more horrors at the Ack-a-me

Maybe it’s because I have a history of paranoia involving supermarkets, or maybe it’s because I seem to spend so much time in them—another lifelong dream fulfilled—but I find them endlessly fascinating.

For instance, I had previously blathered on about stray carts in the parking lot and the stupidheads who leave them there. Here’s a perfect example. Here are four carts, perhaps suicide carts, planning their next mission: rolling into adjacent parked cars as if pushed by an unseen hand. Maybe that’s why they seem to congregate: to plan revenge on the morons who leave them there.



“Yeah. Joey, you get the red Ford pickup; aim for the Bush/Cheney bumper sticker. Myrna, you hit the Escalade. REALLY HARD! LEAVE A MARK! You, Bongo: See that one stopped in the fire lane? It’s been there for 10 minutes. Aim for the driver’s side. Plan for injury.”

If you look closely, you can see the cart corral at the entrance of the supermarket JUST STEPS AWAY.

Inside, the horrors abound.

Look at this box:


Ack! A flying giant ravioli saucer has landed on planet Earth! The biggest ravioli the world has ever seen!

I mean, I understand the statement “enlarged to show texture.” But there is no texture. It’s a perfectly formed, uniformly smooth …pasta breast implant. And it looks so tasty pictured there frozen on the conveyor belt!

To avoid confusion—or perhaps add to it—the box prominently says it’s large (not small!) round (not square!) cheese (not meat!) ravioli (not tortellini!)…just in case you couldn’t tell from the picture. How they fit a dozen bowler hat-sized raviolis into that box escapes me.

I laugh at this box every time I go in the supermarket, which perhaps says more about me than it should.