Monday, May 06, 2002 6:25 PM
The Great Frozen Food Chain of Being.

I had every intention of writing my CyberLogicus Philosphicum Part II here, but managed to screw myself into the ground so well, that I decided it was better to move on to other things until I could at least unstuff some of the fuzzy cotton that inhabits my thought and blocks my snapping neurons.

We had our usual Friday night Lackzoom meeting mayhem. Dean couldn’t get his phone to connect on accounta he never switched from Pulse to Tone on his phone service. His operating system and modem were having none of his Luddite backstabbing. So we never posted anything at all to the web site, our objective set back a week, hopefully less. We talked and planned. The more I tried to think about the fine psychological underpinnings of what we were doing, the more my mind began to resemble a neglected garage at a rummage sale. Yins are jist gonna hafta wait until I at least sweep the floor and pack some boxes before I open the doors again for business.

This left me high dry and without topic for this evenings turn at the Blog. Uninspired I went to the local supermarket to buy a Chicken Caesar Salad, (Yea! a Cowardly Caerar Romaine.I don’t think an anchovy passed within twelve miles of the dressing) and some fruit cut and encased in a plastic bowl, for lunch. I approached the final stages of check out. “Sir, do you have an Advantage Card?” (Dollar off the fruit it turns out) “Uh, yeah, just hold on a second.” It was buried deep behind a torn flap of the tanned cow skin that makes up my wallet. “Debit or Credit”, she asks, which plain confuses me because I have just told the damn machine, swipe, Pick ATM, Enter your secret code, I do. Why is she asking Debit or Credit? There are bad communications skills between the human check out clerk and the electronic check out device. “Debit.” I croak like a frog, even though I have assuredly chosen the ATM option. I am complex enough in this new cyber world to know that ATM is something that is at least akin to Debit. What, my brain scans, happens at the bank, between debit and credit. Am I making a terrible mistake? “Cash back?” she asks, even though I have already answered the blinking text question on the machine. No Cash Back. “Nope!” I say and feel for the twenty bucks in my pocket and wonder why I hadn’t just paid with it. Would she ask, “Silver Certificate or just paper not really backed at Fort Knox?”

As all this complex of finance was happening a guy sneaks up behind me in the line and I cannot help but look at what he is buying. The guy in front of me bought three small jugs of lime juice, plastic, green, the shape and size of a lime. I smile and think of the very clever people who have to sit at desks and come up with ideas for packaging. Lime juice, says one of them, why not make it look like a lime. Brilliant says another and off it goes to the plastic extruding machine.

So the guy behind me puts a cold rectangular box on the black check out belt. It says, and I do not make this up. Frozen Paws. Is this, I think, a delicacy from the Orient? Have Chinese or Vietnamese or Korean peasants taken over the frozen food plants, cut up dogs and cats, cooked and flash frozen their parts? Are Paws eaten in sports bars all over the far east in lieu of Buffalo Wings? In a strange way I can accept this. Alas it is not the case. What it says on the rest of the box is even more strange and horrifying to me. Frozen Doggie Treats!

My mind immediately denies the equation. I cannot even entertain what a Frozen Dog Treat would be. I ask people at work and they seem at ease with the concept. After all says Mary, I feed my dog ice cubes; they’re cheaper and less fattening than bones. I look at her with a look that says, you’re worried about the fat intake of your dog? But she is as oblivious to me as the Check out counter clerk was to the Check out counter machine. Sure, says Roger, at the place where I shop, they have a whole frozen food section devoted to pets. I begin to realize that I have become the alien.

I am cautious. Still no one seems incredulous. No one even seems slightly disturbed. If this is all a cruel joke on Joe, why is no one laughing. When, I wonder, did I miss this section of the world order? I begin to question if it really was lime juice in the green plastic lime-like containers. I’m scared to wander in the aisles of the supermarket. Will I end up in the Frozen Long Pig section? What next, I think; frozen chum treats for deep sea fish. Hold on Charlie, we really do want fish with good taste!