i had to run a couple errands on my lunch hour yesterday, which was also my first day of not smoking, after having taken up the filthy habit again a couple of months ago. i was not at my most serene.
so on the way back from guitar center (which didn’t have two of the three things i needed) i stopped in baskin-robbins for the tiniest possible rum-raisin ice-cream cone. i have no business eating ice cream with this fat ass of mine, but the nicotine detox simply cried out for some kind of reward.
lo and behold, sugar cones now come wrapped in their own little cone-shaped paper condoms. more than 200 years after the invention of the ice cream cone, which millions upon millions of human beings have safely and enjoyably eaten naked, baskin-robbins now finds it necessary to clothe their cones in paper that makes the cone harder to eat. even if you use the cone to build an edible stereo speaker, you have to take the wrapper off and throw it out.
irritated by the delicious but wastefully and unnecessarily condomized cone, i swung through the doors of ever-irritating bed, bath & beyond to buy a mop. i needed a new mop because the previous mop, supposedly a most excellent mop that never needed replacing because you could just put a new mop-head on it, refused to keep its head on. yes, after paying extra for this supposedly more environmentally-correct mop i now had to buy a plain old incorrect mop to replace the nonworking newfangled piece of shit that the original mop had turned out to be. i wonder how long one of their $250 floor-washing robots would last.
there’s nothing to increase one’s irritation level like having to nod and smile (or at least nod) fifteen different times when fifteen different bb&b workers brightly say “Hi! How are you!” as they are now required to do anytime a customer passes within five feet of them. what marketing genius from hell thought that one up? imagine how much the workers hate greeting every fucking body all the day long, when most customers find more than three minutes of it intolerable.
Hi! How are you! … no wonder employees call the place “blood bath & beyond“.
then i saw it. the oxo soap-squirting dish wand (NOT to be confused with the soap-squirting dish BRUSH, which requires a different kind of refill).
that’s right. squirting a little palmolive straight out of the container is now as unthinkable as eating a naked ice-cream cone. in fact, the entire act of squirting soap out of a container has become so distasteful to so many americans that for only $50 you can get an auto-sensing self-squirter that can be used when soap-squirting dish wands simply will not do the trick. just wave your dainty hand before the sensor.
do people really want this shit? i mean, was this shit created in response to some kind of demand, or did the shit come first (conceived, no doubt, by the same evil marketing genius who told all the clerks to greet people to death the minute they walk in the goddam store), followed by some kind of desire-manufacturing campaign?
all this shit has piled up so gradually that we hardly even see it any more. i’ve been in bb&b many times — last year i found myself ranting about their uber-annoying umbrella condoms — but yesterday it hit me like an avalanche. all this beautiful, gleaming, expensive and entirely unnecessary SHIT that is packaged within an inch of its life and most likely, like my frigging supermop, soon fails to work. soon needs to be replaced. one more, another, and another, and more shit, More Shit, MORE SHIT.
there are people on this planet who would consider it a lucky day to find one intact tupperware bowl washed up on the beach. people for whom merely having a bowl might make the difference between being hungry or not being hungry on a particular day. between having and not having a way to wash their face. and so on. i am not exaggerating.
imagine what it would be like to walk through bb&b with such a person, explaining what all this shit is for. why we can’t squirt our own soap onto our own dishrag to wash our plenitude of bowls. why all these items are packaged tighter than the roof of their family shanty, and why we throw all that sturdy packaging straight into a landfill the minute we get to our gleamingly overstocked homes.
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What do you suppose is the point of, I guess, antibacterial ice cream cones? Antibacterial self-destructing mops? Antibacterial dishtergent bottles? Perhaps no one is to touch anything anymore…
With respect–or maybe disrespect–to insincere in-store greetings–when I first moved here and attempted to peacefully use a supermarket, the bagger at the checkout counter asked if he could “help me out”. It took me a full minute to realize he wasn’t asking me if I needed money, but rather assistance to the parking lot.
I haven’t been in a Blood Bath & Beyond since 2000. That’s nearly a decade of doing without. If I can’t find it at Target, then I don’t need it. That’s my mantra. I have an ancient vacuum cleaner and I use a Swiffer to dust and mop. That’s all I need. I buy jumbo bottles of dishwashing liquid and use both in the kitchen and the bathroom…soap is soap. The older I get the less stuff I need…except books, music and movies.
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I seriously almost never made it past the ‘piece of shit mop’ cause I WAS LAUGHING SO HARD!! The funniest blo you’ve written to date, I still have to watch the video and if THAT is as funny as this blog I may not get to sleep tonight because my stomache hurts and i woke Paul up giggling!
A righteous rant, and funny one, too.
And good luck keeping that fucking tobacco SHIT out of yr system!
Jesus, Jackie, smokin?
Here’s what we have to look forward to… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8zNsUTWsOc
But really, all that crap we’re buying (or were buying) did have some purpose. Two guys are on a corner. One has a box of oranges. The other gives him ten bucks for them. The next day the two guys are there again and the first guy buys his oranges back for eleven bucks. This goes back and forth for several days and the oranges go slowly up to $20. Then a third guy shows up one day and buys them for twenty one dollars. The next day all three arrive at the corner and no one has any oranges. The two original guys ask the new one where they are. “I ate them” says the new guy.
“You moron!” the other two say. “Those oranges weren’t for eating, they were for selling!”
you’ve got it, our financial system in one paragraph.
and NOT smoking now! nine long days….
OUCH.
Re BB&B: I went to one the other day in search of a simple soap dish, one with a grid that keeps the soap dry. All they had were an assortment of ugly chrome babies designed to hold a pool of water, which, of course, would turn the soap to mush. Why is everything in BB&B destined to annoy me? Their candles drip, their kitchen tools break, their towels shed like sled dogs, and it’s all made in friggin’ China. I hope they go the way of Linens ‘n Things.
HA. You must have been jonesin big time that day. I actually like the condom around the cone…..I don’t want someone’s filthy fingers touching my cone.
As for BB&B, it’s my guilty pleasure….I hardly buy anything from there…..but I go to BB&B to get a rush of color therapy and I don’t get a high. As for the salespeople being extra courteous, I like that….it’s better than being ignored or having someone treat you like shit. It’s called customer service.
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