Curse of the plastic bags. Or whatever.

Today I had an adventure. Grocery shopping does qualify as an adventure when judged by The Hellholian Scale of Excitement. Besides, when you’re living with Pooch, who has a habit of licking things that should not be licked and developing farts that smell just like the circus, a change of air might not be such a bad idea.

There I was, puttering around between the isles, my little, blue plastic shopping basket in one hand and my shopping list in the other. Ten minutes later, I had worked up quite an impressive selection of items, some of which I needed but most of which I simply wanted. And deserved, dammit.

“Would you like a bag?” the cashiere with the dead eyes asked me, after she’d finished the laborious task of ringing up all my groceries.

“No, hidden inside the dark bowels of my coat, I have more arms than an army of octopuses and would have no problem carrying a million things home,” I thought. I didn’t say that, of course, because I am a polite and civilized sort of person. In stead I simply smiled and said “yes, please.”

So the woman yanked out a plastic bag from underneath the registery, where it lived with its family and friends inside a little cardboard box, dumped it on top of my small mountain of groceries and then she quickly got up and disappeared through the plastic doors in the back of the store, labelled “staff only!!!”

That’s right: three exclamation marks.

I’m not entirely sure what sort of math went on inside her head to make her think that said mountain was going to fit inside a single plastic bag. It is, after all, exactly as big on the inside as it appears to be from the outside. It’s a typical, run-of-the-mill plastic bag – not the bloody starship Enterprise.

The thing is, they always give you one -1- plastic bag, regardless of how much crap you’re hauling with you. If you want more, you have to specifically ask and carefully outline how many you think you’ll need. I momentarily forgot this, and ended up standing there with 80 bucks worth of groceries, a tiny plastic bag and the distinct feeling of just having screwed myself over.   

I bet they all just sit in their little staff-only area, stuffing their faces with chips and watching the little surveillance screens to see how the customers try to work out this little equation. Well, I wasn’t going to be their lunch entertainment. I stole a plastic bag, I did. Hell, I stole TWO.

Thus my life of crime has started. You gonna do something about it, mate? I have a pooch with flatulence and I’m not afraid to use it.

 

Satan's.... Uhm... SANTA's little helpers

I love when the Christmas decorations all come up around town. Especially the ones in the mall. They’re all shiny, soo shiiiiiiny. After having been awoken by the sounds of loud screechy sex from upstairs, I figured I’d go check it out. The decorations that is, not the screechy sex. The less I know about that, the better, really.

The first thing that you notice is the enormous Santa hanging on the wall right next to the escalators. First you see his boots and his gigantic…uhm…pelvic area, then comes the belly, arms and when you start to near the top of the stairs, you're always relieve to see that he's got a head. As I was staring up at Chris Cringle’s private bits, I could hear the merry music of the season pouring out from the record store.

Every year the record companies spew out CD’s with various A- and B celebrities singing Christmas songs. If you play them backwards you’ll probably hear the voice of Satan commanding you to stock up on Coca Cola products, or something.

This time of the year, I become extremely partial to everything with the word “Christmas” written on it. I buy Christmas soda, Christmas cookies, Christmas notebooks and the list goes on and on. I have a Christmas calendar, of course. Normally, when there’s chocolate in the house, I attack it all with such feverish glee you’d think I’d just been released from a work camp in Siberia. Are there still work camps in Siberia, by the way? Probably not.

Hey, did you know what I just noticed? SANTA is and acronym for SATAN. I wonder what that means? Probably that I have too much time on my hands.