Shit's Bananas

Whole Foods grocery shopping turns me into an angry asshole. The fact that i was listening to 'Rancid' on my iPod while shopping didn't help matters.

i was very optimistic, excited even when word came that Whole Foods was going to be opening a store in my city. Being an environmentalist and vegan this seemed like a great prospective place to do my food shopping. None of their foods have artificial ingredients, 90% of their employees are full time workers with benefits, and they are very environmentally minded when making decisions from energy purchasing to packaging.

Being a realist i acknowledge and expected there to be large crowds for the first month or two. New things always attract people. i was, however, rather naive about the type of clientele which would be frequenting this new retailer of edibles. i was prepared to be excited by the crunchies, tolerant of the dirty hippies, encouraged by the hipsters, and even patient with the crazy new-agers. i enjoy occasionally rubbing elbows with different counter-cultures, even those i myself don't subscribe to. There's a certain unity in knowing we all inhabit the fringes of society, a reassuring nod if you will, that can make you feel not quite so alone in your misfit ways.

There was one group of shoppers, however, that i hadn't expected at all: self-involved consumers searching for the next 'IT' place to be seen shopping. They don't give a shit about the environment. They could care less if ingredients (in-greedy-ants) are artificial like they are. They don't even realize that there are people around them trying to actually achieve something efficiently so we can get back to our lives.

Noooooo, these wastes of oxygen want to 'hang out' so tomorrow around the water cooler they can say "Hey, have you been to the new grocery store Whole Foods yet?" They stand in pairs staring at their own reflections in the glass doors of the bakery as four of us other customers are forced to wait for our chance to grab what we already know we want. They park their carriages just so, in order to get the most isle blockage possible. People who grocery shop while talking on their cell phones need to be clubbed like baby seals. The rest of us don't give a fuck what time you'll be home, nor do we care how your day went as you yell at volume 10 to be heard over the ambient sounds of the grocery store.

15 items or less means 15 items or less for EVERYONE. You are not special (well, special ed maybe). For those of you who can't count 15 is two hands and one foot, assuming you have all your original digits. They should paint two hands and one foot on every 15 item or less sign for these dumb-asses. Oh, and 15 items means 15 ITEMS, not 15 kinds of items. If you have thirty cans of cat food that does not count as one item.

i know, i know, some of you might say: well at least they are supporting a good company for whatever reason. That's not good enough for me. i don't want everyone to start skateboarding. i don't want everyone to start listening to punk rock and jazz. i don't want everyone to shave their head (although way to go Britney). i want some things to be left for those of us who know better. Things left for those of us who APPRECIATE them. When you have good reasons for doing something and you put your heart and soul into it, it is very belittling to have yahoos just jump in and start doing them. The sincerity gets lost. The meaning gets lost.

So if you see some guy with a shaved head and iPod on bombing efficiently down the isles, get the fuck out of his way... or pay the consequences.

Why Santy Claus Why?

In my three decades of walking this Earth i have seen many things change. Unfortunately i have also seen some things remain the same.

As a small child i listened to music on records. As i got a bit older i bought my first recorded music of my own: on cassette. During my teenage years the tape playing Walkman i owned soon became outdated as Cd's came to the fore. Cd's have had a pretty good run, still holding up, but mp3's and digital formats are rapidly becoming the listening choice of the masses. In 30 years we have gone from large, warm black disks of vinyl which could only be listened to at home to a tiny iPod i carry around everywhere which contains almost my entire music catalog.

As a small child i watched images on a black and white television. Eventually the neighbors got a color television and oh what a treat it was when they'd invite us over to watch Buck Rogers and other prime time programming. Eventually we too got a color television, around the time an uncle got a TV with a 3 button control tethered to the set with a wire: the first remote control i ever saw. It had 3 clunky buttons that you'd push with some force. One was on/off, one channel up, and the final one channel down. You could change channels without getting out of your seat (as long as it was relatively close to the furniture sized television).

Eventually we got a color television with a remote control and by the time i was in high school i had saved to buy myself a small TV for my bedroom (which still works). TVs have since evolved into projection screens, flat-screens, plasma, and i now have an LCD TV mounted on the wall of my bedroom taking up almost no space. All within 30 years.

As a small child i remember one time my uncles rented a reel to reel projector. They tied up a white sheet against the wall, loaded & fed the reels, put the accompanying record on for sound, and we watched films of Evil Kenevil jumping things on his motorcycle and Bruce Lee movies. At home we used a big antennae attached to the outside of the house to watch TV. It was mounted on a motor so you could spin a knob on a box by the TV to try to get slightly better reception.

When we moved into the "New House" there was no antennae so my parents gave in and we got cable: an elongated box sat on the TV and we slid a lever to one of the 20 to 30 stations numbered on a back-lit piece of white plastic. Soon after a guy opened a shop not far from our house where you could rent a VHS player and a selection of VHS tapes (quite insightful going VHS rather than the competing Beta). Oh the special Friday nights when we would rent a machine, order Pizza Hut, and watch movies. Eventually we bought a machine of our own, once VHS had clearly won the popularity contest.

Coming home from college one day i found my family had bought a DVD player. What an amazing quality jump, and no rewinding. Now i have a DVR and can record and watch TV programs whenever i like. As we speak a new media war has started between blue-ray and HDVD which will probably be outdated by larger hard-drives where we all just download what we want. All in 30 years.

Think of the way you prepare food. The materials used to make the clothes and shoes you wear. The telephone you talk on. Think how it has changed.

As a small child my family's car was driven by a combustion engine. My current car is driven by a combustion engine. Granted it is matched up with an electric engine to power the hybrid system but my car is by no means the norm. Even if we include the hybrid drive-train into this evolution, the technological advances in car engines hardly seems to compare the the exponential growth of almost everything else used on a regular basis over the 3 decades of my life. Why? The answers are disturbing.