drinks on the pavement and the sugary syrups attract ants. Don't tell me you never noticed this at your local drive-through lingerie hut. I mean if you haven't noticed this by now don't go trying to identify presidents in mid-winter because Roger Tory Peterson will beat you over the head with a shoe. 

** With thanks to JON, from whom I ripped off the mashup idea. 

 

Two Birdy Soups Spill The Fleet

 Where have I been? PROCRASTINATING.

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BIRDS BIRDS BIRDS Oh  my God birds y'all. 

Quick summon up a map of the Western fuckin' United States.

Pic

Now grab your Roger Tory Peterson and flip to 'Birds'. Using the 'Field identification markers' key, turn to 'Birds you don't expect to see in the middle of Winter' and you'll find everything I've been seeing out my back sliders this Winter, and I don't mean the crackheads OR the chick who used to live upstairs from us. No. I mean real birdies with wings and shit.

Today!  Just this past fuckin' day!  I had to drag out my 'Field Guide To Western Birds' four separate times to try and identify the little feathery sapsuckers bouncing around out here in the snow -

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FUCK IT SNOWED

It snowed nine inches between 5:a.m. and 8:30. a.m. this morning.  Then the Northeaster began blowing and now it's all polished like alabaster, sticking to the side of the buildings and way too cold outside. I hate snow. 

The Biker slipped and wrenched something in his back and so he stayed home today and got on my last nerve.  Fortunately, God gave us the Irish, and the Irish gave us Bushmills, and I kept pouring with a heavy hand, and the day didn't end in bloodshed. At one point I was describing how the Bronze Age measurement of 'hides' came about and he actually listened. I am still trippin' on this.

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The Antiquarian

I have discovered a YouTube channel called The Antiquarian, which is a dude who is an Antiquarian, and he tells you shit about Ancient Stuff in Britain (and sometimes Constantinople.)  I am all about this.  

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Holy Shit People Invest In A Lock

Did you know that you can go to these tiny little towns way back lost in Darkest UKzonia and just rock right into a church built in 1 A.D?  and find crazy amazing things like old wooden furniture and carved rood screens and paintings and brasses and HOLY CRAP PEOPLE. Have some pride!  You have a history!  OK FINE maybe you're bored with it by now, but if you don't preserve your material legacy, it makes it all the more possible for your intangible legacy to be erased, and as somebody with no legacy whatsoever, I can safely say to you as a people QUIT BEING SO CASUAL ABOUT THIS STUFF. 

I see tiny fragments of the same kind of stuff on Antiques Roadshow UK that aren't even half as nice, and those things go for one bazillion dollars, and Fiona Campbell says 'What an amazing survival; a striking and poignant window back in time from Northumbria' (or some shit like that.)  Aha, but drive 60k out to East Foreskin, take a left at Least Wappingtits,  and you got a whole different ball game.  

Seriously. Literally. You can go into these places, not a security guard to be seen, no locks, maybe a shitty screen door if that, and whammo, there's a bunch of stuff from 98 A.D. just lying there with bat crap on it, and maybe a week whacker.  WHAT DOES THIS MEAN.  Why is a bazillion dollars worth of amazing stuff just sitting there abandoned, getting shit on by bats?   Dump it all off a logging stage if you don't value it.  It's what we do here. 

Or send it to me.  I will be glad to redecorate in Early Catholic Guilt.

  

Mozart Hippopotamus nominates Ten Finger Farmer 3000

 You know what, I don't have any better idea than you do. Here's to ya:

All of you, my darlings, will never truly know how important you have been to me this past year.  You've been wonderful!  Even if you prefer to lurk (HI SOPHIE!) I know you're out there, because I've embedded a Txl4 virus in the 'reply' box    because I can hear you giggling behind my shower curtain   I forgot where I was going with this.  But thank you for stopping by nonetheless. I appreciate each one of you and the things you have to say.  Reading your blogs is a bright spot in my day, even if I don't always comment. I'm just as freaked out by the Tx14 comment virus as you are   Some days the clams won't let me   

Did I keep my last New Years resolution?  Yes. I resolved to read The Classics, and I did. A good many of them, in fact. My takeaway is this:  

1. Thomas Hardy is a little over-represented.  

2. A lot of ancient Greeks and Romans are only famous because nobody thought to use certain scrolls as toilet paper. 

This year's resolution?  I'm thinking I would like to have a side hustle. A little something that brings in cash.  This will take some creative thinking, but that's what resolutions are all about - masochism  hiding from the robot airships  broadening one's horizons.  I mean at the very least.  So here's to me putting this out there!

