I hate to sound like Andy Rooney, but "Did ya ever notice...."

Actually, Andy rarely says that... he's usually too many sheets to the wind on Wild Turkey to motorvate the necessary jaw muscles, but did you ever notice how supermarkets are being taken over by this race of super idiots.

First of all, they don't stock what people like to buy. Supermarket shelves are always loaded with the crap nobody wants to buy. Popular items, if they ever do get stocked, are usually placed on the shelves around midnight and are purchased by ephedrine crazed housewives on bizarre diets advertised on the radio (hint: if the diet "lets you lose weight while you sleep, it's a laxative; if it gives you energy, it's bad Nazi speed precursors and caffeine; if it does both, it's completely bogus and buying it won't get you all hepped up to take a shit like one might think).

So us regular shoppers go in and see the shelves where our favorite foods are kept decimated to the point where, say, all there is to drink is "White Grape Soda", which is some horrible shit, man... but they keep buying more and more of it -- apparently on some twisted stoner theory that "if we got a lot of it, folks must really like it or else we wouldn't have bought so much."

So as i take my white grape soda and frosted Pop Tarts up to get checked out (because that's all there is in the whole fucking store on a Saturday Afternoon -- I will reward anyone in America who can find an unfrosted Pop Tart any time other than between 3 and 4 a.m. on Tuesday Morning) I slyly ask the manager, a/k/a the head alien trying to undermine the US by destroying the food chain or something, "Hey, how come you don't have any other kinds of soda?" He looks at me stupidly, tries for a laugh with that old Belushi "No Coke, Pepsi" line and then tells the 500 pound box "boy" he should just bend his fat ass over in the middle of the store and make all the shoppers walk around him before scolding me because I took cigarettes out of the cabinet the fucking store is supposed to keep locked.

But what really kills me is the way they train all store employees to pack up the groceries. Actually it may be an attempt to kill shoppers by cutting off their fingers and having them bleed to death while trying to drive to the ER using just the palms of their hands to steer.

See, as you probably know, they have these new plastic bags... they also have paper ones with worthless handles which will break under the weight of a frozen burrito... so smart shoppers, or ones who use the bags for trash anyway, ask for "paper and plastic." The clerks love this because they're like the alien infantry and they can really load up a paper/plastic combo -- and they do it in a very special way, too... they select all the heaviest items -- say your 12 liters of white grape soda, your milk that's a day from going bad, a jar of rancid mayo and, just to crowd things and make it really hard to carry, a couple rolls of toilet paper (bought or not) -- and put them all into one bag. All the light stuff -- your frosted pop tarts and cigarettes and Lean Cuisine, go into a much lighter bag, but no matter how much you buy, they try to cram it all into no more than two bags, and if one of these does not manage to sever your fingers as you grab it buy the plastic, I think the goal is to get it to break so all the alien supermarketeers can get a good chuckle as all your white grape soda goes rolling hither and yon as you fumble not only with the receipt, but the two yards of meaningless coupons they force you to take from them (offering deals on white grape soda and frosted pop tarts and out dated cream and broken eggs and diet products which pep you up while the pounds melt away while you sleep and a discount on Vicodan if you're lucky enough to make it to the ER with your severed fingers and fucking stupid enough to go back to the store to have your prescription filled).

I've often wanted to ask one of the aliens "Are you idiots trained to put all the heavy shit into one bag?" but i haven't because they're very crafty... all the baggers either take the form of a slutty looking teenaged girl I wouldn't mind boffing or some zipperhead who can't speak English or a gang banger who looks like he'd put a cap in your head if you asked....

So, hey, when we all die of malnutrition from surviving on white grape soda and frosted Pop Tarts and these aliens morph into some ugly motherfuckers and eat our dying selves (BBQed severed fingers in blood sauce first), don't say Bao Dai of Hollywood didn't warn you....