WyldFlamingo waxes poetic

• The lead car in the parking lot, waiting for one open spot while five or six open ones exist just 15 feet further down. Get off your lazy ass and walk the extra distance. What you saved in walking was just wasted three times more by the cars waiting for you.
• The man in the parking lot who darted out in front of my moving vehicle, darted back, returned with a child in his arms and then glared at me when my brakes sqeaked. Excuse me, but they squeaked because they were wet. And perhaps you might want to think twice about darting out in front of traffic with your kid in your arms.
• Then there's the man with his two kids in front of the store, completely blocking the entrance for all new shoppers. It's great you're trying to explain to your children that they need to share the shopping cart--how about expanding out to sharing the store with others?
• Yhe woman at the cheese counter, who could clearly see I was going out of my way to try and avoid her, yet continued stepping in front of my cart until I was forced to stop. The laws of physics still apply: if I stop paying attention for one second, and run into you, metal is going to hurt a lot more than human bouncing off human.
• The various people in the various aisles, who can't figure out that four carts cannot occupy the same space as two. Move along. Move along.
• The surly, monosyllabic clerk who could not say thank you when I bagged my own groceries in an effort to keep her line moving. Thanks, you have a *mumble* day too.

Was I oversensitive? I'm more than open to that possibility. Was it a bad/unlucky day to be at Whole Foods? That could certainly be. However, the sense I got was more that the people shopping today were people shopping because "Whole Foods is cool! All the cool people shop at Whole Foods! everything at Whole Foods is healthy, even the stuff that's in a can! I don't need to read, I can just buy anything and throw it in my cart!"

In Idiocracy, the world has dumbed down to the point where all food comes from a massive conglomerate made up of a combination of Gatorade/Carl's Jr./Wal-mart. You can't buy food in stores, it all comes from a drive-thru kiosk. You can't explain anything to people in a hospital, because all they have are pictographs of various ailments. TV shows have titles like "Rehabilitation" (where "criminals" are rehabilitated using monster trucks) and "Oh, my balls"--where the main character is repeatedly kicked in the crotch in every episode. There are giant dustbowl tornadoes which have destroyed the environment, the result of a failure to grow crops or keep any sort of vegetation around. What happened to the crops? All the water in drinking fountains and irrigation has been replaced with a Gatorade-like substance called "Brawndo". "Brawndo" has convined the world to water plants with its product because it contains "Electrolytes". "Electrolytes--it's what plants want!" Which brings to mind the current plague of "Propel" and "Vitamin" water (sorry Sam and Marc) now flooding the market.

Am I being overly harsh? I don't know. It just seems like we cater more and more to the lower denominator these days. It's not cool to be smart. People can't believe it if you read a book, or don't watch TV. I had to argue with the Comcast rep when we cut off our cable--"How will you get your news?!" she exclaimed. I responded that the only news I watched were Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who are hardly "hard news" icons--yet their wit and humor offer a wider point of view than the regular media outlets now largely controlled by one or two corporations (Rupert Murdoch, Disney). What does it mean that some people don't understand these shows are COMEDY?

I find it hard to see kids not wearing bike helmets and avoid thinking "chlorinate the gene pool". Walking across I-5 during rush hour? Drunk driving? The predators are still out there; these days they just tend to be big, with metal teeth and tires.