Gratuitous drag king-age    

  And here's to you! Here's me hoping you all have an astounding 2024, you wonderful people!  My wish is that the light you shine comes back to you tenfold and the good you do comes back ten times more.  Here's to you all, heroes every one!

       

Just The Facts

The facts are these:

The Biker and I (note the specific language here) had an absolutely LOVELY HOLIDAY!  We did!  And Boxing Day was wonderful too!  We hung out and drank eggnog and treated ourselves to some thoroughly decadent meals.  Him and I, kids, had a great holiday. We did.

It's the rest of the family that needs to be stuffed into a sack.  

To sum up:  We should have thought to turn our phones off.  

Fortunately, there was plenty of eggnog.

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I do not have a hat head.  I don't. Not a regular hat head anyway.  I put a hat on, most hats, it begins slipping and tipping and grabbing my hair and it falls off. Most hats make me look like an egg-shaped lunatic.

Ah, but give me a hat with a brim and suddenly I am a star.  I'm not bragging, just stating the facts. 

For years now my go to has been the Flat Cap. Not to be confused with the eight-paneled Newsie - that's the one the Peaky Blinders wore:  

      Not this one. No no no no no. Looks like a cowflop.  

    

 THIS one. Yes yes yes yes yes!       

The Flat Cap and I were made for each other. Flat Caps - Tweed, Linen & Wax (hannahats.com)

Anyway, I had one that I loved, and that I had paid a fair amount of money for years ago, because life is too short to go around wearing sad, cheap hats. That hat was perfectly tailored.  Flat sides, angled back, a relaxed straight shot to the brim, no snap, no buttons or tags or pompoms.  Glorious in every respect.

 That lovely hat got lost in the flood. I was so bummed.  

But guess what the Biker brought in from our storage place today? That's right! My hat!  And I am so happy!  I am wearing it right now!  (note from the future: I wore it for the rest of the day and forgot I had it on.)

I've been wearing a flat cap for...longer than I care to admit, now that I stop to do the math. Never mind how long. I looked damn good in my yoooth; I look better now, it can be argued, since my grey hair has come in very wiry and full, like a Karl Marx effect, less the beard. I look like a savage jazz aficionado with strong Communist leanings. 

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Because we already have everything, for the last fifteen years or so we've been buying ourselves a 'house' gift for Christmas. You get to a certain age and you're just all gifted out. That and we've done a lot of buying low and selling high over the years, and once a lot of things have crossed your table, 'things' stop being special.

That is why we have a brand-new carpet cleaner under the tree this year.

Now if this had been a gift to me, from the Biker I'd still be pissed off.

      "The fuck you think I am, the help? Giving me this utilitarian bullshit for Christmas. No, you fucked up, you can't take it back now, it's done, I see what you think of me, it's fine, I'll just clean the Goddamn carpets now because I'm apparently the maid" and so on. 

But if we discuss this shit and agree on it together, it's absolutely fine. Not only that, it makes for an astounding Christmas.  Bring on the industrial lathe. Wheel in the riding lawnmower. How about a new chain hoist, a car, a stainless-steel prep table for the kitchen...absolutely no romance whatsoever, no surprise, no wrapping paper, no bow, no illusion of scarcity or uniqueness, just an invoice - and it's fantastic!  I mean it. You get to gloat and congratulate one another on your combined practicality, and you get an amazing, cozy feeling of togetherness and accomplishment just knowing that this stuff is going to make your life together more comfortable and efficient. 

Plus we have lots of recreationals and rockin' chow.   

It's open house up to New Years Eve here! Stop on by! You drink, you can smoke, you can snort off the top of the toilet tank if it suits ya. You can plink squirrels, you can visit the ancestral land of my people, you can play your music loud and dance how you want to dance. Hell, there's a brand-new carpet cleaner for you to admire too!

Change of Heart

 I had a less than edifying post up about my current circumstances and I thought 'why bum people out?' so I took it down. Instead, here is a picture of a bunny.

