Walmart Fails Latino Shoppers - Unless They're Robots, Of Course

 

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Here is proof positive that Latinos are actually marauding robots in undocumented worker's clothing.

Clean up on Isle Quatro!

My photo shows an aisle at my local Walmart whose shelves are filled with appliances and marked with a cheerful blue placard as "Latino Food". I know a number of Latinos intimately and they insist that circuit boards, heater wire and stainless steel are NOT dietary staples. In fact, they claim that they would prefer rice and beans to a toaster as a side-dish anytime. Hmm. I wonder: Walmart is, after all, a huge corporation and I'm feeling that I might have to side with them on this one.

On the other hand, and perhaps only slightly more seriouslyishness, I have to congratulate Walmart on having the foresight to keep an eyeball on the growing Latino population in my area of New Jersey. These recent transplants have breathed life in a town otherwise populated by a race of near-rednecks on the verge of extinction. Bienvenidos, mis hermanos y hermanas latinos! And thanks for keeping real estate values from dropping ever more ferociously into the core of the planet.

Walmart is not the only local behemoth that has noticed the northward migration of my olive-skinned, foreign-tongued brethren. ShopRite has been carrying more Goya products and I even found a rare can of El Jibarito brand pigeon peas at the Weis. The Lowes has information signs with nearly-equal-sized English and Spanish markings. And yesterday's Big Shop, where I, with the help of the somewhat-junior-yet-somehow-savvy Divine Ms. M, re-upped the pantry stores for La Casa Grande, otherwise known as Chaos Manor II, noticed many apparently latin-type folks (excuse the profiling, but they looked to me like they had recetly descended from the cloud-shrouded Andes AND they were speaking Spanish) eagerly snapping up calabasas and green plantains and other such staples that might otherwise be considered both frightening and bewildering to the Northern European-descended shoppers mauling the tomatoes imported from Argentina in Produce.

Does this mean I should be preparing to fend off drive-bys, cutting up oil drums to construct ersatz bar-b-ques and learn how to love burritos? What are you, a racist? This ain't LA and these are my ass-busting, American-dream-grabbing peeps, yo. So, calm down. And maybe these fine folks will inject a little sabor into my nearly comatose town. One can only hope.

Hasta la próxima, estar bien y hacer el bien! And Walmart, please put some actual Latino food on the shelves there, okay? These folks have the money to spend and boy, do they know how to eat! Just not microwaves, though. K?

Um, yuck.

I'm eating a bowl of Cambell's Hearty Sirloin soup at the moment. On opening the can, I was presented with an aroma that, having been the host to many domestic felines over the years, I immediately recognized as that of cat food. And I don't mean Fancy Feast here. We're talkin' Shoprite generic that might be made from unfortunate pussies, for all I know. It's the kind of food that one might toss in an alley to assuage the pangs of hunger rumbling through the tummies of hapless, homeless, feral kitties whose alternate menu selection might come from the dumpster behind Happy Time Kitchen.

Like those fuzzy soulmates, I am hungry and faced with either going out to score something else, either at Happy Time or at Shoprite. But that would mean going out into the wind and I hate the wind.

The images on the packaging are appealing: steamy chunks of "beef" and hearty-looking potatos just waiting to be loaded into a gaping maw.

So, here I sit, typing, breathing through my mouth between bites to avoid the ambience, alone. Next time I shop, I'll stock up in case of snow since the salt content in one putrid bowl is surely enough to keep my driveway clear until Spring.

Dismemberment, Desertion and Death

Eeek, eeek, eeek! EEEK, EEEK, EEEK! And the knife comes down, again and again and again as rivulets of ruby essence mingle and flow into a unseeable underworld of chaos and pain.

Though the foregoing evokes the stirringly sexual "shower scene" images from Hitchcock's "Psycho," it seems to me that the passion of that scene fairly well describes the stages of destruction in far too many relationships in history and perhaps, right in your backyard. Or maybe your front yard.

Luge Claims Another Life

According to to various press sources, Nodar Kumaritashvili of Republic of Georgia was killed in a training accident today when his toboggan luge-y sleddish thing flew the f*ck off the end of the track at about 90 miles an hour, carrying him into an unpadded metal pole that seems to have been placed optimally for that task. He was declared dead at the scene. Kumaritashvili was 21 years old.

