Saturday, May 17, 2008

Frankfurt, Kentucky

Hillary is on TV speaking right now in Frankfurt, Kentucky, and I swear she's got that cracker accent down pat. There is a black man in the audience behind her and he's all alone and looking sad. Empty seats on either side of him. And the women on the seats next to those two empty seats keep stealing glances to make sure they're safe. He looks mighty lonely up there. I wonder how much the campaign had to pay him to sit there.

And while were on the subject of crackers and Frankfurt, I just got back from the grocery store and it's your fault, Scarlet Blue, that I spent $113.00 on crap like hot dogs and chili cheese dip. I bought Dr. Pepper, another quart of mayonnaise, buns for the dogs, of course, corn chips for the chili cheese dip, and yes, crackers. Don't ever let anybody tell you going to the grocery store is not a political experience.

When I drove into the parking lot, I noticed that everyone I saw, coming and going, was fat assed and talking on the phone. Now it's not enough to have a flip phone or an Iphone, now everybody's got a head set so they can talk every fucking second, hands free to multi-task. Three times I thought someone was talking to me, but no they were talking on their phones, but I felt like Travis Bickle, "Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?" I wanted to shoot someone before I even got through the door. Fat asses everywhere, probably size 4, fat asses. And a sea of bleached blond cotton candy hair. If you ever fly into Salt Lake, one thing you will notice is the uniformity of the fat assed blonds with three blond kids. I think it must be a requirement for entry into the Celestial Kingdom, that every Mormon woman has at least three tow headed kids roughly ten months apart. This helps explain the fat asses, I guess.

I got my gigantic cart and headed for the pharmacy to see if my psychiatrist had called in the higher dose of my antidepressant yet. And yes, yes she had. Now instead of taking one 50 mg. and two 25 mg. capsules. I now only have to take one 100 mg. pill. And as a bonus, my valium script was filled, even though I hadn't asked for it--guess my shrink was feeling guilty.

After picking up my drugs, I headed for the dairy aisle, picking up yogurt, sour cream, eggs, then the boat load of organic milk I combine with my espresso in the mornings. Grabbed some more espresso, and on to the meat aisle. I know it's stupid to drink organic milk and then grab a ham steak, but what the fuck--I told you grocery shopping is a political experience--we confront our choices with nothing short of anguish, and at the very least ambivalence. So now I headed for the produce department. This one always causes me some anguish, since I want melons and it isn't melon season. I want tomatoes that taste like tomatoes, and it isn't tomato season, so I know these items have been shipped half way round the world to get to me. I'll be lucky if they taste like anything more than exhaust fumes. But the tomatoes are on sale and so is the cantaloupe. Yes, I am calling myself a sucker, and worse, but my mouth is watering at the prospect of cantaloupe and cornbread for breakfast. Strawberries too. Sucker. At least the strawberries are in season.

Now I drift towards the back of the produce department where they keep spraying all the vegetables with a mist of water so that all the priced-by-the-pound produce will be soaked and heavier. Bastards! And I notice that the only other person checking out the vegetables is a woman roughly my age with her portable oxygen tank and her plastic tubes delivering a steady dose of pure, fresh oxygen directly to her lungs, I think, that'll be me in not too long. We are both lean as old smokers often are. She is holding an artichoke in her palm and studying it. I say, "I used to ask for artichokes for Christmas when I was a kid." She says, "I used to grow them in my backyard." And a conversation ensues that gives us so much information in so few minutes that it sums up our lives, our political leanings, our hippie youths, our hope for that feeling of commitment and passion to return to young people again. I didn't say who I was hoping to vote for until she said, "I sure don't want it to be Hillary." And I said, "I certainly don't want Bill back in the White House bored and looking for something to do." We laughed, she said, "Doesn't Obama remind you of Kennedy?" "Yes."

I got my Frankfurters and buns and went whistling and happy to wait in line for a checker. I will not check myself out, ever. It just gives those rat bastard capitalists the excuse to fire another minimum wage employee.

As I was unloading my gigantic cart of overprice crap into my trunk, still happy, and I nearly got run over by a redneck in a green pick-up truck with his windows rolled down and some hillbilly singer shouting a song about his mean, dark, killin' kind a love for his woman.

Hows that for insulting hillbillies, rednecks, crackers, and Mormon women, all in one post. Who have I not pissed off yet?