I turn my nose up!

Well, it’s been a while. Thus, this will be a blog bonanza, featuring what would normally have been broken up into 2 entries. Due to a mélange of vacationing and sloth, I have not posted over a week. Apologies. Here we go…

Last night, I went into Key Foods, the somewhat grotty (British word meaning dingy) supermarket on 4th Street and Avenue A. I have always hated the place, but, to their credit, they are the only one that stocks the particular brand of veggie hot dogs that I consume so eagerly. I decide that while I’m there, I might as well get some other stuff too. I pick up a normal looking cheddar cheese. I glance at the price, expecting $3.50 or so. No! It is SEVEN DOLLARS! I stifle a gasp and look at the other cheese prices. They are equally extraordinary. $4 for a SMALL MacAdams (or whatever it’s called) cheddar. $7.50 for a SMALL smoked gouda. I dared not look at the feta. I decide to eschew the cheese, later settling for a $1.69 Kraft cheddar. I meander over to the vegetables section. Now, this is where I really was outraged/appalled/horrified. The peppers they had sitting there were not only unappealing, I think that they were officially inedible. They were decaying, with patches of mold and joyous swarms of fruit flies lording over their nightmarish, rotting domain. They cost approximately $4.99 per pound. I then spy some mini avocados. They were about the size of one ping-pong ball plus one small egg. I thought, aww, that’s adorable. I then notice that said vegetables (fruit??) are being marketed as regular avocados, and priced at regular avocado rate! It wasn’t by weight! It was by piece! Does Key Foods not realize that their avocados are about one sixteenth the size of everyone else’s? I leave the produce aisle in disgust. I wander over to the bread aisle, figuring that surely the packaged goods will be OK. I notice that the hot dog rolls are sweating in their plastic bags. Oh dear, I think, someone placed them in there when they were still hot out of the oven! But then I realize, no, these are corporate mass-produced rolls. They were probably cooled by a machine before another machine put them into the bag. Thus, I have no choice but to believe that Key Foods allowed these rolls to become hot, causing them to sweat, prior to placing them on their shelves. Disgusting.

AND, you want to know what else I found disgusting? The conversation I overheard at the gym this morning between two large, unattractive women. They propounded the view that all French people smell bad, thus a French woman makes an unsuitable nanny for Woman #1’s brats. They delighted in the joke that all French people are “unsure” (remember those ads?). They said that French people are all “fuckers” who are always “messing with us.” Then, they said that another category of people who make unsuitable nannies is people who come from “third world countries.” This was later clarified to mean communist countries, for reasons unknown. Woman #2 averred that people who come to the US from communist countries should not be hired because, “they used to be prisoners, and then they come to our country and expect hand outs, because they missed the step that the handouts come from hard work.” This stunningly flawed economic analysis is so fraught with error that I won’t even delve into a denouncement. Then, Woman #2 stated that “all that Eastern European shit, Poland and Russia, that’s no good either.” A pregnant pause ensued. Then Woman #1 said, “Hey, now you’re messing with my people.” Ha! Ha! Ha!

However, to be fair, my reaction to this incident made me realize a strange prejudice of my own: I was particularly offended by it because these people were overweight, incredibly ugly, covered in non-hip tattoos, and generally looked like trailer trash. In addition, they were at MY gym, which is for the plebians. There was an element of, “Who are YOU to snub anyone?!” that would perhaps have been absent if I’d overheard this discussion at, say, Equinox or New York Health and Racquet Club. And THAT, my friend, is snobbishness on my part.

To be so appalled twice in 24 hours! Alas.