Here's how well-respected, big-gun media has covered it:

USA Today "Luger's Death Casts Somber Tone . . ."
Vancouver Sun "Georgia's Minister of sport pleads for a full investigation after luger's death . . ."
and, with HD video, of course, from NBC Sports, "Olympic luger dies . . ."

I'm not going to make this a rant on the internet, media or anything else. You can figure that out yourself and if you can't, then enjoy replaying the video in slo-mo over and over again.

Now, I snowboard. I have hurt myself seriously enough - at 15 miles per hour. This guy was screaming along at 144 km/h - about 90! As a friend who once wrote about her experience as an amateur luge-r said, "It'll scare the f*cking sh*t out of you and I was only going about 30." So, what kind of idiot was Nodar?

Not the point, again. I want to know this - why on god's green earth did the brilliant architects designing the $100 million sliding track at Whistler save a little green to PAD THE FRAKING POLES on a track where people could indeed go hurtling through space OR construct mesh or acrylic shields or any other of a mess of safety stuffs that could absolutely have improved this poor guy's chances and reduced the risk of sudden, skull-cracking consequences whilst boring full-speed down an icy half-tube?

Just doesn't make sense. Morons. Geez.

I Have Something To Say

There's something I'd like to say to you.

I care about you. I'm concerned about you. I don't want you to be afraid. When you can't count on anyone else, you can count on me.

In the meantime, here's a cute panda picture I stole from another website:

 

I hope this makes sense to you.

Why, Thank You, Norma Jean!

She's such a dear! So thoughtful, wishing me a happy birthday FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!

To celebrate, I present the following:


Enjoy more tasty Maneggs at maneggs.com

Grasping The Nettle

Happiness is an unlikely outcome in life, I have come to believe. So much of it is spent and sacrificed and set aside and put away in the support of life with the counter being death. And now, as unhappy as it makes me, I face it. Death, that is, not happiness.

"God, do I have to listen to you complain again?," queried the Divine Ms. M. This shocked me as much as her complaints of my bland cooking. I can't help it if I don't care for 1200 milligrams of salt with each meal. On the other hand, I don't have hypertension. But near-teenage tastebuds as hard to retrain and apparently, easy to insult. As for the former, it is what I do - complain. Rather, I feel, I observe and decry. After all, who's going to do it for me?

But now, with the certainty of numbered days narrowly stretched out in my immediate view like the opening titles of a Star Wars movie, I have to ask what's most important to accomplish before the sand runs out? Write another book? Set aside a bigger stack of cash for my kid? Learn to luge?

Some people have a better idea of how to navigate all their days and especially, the end of their days. My mother knew that it was time, when it was time. She said so, that she didn't want to be bothered. "Beh. That's enough already." Stoically, she did it her way, decision made, that's it, that's all. There was someone I knew who would create family traditions that, quite frankly, would never occurred to me but were charming, though that was only a part of the reason those "traditions" existed. I believe they were meant to carve a shiny path through time, marking mileposts as those special dates were anticipated and then passed, another memory safely deposited in the till.

I have no clue how to make either of those states of mind be mine. I'm just not equipped. If I had it to do all over again . . . ah, regret: it's the ultimate excuse.

So, the clock, it ticks. It's a little like knowing that one has vacation in a month, then two weeks, then one, then waiting until the night before the ship sails to rush over to WalMart for an ill-fitting, badly coloured swim suit and Dramamine and then rushing home to pack, oversleeping and almost missing the boat. Only, some boats sail with their passengers whether they want to be aboard or not. It almost doesn't matter what happens between now and then, but, in fact, it matters very much.

Truth is, I don't want to die. Ever. I want to right every wrong, unbreak every heart, live, love and laugh (gag, but, still . . .) So, to sum up, as ugly, brutal and sordid as life is, it's not bad to be breathing.

Damn you. Damn me. Damn it all. Damn it. Dude, where the hell is my damn time machine? And my supersuit, for that matter. I gots sh*t to do.