kidattypewriter

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Destruction! Devastation! And low low prices!

"I have had a variety of unpleasant experiences with my fellow shoppers at the supermarket", writes Lip Magazine's Ms Manners.
... ranging from an unnecessary sigh when I asked the guy crouching in front of the shelves if he would mind letting me pass with my trolley, all the way through to a confrontation with a mother who was determined that she should be served first at the deli (even though my ticket was before hers) as it was her son who fixed the ticketing machine. All of these experiences could have been avoided if we all followed some simple form of supermarket etiquette.
This suggestion is excellent; however, I cannot help being a little disappointed by the tips that follow. ('Forming a queue', and saying 'excuse me' when you wish to slip past people on the aisle, for instance.) All very well - but in this age of rapacious supermarket capitalism, will this really do the trick? I think not.

Taking 'offence is the best form of defence' as my leitmotif, I would like to offer my own humble tips for supermarket etiquette.
- Challenge your fellow customers to a duel using French baguettes. Also, those large salamis they sell in the deli section make excellent, mace-like objects. If you tie a dragonfruit onto the end of them with dental floss (health aisle) you will even get the spikes on the end.

- Large wheels of cheese are virtually unstoppable once they get going, so roll them under the shopping trolleys of your enemies fellow customers.

- Other good things for rolling - apples, oranges, cabbages.

- If they start getting close take some detergent from the 'cleaning' aisle and squirt it on the floor behind you to make them slip up.

- Now I'm not suggesting arson or anything like that, but bicarbonate of soda can be found in the cooking aisle. And coke in the drinks aisle. Now, if you put these two together...

- Use shopping trolleys as a makeshift horse to beat a swift getaway.

- Durians. They stink. Biological warfare, anyone?

- Rolling pin (cooking aisle), baking tin (cooking aisle again), chestnuts (fruit aisle). What could this make but... THE PERFECT CATAPULT? Basically, you have to do this.

- Camouflage and trickery is an essential component of modern war. So don’t forget to use bananas (can be made to look like real guns), and strawberry jam or tomato sauce (excellent fake blood).

- Tip out all the blubbering bags of tofu from the vegetarian aisle into a huge mass on the floor, and use them to form a gigantic Tofumonster. With any luck, some of that tofu will be made from genetically modified soy, and the Tofumonster will come to terrifying life and wobble in a menacing fashion down the aisle at your foes fellow customers.

- Prisoners fellow customers (why do I keep doing that?)can be held under those large wooden crates they put the fruit on. Use the watermelons and rockmelons as weights to ensure they can’t get out again.
Happy shopping, everyone!

Supermarket shopping in happier, simpler times.

13 comments:

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Vegetarian aisle?

TimT said...

Yes, you'll find it just over from the Mystical Aisle of Avalon.

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

The Aisle of the Lotos-Eaters.

TimT said...

I thought Lentils was more the done vegetarian thing.

You haven't commented on the Tofumonster, so I shall take that as an endorsement of the concept.

Anonymous said...

Pitta bread, pizza bases and 'health' wraps (bakery aisle) may be deployed as discus aimed at the knees or neck of foe customers depending on the desired degree of incapacitation you intend.

Anonymous said...

or, indeed, decapitation...

TimT said...

Yes!

By the way I hear supermarkets are now selling nirvana.

You can find it for $5 in the Aisle of Eternal Peas...

Anonymous said...

fresh, dried or frozen?

TimT said...

Yes! I mean, both! That is, all four of above!

TimT said...

THE AISLE OF THE LOTOS-EATERS
By Alfalfa, Lawn Venison
(an excerpt)

... And in the afternoon they came unto an aisle
In which it seemed always half-price time.
The tofu - two-for-one! - and mile on mile
Of laid-back lentils, mung-beans, seaweed slime;
Rice-paper rolls - slow dropping veils of thinnest lawn -
were free with every second purchase of
'I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT EGG!'...

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

I wouldn't let Alfafa lucerne my turf.

Also: whatever happened to mungbeans? I remember Cistern Harlot sprouting them ALL THE TIME in the 80s, and putting them in things (i.e., her mouth), but I haven't seen a mung bean in yonkers.

TimT said...

Also, what is mung, and how do you make it out of mung beans?

TimT said...

They've long been a mythical food-type to me, like ambrosia and that honeydew wot the fairies get drunk with, ever since I was made to pronounce on the habits of people eating mung beans in a Robinvale Young Person's Drama production one year.

Email: timhtrain - at - yahoo.com.au

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