Cockaigne

This one goes out to Beast on his bed of pain._______________

I'd like to invite you to an absolutely typical grocery store in one small corner of the United States. Lets go! I call shotgun!

Here we are approaching the produce department:

Oranges. Just oranges. Only oranges. One display of oranges nearly large enough to merit it's own representative in the State Legislature. While we contemplate the oranges we turn left and are greeted with the next image:


The juice aisle. Just juice. Only Juice. Apple, grape, orange, strawberry, agave, peach, pear...pretty much anything that can be squoze and won't fight back. A vast vista of juice stretching off to a tiny point in the distance.
Ignore the damn beans on the endcap. Lalalalalala wooooooooooOOOOoalalalala.

Turning once again toward the vegetable department we bid a fond farewell to the juice aisle and leave the oranges behind to ponder the finer points of the state budget.
Here we see the Mexican section! You will note the distinct absence of Mexicans. Instead we have agave leaves, nopalitos, tomatillos, jicama, papayas, green things and things in a white container, and and lots of other stuff that Mexicans presumably are fond of chewing on.


Here we see the rest of the produce department stretching out like a vast expanse of expansive vastness...row after row of slave-plucked radicchio redolent of Peruvian pesticide; Zom-beans sprung from gel-filled plastic troughs of petroleum-derived nutrient solution, taking shape beneath an ersatz sun.
At least, that describes the affordable stuff. The rest is organic.


They might not make a Crayola in your tint but they know 'you folks' like to eat too! The finest products of the Ethnian countryside have been selected for your easily-tanned delectation!
And because y'all insist on eating this weird shit we've jacked up the price all high in order to train you to eat like normal folks. Fricken' water chestnuts my aunt Mary; geeze. Eat people food.


Here's what we mean. This is what we're talkin about.
Nearly one quarter of the entire store is devoted to this department...we're talking MEAT.
M.E.A.T.
FUCK YEAH. THIS IS THE DEAD FRICKEN ANIMAL DEPARTMENT BABY! GO GET ANOTHER CART BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT YOU CAME TO BUY!


Here is the dead chicken department! As you can see you can even choose the region of the nation you want your dead chicken to be from. Southern chickens sell for 50 cents less a pound on the main. Why? It's a SECRET.
You can get any part of a chicken here that you want, too. I am not playing. There is a man back there behind the dead chicken counter and you can knock on the window and say 'Dude, I need seventeen pounds of them weirdass doodly thingies from a chicken head' and he will give you a bag of them. No lie. They come frozen in a bigass chunk and the guy chips you off a piece (I guess they call it an 'Ice-bird'! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!)



This is the Pig Parts section. You can buy any part of a pig here that you want. Even dick. Of course they don't sell it under the name 'pig dick'; its all ground up in sausage. But really when you think about it, it's not like it would look particularly dickish lying there in the cooler anyway because pig dicks are all weird; they could name it something nice like 'natural sausage' and maybe they would sell a bunch.
Shit, they sell every other damn pig part and some of them are freakier than dick. Like ear. And Nose. Hell yeah. Gimme a fuckin pig nose right now; I'd like to stick that right in my mouth.



Then theres face. Yes, face.
'Yes, I'd like four pig faces; we're planning on a nice face dinner this evening my good man. Make sure they have a friendly expression.'
No. Just, no.
Who looked at this and thought 'Oh yeah; that'd be fucking tasty. "
It wouldn't have occurred to me. ( I'm waiting for them to go on sale; then I'll stock up.)


Here we have the tiny taco section of the Meat Department.

What? Your meat department does not have a tiny taco section? You mean to tell me that you cannot just whup on in to the local supermarket and buy yourself a scoop of frozen miniature tacos whenever the whim takes you? *sNERRRRRRRkkkk* Yeah, um, wow. That sucks pretty bad. *SNOOrrrkk*

Look what I found next to the tiny taco section!!

I love them REAL GOOD.

Here are the corndogs! It's nice to know that you no longer have to wait for a fair or a carnival in order to get this kind of fine cuisine. You can just heave a couple-three of these in the microwave and VOILA. ANY TIME YOU WANT. You don't have to beg and plead and whine anymore like when you were a kid at the fair and your parents were all 'no you can't have a dollar to buy one of those junky things it'll make you sick.' HA ON THEM.


Here we are looking down into HOTDOG PURGATORY. Not bad enough to be good, not good enough to be steak. You could even think of them as naked corndogs; they're long past caring. Buy some, won't you?



And here we are at our last stop on the way to the check-out stand; racks and racks and racks and racks of CANDY, all displayed in small transparent coffins; just like Lenin. Each according to their need.

The sweet thing with the shopping cart in the foreground is not a part of the display. I know! She should be, huh!


Well that was fun, wasn't it? I know I had fun. Maybe next time we'll go someplace else! Would you like that? Of course you would. Now go away.