A-Rudolph the arf arf arf arf! Was a very arfy arf!

 The church I went to as a kid was an architectural marvel in it's day. No, it really was.  Take a look:

St. Johns Catholic Church, Milwaukie, Oregon. The tall swoopy-uppy thing is the church proper. Underneath that tall swoopy-uppy thing is the huge, huge sanctuary. The ceiling really does go all the way up into that spire.       

 

 

To give you some faint idea of how huge this place is inside     

People used to come in from all over Oregon to attend mass here just to say they had, it was that famous. Infamous, really, as every older person still able to piss dust hated it with every atom of their being.  I thought it was cool as heck and I still do.  It looks like it was built by Klingons.  I say boring baroque decor might be good enough for other Catholics. We in Milwaukie were Swanky Catholics and very modern indeed. Qapla!!

As hard to love as this interior is, my very favorite Christmas memory took place there.  It was a High mass, and I was about seven years old, and the pomp and circumstance had just about worn me out.  Suddenly all the lights went out. No warning. It was completely silent. At first people gasped. After a few moments more, they'd begin to shift and whisper.  And then the candle above the tabernacle was lit, one tiny little point of light shining in the middle of this immense church.  Then the priest began to sing 'Silent Night', and hesitantly the congregation began to join him. He took a taper and lit it from the tabernacle candle, and he went around and lit all the candles on the altar. The sacristans took the light from him then, and went around the whole sanctuary, to all the votives and all the devotionals and lit them.  At the end of the song he simply said "Christ is born."

It's my favorite Christmas memory. And it's of Christmas - not fake Happy Holidays Christmas, where people get in fistfights over Playstations and send 34,000 cards and dash around to visit people they don't like. I left fake Christmas behind and I am better for it. 

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I am probably the only American who hates the Christmas Classic 'Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer'. I hate the song, and I hate the holiday T.V. special. I do.

For some reason my dad was really taken by the song, but he'd just go around and yodel the words "Rudolph the red nosed reindeer!  Had a very shiny nose!" at random. Starting two months leading up to Christmas. And he'd change the words. "a-Rudolph the Red-Nosed Hoosegoooooow!  Had a ve - hry shiny schnooooo!" And he thought this was utterly hilarious, particularly when my mother got sick of hearing it fifteen times a day and began to yell. Then he'd just do it more. "Rudolph the woof woof a-reindeer!  He had a very shiny nose you know!"  

Now this may sound like fond holiday hijinks, but honestly by the week leading up to Christmas mom and I were ready to shoot the guy. It was demented. He'd answer the phone like this. He'd chase me around the house singing this.  I hid in our basement once, iot got so dumb, and I could hear him prowling around upstairs looking for me going "Rudolph the Goose nose a-honk honk! Had a very goosey goose! Are ya here?  Rudolph the Red-Nosed Red Nose! Was a very rainy day! Are ya here?"

"SHADDUP!" My mom would shout. 

That was the sound of the holidays at my house until my mom took the record off the player one day and broke it over her knee. My dad howled like she'd bit him. Honestly, he's lucky she didn't.

Now as for the T.V. special, let's just say it's a matter of taste. If you like this, you have no taste.

"OK OK so this is a good one, Rudolph. Guy walks into a theatrical agents office. 'So you wanna work in Vaudeville, huh? the agent asks. What kind of act ya got?'  OK OK now, and the guy goes 'Well, first my wife comes out and pulls a sweet potato straight out of her..."

Stop-motion animation has always given me the heebie jeebies. Clearly those things are dolls. Am I supposed to believe they're magic dolls that move and sing?  What weird reality is this? And why does it suck? 

I can trace my dislike of this saccharine offering to the vocal talents of Burl Ives. Burl Ives ruins everything. (Wow, I am desecrating all the holiday traditions, huh?  Look at me go.) I think the UK term for his sound is 'treacly'. Yes. Burl Ives was treacly.  Now he is dead.

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So I began this post with a very gentle Christmas reminisce, and now here I am at the end and I've nearly written down the text of the dirtiest joke in the world (The Aristocrats) and it wasn't on purpose; I'm just writing down this and that.  I think I better leave it at this, OK?

Merry Christmas to all!