Saturday, March 04, 2006

Bad medicine

Running out of my own shampoo yesterday morning, I was forced to use the “Botanical” shampoo acquired by my wife from the local Whole Foods organic grocery. Despite the name, it smells like pesticide, and I spent the rest of the day leaving a trail of stunned wildlife behind me, holding meetings with people carefully standing upwind.

My patience grows short with the entire Whole Foods brand, whose prices amply justify the nickname of “Your Whole Paycheck” and whose earnest staff regularly betray themselves to be helpless thralls to the worst excesses of crystal-worshipping new-age nonsense. After one recent spiel from some pimply ecology major about how Whole Foods was “in touch with the pure herbal wisdom of our Native American ancestors” I was moved to ask where they kept their pure, organic Native American tobacco. Did they stock this totemic element of indigenous culture? No.

My only reward was the po-faced outrage of a hippy whose worthless secular idols are mocked.

This morning I stole some of the kids’ shampoo instead. You’d be amazed how many people enjoy the smell of cherry on a man…


The wrong sort of Native American, yesterday. Put that pipe out and go stick a soup plate in your lip or something.

9 comments:

HA HA HA said...

in dafens of hol foads teh ones aruond bostan bake bagets an its just fabuluous. u know watha bitch it canbe to get decant braed in this conutry.

an the lesbien vegan yoga lifstyle magazins at teh checlout are retaded but teh ones in a reguyler grocry store are argubly evan worse.

an the're is somthing charmignly uniroinac about how slickly they market all that pricy anticonsumerist merchandise.

Desargues said...

3H makes a good point there. About the anti-consumerism, I mean. It's no secret that more than a few of the people who think global capitalism is the first step in the advent of the Antichrist or something. To see capitalism tricking them into buying pricey organic salmon, blissfuilly unaware of the contradiction, fills one with relief.

The WF in my city is a rather measly affair, painfully aware of its provincial status. Last summer, I went to visit a friend in Los Angeles, and she took me to one of theirs. It really strikes you as a temple of a pantheon of heathen divinities, a congregation of soft-spoken believers worshipping at the altar of organic peanut butter (that shit is good, though).

I'm not that elitist about tabloids in supermarkets. Sure, none of them is likely to feature analyses of the federal budget deficit or the metre of Latin verse. But, after half an hour of near-catatonic navigation through the isles, looking for Folgers and cans of Campbell's soup while being forced to listen to Schubert's string quartets of Neil Diamond's greatest hits, it's an ineffable relief to park at the check-out line and see that Lindsay Lohan has decided to give food a try. One feels the world is in its natural place again.

Ivan the Terrible said...

Yeah, I guess I don't mind paying for the healthier stuff - I just hate how damned sanctimonious they get about it. It's like Ben & Jerry's - I mean, who gives a fuck what you think about Iraq, just hand over the ice cream you commie freaks...

Can't say I'm a fan of their peanut butter, tho' - pisses me off the way the oil always separates out. Bloody lazy hippies.

Foot Eater said...

After reading ha ha ha's comment I did an eager Google search for lesbian yoga lifestyle magazines and promptly got fired. This is especially frightening as it's Saturday and I'm not at work. Big Brother is everywhere, people.

Ivan the Terrible said...

That's just your circumcision joke catching up with you, Footie. I have no sympathy whatsoever...

The Aunt said...

My mother has retired and now amuses herself and sources food at the farm gate from organic farms around Bridport (Dorset, UK). And very good it is too.

What hasn't occurred to her is the pollution she's causing by piloting her humungous BMW down country lanes in search of a single pack of organic Gloucester Old Spot and Nepalese sage and Spanish Onion sausages, guaranteed real intestine skin, handstuffed by a handicapped and obviously non-muslim weak-head-of-household refugee lady, and that perhaps getting the producers to group together into a local farm shop might be a venture appropriate for a retired lady who sits, as she does, on the Tourism action group.

staghounds said...

My local hippie organic food market carries organic cigarettes, so there. There's an Indian on the packet, too.

So there, Mr. Smarty.

(They have the best meat in town, is why I go there. This is a SOUTHERN hippie market.)

Ivan the Terrible said...

Stags, I need the address of that headshop...

Anonymous said...

Ivan you really are terrible.