I was having a pretty normal (read: miserable, soul-crushing) day at work last week, just cruising along in that haze of disinterested professionalism I affect to preserve my higher cognitive functions from harm, when something came along the belt that gave me pause. It was a box of Kellogg's Nutri-grain Twists, a breakfast/snack item for the health-conscious that first hit the shelves a few months ago. This box, however, was of a new flavour: Chocolate-Marshmallow. I was absolutely aghast. They're supposed to be healthy, they're advertised as healthy, they are stocked in the health-food section, but are now available in CHOCOLATE-MARSHMALLOW!
For any readers out there who just got off the boat, I'll let you in on a secret: Chocolate and marshmallow are not good for you. No reputable doctor has ever said to a patient "You're a huge fat-ass, sir. Excercise more, and try to eat some chocolate and marshmallow. The pounds will melt away." What exactly where the fine R&D staff at Kellogg's thinking when they threw this together? That consumers would be so assured by the Nutrigrain moniker as to completely disregard the completely un-nutritious nature of the two primary ingredients? Well, sadly... they were apparently right. Because these things are selling like hotcakes, only I think hotcakes are pretty good for you, and cheaper too... so they're actually selling signifigantly better than hotcakes, given the uphill battle against sensibility they're fighting.
I wish that this were an isolated incident, but there are myriad examples on every shelf of the store. Pop Tarts, which where once intended as a healthy breakfast, can now not be found without frosting. FROSTING! We sell a variety of fat free yogurt which comes with candy to mix into it. People see "fat-free" on the label, so the whole issue of dunking wads of sugar into it apparently doesn't strike them as vaguely inconsistant. The pharmacy sells "energy" bars that are coated with chocolate and contain great viscous globs of caramel. The marketing genius behind these apparently recognized the trend I'm discussing here, because aside from the words "energy bar" on the packaging, these bars are metaphorically spitting directly into the face of healthy eating. But people see the words healthy or (and this is my favourite) organic, and assume that they are adding years to their lives and taking inches off their waistlines with every nibble, the actual ingredients be damned!
Sobe, a very trendy beverage right now, launched a few years ago as a health drink containing all those fancy oriental herbs like gingko biloba to help you be more healthy naturally. Last month, they introduced their chocolate flavour. They discovered, as I did with the experiments of my youth, that chocolate mixes very well with milk, but rather terribly with water. So a glutinous sludge of chocolate-matter actually develops at the bottom of these Sobe bottles as they sit. But rather than be daunted by the across-the-board vacuum of sense that spawned this product, they've made the gooey condensation a selling feature and are selling units about as quickly as the bastards over at Kellogg's. All the while, selling their drinks as healthy alternatives to pop and such.
My guess would be that if you follow this trend of health-food corruption back far enough, you would find that M&Ms were actually introduced as diet pills. Fudge was probably a grain-product of some sort. And it will probably only get worse, as the makers of products that we already know are unhealthy will clue in and and start advertising their wares as hearty and nutritious. "Reese Peanut Butter Cups: Peanuts come from plants, and are therefore healthy!" I'm sure the actually marketing executives will come up with something snappier than this, but watch out for it. In fact, I realize as I write this that the preceeding gimmick has already been used by Snickers. They are advertising their candy-bar as some sort of carb-loaded energy bomb ready to propell soccer players to new heights of performance and glory, in apparent contreveyance of the obvious reality: A Snickers bar is 65 grams of fat and the most nutritious part of it is probably the wrapper.
Now to be fair, not everyone is falling for this. I'm sure that at least some of the people buying these faux-health snacks are fully away that they are spending their money on an idiosyncracy-in-a-box. My favourite snack is Doritos, little day-glo triangles of god-knows-what that are so full of fat that they melt way before they burn. So there's nothing wrong with scarfing down a half-dozen Chocolate-Marshmallow sticks with bits of grain on them, as long as you know what you're doing to yourself. All I'm saying is that eating halloween candy would have about the same nutritional effect, and would cost way less.
"You've got an awful lot of stuff there," I say to the woman with two carts stuffed full of groceries. "Can I help you to your car with that?" She smiles brightly to me and replies, "sure, that'd be nice."
And she waks away.
I stand with my mouth open, frozen in the soundless instant before speech, as she threads her way through the bustle of people between the checkout counter and the door. The far door. I look around at my fellow "Courtesy Clerks" (euphamism for bag-boy, errand-boy, gopher, helper-monkey, or the universal "everybody's bitch"), who are embroiled in their own struggles of the innane variety, with the exception of Ian, who is no doubt at this moment chatting up one of our more attractive cashiers.
Wanker.
