The Grocery Apocalypse

Harking back to the days of Paul Tournal’s anté-historique, we feel that the hunter gatherers of that time would well represent the emotional aspects of these modern decrepit, ill planned, consumers. Whatever did we do before tweets, and status updates to bring awareness of oncoming horrendously unexpected, catastrophic closures of retail indulgence. Oh how the panic starts when the news breaks that whatever deity you worship has forsaken you the ability to buy cheese puffs twenty four hours a day, and seven days a week. And then, you finally realize the life saving quality of those corn-meal enriched, unique artificially cheese flavoured, air-blown puffs of delight right when you can’t have them. Like a toddler wanting candy, there is no planning or rationale as to how to acquire said trivialities during pre or post closure except to have a temper tantrum of epic proportions. As if life were so completely engulfed by activities more pressing than acquiring sustenance, people then become enraged in unjustified shopping hysteria. Calendars are obviously not a tool well understood and implemented in the general body of society. Back in the day it seemed as though we might have had on a regular basis, one less opportunity per week to fulfill this panic inducing struggle to survive. Maybe someday our grandchildren will live in a world where they will never feel deprived of their cheese puffs for even a fraction of a millisecond. —Caesar and Cleopatra

This article appears in Nov 10-16, 2011.