On Shopping at Aldi

You have visions of your post-graduate life, in your hip studio apartment, emptying out your reusable wholefoods bags and stocking your fridge with fresh veggies, faux-meat and bottles of wine. You don't picture your messy two-bedroom, your no-time-to-write and your notices from Northwestern Medical Center telling you it's about damn time you paid for your E.R. trip that resulted in a diagnosis of "maybe you're farty."

Maybe if I'd worked harder, or at all, I would have a different life in Chicago. One that involved boutiques, organic food and self esteem...

But alas, my slackerdom and its repercussions have followed me into my almost-adulthood.


When you shop at the Uptown Aldi, you learn to appreciate the unexpected. Will the man in the alley call me a bitch or a devil today? Will anything crawl out of the nectarine pile and bite me?

At Aldi, the surprises are what keep you coming back.

In the past week, I got some unexpected gifts in my Aldi purchases: one solitary hunk of pineapple in a jar of spaghetti sauce, two shreds of mozzarella and one french cut green bean in an Asian inspired frozen entree, and an unpoppable bag of microwave popcorn.

We don't just need a public option for healthcare, John Mackey. We need a public option for grocery shopping.

Are You There God? It's Me, America

America. Oh sweet, adolescent America. We love you, but it's hard. Sometimes you're a bitch. Sometimes you run upstairs and slam your door and listen to shitty music. Sometimes you pick fights and when you realize your wrong, just can't say you're sorry.

Sometimes you can't help but believe what your parents believed, even though you hate your parents and can't wait til you're 18!!


You're struggling with your weight and no one wants to sit by you at lunch.


If you survive your youth, I promise you'll be cool. Middle school is the hardest part of life.

Caution

Use caution when removing from microwave as product may be hot.


MAY be hot....


It had damn well better be!

Saint Boniface

When you move to an apartment that overlooks a cemetery, you think about the morbidity. You maybe joke about having to hold your breath in the living room.... You think it's cool.




But when you look out the window on a Sunday morning, when the air still holds a bit of a chill.... and you see an old man walking slowly to a stone beneath a tree, it really changes things. And you think about the stories behind each of the stones....

My mind can't help but wonder who gets the most visits, who gets none at all. I wonder what the drive over is like for the visitors. I wonder what the moment they decided to come was like. There are scads of people I'm related to, buried in some form or another, all over the country. I wonder who visits them?


I guess it's not nearly as creepy as it is someone's melancholy morning.

Vei is mir

The Jews didn't kill Jesus. They were like the little girl in the Shake'n'Bake ad. She didn't REALLY help. Her mom made the chicken.

And even if the Jews had put Jesus in the bag all by themselves, shaken him up and baked him for 20 minutes in a 400 degree oven... wasn't that the point?

He had to die to save us from our sins...


So if it weren't for the Jews, mom would have to make chicken the old-fashioned way.


Wait... what were we talking about?

The Waiting Room

Mary was protesting outside her local planned parenthood one Thursday morning. There she met Josh, a handsome evangelical with golden hair and piercing blue eyes. "This must be what Christ looked like!" Mary exclaimed inside her head as he shook her hand, winked and complimented her saved soul and tight sweater. That night they made sweet, unprotected love. He hasn't called. She hopes God and the doctor don't mind that she used an assumed name when she checked in.

When Amy learned that Anchi's Indian Restaurant and Grocery delivered, she ordered the "Pork Vindaloo 4 two," extra naan and a samosa. She gorged herself while watching Jane Fonda's Workout Presents Fun House Fitness: The Fun House Funk. 20 minutes after eating, she began to purge into her freshly cleaned toilet. When a red chili coated in 2000 Flushes splattered into her eye, she lost vision immediately. She can't read the 3 month old Cosmo before her and it's really making her angry. And hungry.

Susan is a very clumsy woman married to a very sweet man. She frequently walks into doors, hits herself in the face while opening cabinets and falls down the stairs. No one ever believes her when she explains her bruises. This morning, Susan tripped on a roller skate and fell 3 flights, breaking an arm busting a lip and blacking both eyes. Her very sweet husband was taken into custody shortly after she arrived. The other ladies in the waiting room are whispering. And she just got a paper cut.

A Generation of Douchebags

I have on occasion watched PBS during the day. This is when we see "educational" programming for kids.

Sure some of these shows may help kids learn to read, but by and large we're teaching our children to be lame.

One show in particular is about this annoying little kindergaterner named Betsy. She boasts that she likes weekends fine, but she likes school best. What a loser. She's always telling her peers to "be quiet" and "listen." She does what her mother tells her all the time. She has stupid hair and a whiny voice. I hate her.

There's also a show called Super Readers in which they change the endings to classic fairytales to make them more P.C. In the end people learn to "get along" and "be themselves." Gag me.

What happened to the dirty disobeying kids that we grew up watching? My generation is the most accepting, creative funny generation in recent history, and we grew up with Pete and Pete and You Can't Do That On Television.


Also, we're eliminating entertainment and imaginative play from our children's lives... All television and toys for children seem to be "educational" these days. Kids are supposed to play!! Let the children play!!!

I am so fearful about what will become of this poor generation of superficially educated, insincerely nice, "cooperative" children. It's going to be like the worst parts of the baby boomers without the protesting and good music.


I hope my kids lie about skipping class every now and then, and bullshit their way through at least a few papers... and get sassy with their teachers.


If i have a kid like Betsy, I'm sending her back.