Shaking myself from my disbelief, I glance again at the scene before me. Yea and verily, this woman walks off promptly after recieving her recipt, leaving me with the two enormously overstacked carts which contain her order. Over $500 dollars in groceries (approximately $4.57, American), and heavy ones at that, left all for me. Joy. Bliss. Ex-fucking-tasy. What does this woman think I am, the Incredible Hulk? Superman? Mr. Fantastic? Maybe even the Flash or Spiderman could help out in this situation, but for the love of shit I left my tights and SHA-ZAM! belt-buckle at home, alright?
We have these radio controlled PT Cruisers on the shelves at the store; they're about two feet long, and just as ugly as the real thing. This woman's behaviour is the kind of thing that makes me want to take one of those God-forsaken Cruisers off the shelf, throw it to the ground, violate it with a tube of cookie dough, melt it, freeze it again, stomp on it, then make it wait in line for three hours for a pack of smokes at the customer service desk, which I would make it pay for, whereupon I would take the smokes, and the mangled Cruiser outside, and smoke the cigarettes one by one in front of its helpless little Chrysler face whilst I proceed to melt the entire monstrosity into a little black and red puddle, which would freeze when winter came, so all the little children would slip on it and break their arms and have to stay inside for all of ski season, all the while cursing the evil that has brought the PT Cruiser upon the innocent, unsuspecting world. And I don't even smoke! Actually, I want to do that every time I see those Goddamn PT Cruiser models anyway; I mean, what a dumbass looking car. I only plan to ride in a hearse once in my life, and when the time comes I think the last thing on my mind will be the popular appeal of the vehicle. Seriously, what the FUCK was Chrysler thinking when they came up with this piece of shit? Really, what corporate executive said to the board of governors or the trustees or stockholders (or whatever goes on in those pits spawned from the seventh layer of Hell of which corporate upper-management meeting places are forged) "hey, let's make a car that looks like a hearse, so that anywhere people go, they can look like they're hauling around the recently formaldehyde-injected corpse of a loved one! What fun that would be! And hey, lets sell a lot of black ones while we're at it!" Wankers.
Where was I?
Oh yea. So this woman trots off without me, blissfully unaware of the anguish, angst and agony involved in getting both of her grocery carts pointed the same direction, not to mention through the throng of people between me and the door, not to mention the door itself, not to mention the parking lot. The parking lot has no speed limit signs (that I've seen anyway), so we get a lot of happy motorists. 80 kph is the speed limit on the main road that feeds this parking lot, so needless to say, when people get into this football-field-sized tarmac, with no speed restrictions, they are relieved and elated to no longer be held to the cruel bondage of an 80 kph speed limit. The sweet bliss these drivers must know, being able to rip around the parking lot at unencumbered velocities of Mach 2. But I digress. When I finally reach the woman's minivan ("thank God she doesn't expect me to fit all this shizzat into the trunk of a car!"), I find her to be wearing an expression of intense displeasure. Instead of engaging upon a line of questioning which would elucidate to me the exact nature of the arthropod currently lodged (sideways) up this woman's rectum, I simply smile charmingly and say "sorry for the delay".
Naturally my disarming good nature relieves her frustration, and she ever so kindly opens the back hatch of the van so hard it nearly tears itself from its hinges, and misses my head by a courteous three millimetres to boot. How pleasant. And then it happens. The heavens roll with the ominous thunderclouds of a cheesy B horror flick, and lightning crashes to the earth around me, striking in line with the four cardinal points of the compas, and slowly spinning about to create an ancient and arcane glyph of power. The astral energy courses through me, and I know, deep in the bowels of my bowels, that Hell is not finished with me yet. The woman's back hatch, nay her entire vehicle, is crammed with bundles of old newspapers. Through my tear-wavering vision, the date February 12, 1914 stands out. I don't know what galls me more; the fact that this psychopath expects me to fit all her fattening, carcinogen-laden shit into this travesty of a cargo space, the fact that she expects me to do it all myself, or the fact that there is a newspaper recycling bin not fifty metres from the front door of the store.
The earth-rending "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" that had been forming itself in my throat subsided to a choky-sounding "you don't have much room back here," which garneres me the nearly universal response of "oh, just put it wherever you can." Whore. Slut. Pimpfodder. Whilst haphazzardly flinging her purchases into every available nook and cranny, I contemplated my revenge, my righteous wrath. Would she writhe in agony at my feet, begging to die, while the blood of her family showers over me like a sweet, decadent rain, their skinless corpses swinging gently above us, suspended by meat hooks? Would she simply awake one morning to find herself stranded, stark naked, in Prague, in winter? Would I poison her slowly, so that I could dangle the antidote just out of reach of her ever-weakening hands, so that she would know beyond any doubt that it was I who was the agent and instrument of her ignominious downfall?
I put her eggs on the bottom.
Under her four 12-packs of diet caffiene free Coke.
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