[WARNING, PEOPLE - BIG SERIOUS WARNING - PLEASE READ THIS TO BE WARNED: This post deals with perfectly ordinary subjects in a childish way. There's also a godawful comic in here somewhere, and there's a bad word in it. The bad word starts with "f" and ends with "k." There's also a "u" and a "c" in there, but I don't want to injure anyone with my foul tongue by connecting these letters to form the forbidden word of which they're all part. If you don't like it, then I think we can all agree that it's nice to know that I don't answer to you. By "we," I mean "I." By "you," I mean "you." If you're angry, then I encourage you to file complaints with the Better Business Bureau and your congressperson. It won't stop me from posting, but it might keep you busy enough to give me the space I think we need in our relationship. Also, I'm taking the kids.]
I went shopping today. I picked up a basket at the doorway of my local grocery store, and made my way directly to the bird food section. It's perfect because the bird food section runs perpendicular to the diaper section. Very convenient.
When I was done wishing that I had an incontinent bird, I headed to the synthetically-manufactured-and-interestingly-shaped-cracker department. I didn't know what to do when I got there. I just wanted some saltines, but there were packages of pizza flavored fish, salted hexagons being pushed by elves, and a box of square things, each of which looked like a wicker basket that had just gotten back from a productive afternoon in a particle collider.
Crackers couldn't just be crackers. They had to have Flavoroids: a hyperextension of cheese accented MSG into nine of the eleven proposed dimensions of M Theory that was created by a group of scientific types who had a party during which they destroyed a Stephen Hawking shaped pinata full of LSD that fell to the floor, quickly went from a liquid to a vapor, and wonked everybody out, including a dog who, totally unprepared for the experience, wound up thinking itself to be an asteroid and spent the remainder of its life launching itself at the Earth from trees while trying to render the dinosaurs extinct. The only things it destroyed were the sidewalk below and its nose. Still, you had to admire that asteroid's dedication.
Diet soda can't just be diet soda. It's expected now that, when you open a can of diet soda, it takes everything out of you instead of putting it in, as it's actually a micro black hole stuck inside of a can. If there's still light in the room when you're done and time isn't moving more slowly where you are than in, say, the family room, then you got ripped off. If it's an especially terrible diet soda, then there might actually be diet soda in the can. Twelve ounces of one calorie, staring you in the mouth, waiting until you aren't looking so that it can increase your overall mass by the weight of approximately nothing. The calorie wouldn't even be there except for a flaw in the packaging, which is that the aluminum can imparts a small bit of nutritional value to the fluid. If they could just figure out how to bottle diet soda inside of diet soda, that stupid calorie would vanish, but I fear we're a long way out from that.
What appalled me most - more than the neon crackers or the drinks of negative mass - was the toilet paper. The madness of having to make everything exciting has finally arrived on the packaging of toilet paper near you.
I saw couples studying the various TP offerings as though they were on vacation in another country where they're pretending to be interested in the churches. I effing hate that. People travel thousands of miles to go try to be interested in something because it seems like the sophisticated thing to do.
Speaking of sophistication, let's get back to the TP.
I don't know when it happened. One day, everybody chose their toilet paper based on whether there was a baby or a puppy on the package. Then, out of nowhere, the stuff started to come with feature lists. In a roundabout way, this is an improvement, as I've always found the baby vs. puppy thing disturbing. A baby is something which produces so must waste that the mere thought of trying to blot the chemical spill with something as weak as paper causes me to wonder if it's even legal. As long as that baby is being held back by a little tissue, we're all in danger. Then there's the puppy. I think puppies are way cute, but I can't figure out what in the hell a puppy has to do with toilet paper. I've watched a puppy eat toilet paper, and maybe the toilet paper companies like puppies for this reason, but they certainly don't know how to use the stuff.
The bit that isn't an improvement is that toilet paper with features is repulsive. There are companies that scent the stuff. Like I'm going to hang out all day, snorting my toilet paper. I don't get it. When exactly is the scent supposed to bring you pleasure? I don't want to get it.
There's also the moisturizing variety. I can't imagine what life would be like for people who need this flavor of TP. What are they doing? And, like the scented variety, when is this feature supposed to make you all happy or whatever? Do you feel a cooling relief as you work your way through the roll? Do you savor it? The fact that TP like this even exists implies that applying moisturizing lotion "down there" is something people do. Is it? Is this something I've been missing out on? Is this some great pleasure of modern hygiene? Or am I right in thinking it's all kinds of freaky?
The worst feature of all is one I saw on another package, all by itself, behind a glass case. You needed a customer service ambassador (I don't know if that's the right term, but it seems like nobody's just called an "employee" anymore) to get the stuff out. But, when you did, you were rewarded with "ridges."
W. T. F.
I haven't watched TV in a couple years, but I remember an ad campaign by Ruffles - the potato chip people. They advertised that their chips had ridges. I thought that was all right. I mean, these people were trying to make a potato exciting. While it never worked, it was still an admirable try. But what does it mean when toilet paper has ridges? It brings to mind "ribbed for her pleasure," which we all know is a bunch of crap, but at least that's involved with an act that people generally associate with pleasure. It could be that I have a puritanical outlook on toilet paper, but I cannot, cannot, cannot, shall not, and refuse to understand why someone would go for a textured TP.
It makes me wish it were still just the baby vs. the puppy.
It's not just sanitary ass paper anymore.
No.
It is so much more...
