21 November 2007 - Trader Joes = Dead to me

Today was one of those perfect days where every song on the radio is seemingly about your life. It was downright creepy how 93.1 Jack FM (shameless plug) kept blasting out my own personal soundtrack. Giving you a look at said soundtrack, however, would just be a passive aggressive act on my part to describe what I've been feeling over the past week or so. And there's no room for that on my blog. But one key song was "Mama, I'm Coming Home" by Ozzy. An oddly emotional ballad from the bat-head-biter-offer about homecoming and redemption. I recommend you hit up Limewire and find it immediately (Note: Max Davison in no way supports the illegal downloading of copyrighted material).

But my mood was easily disrupted by someone that I thought was an old friend: Trader Joe. On Tuesday, I had to make three trips to Trader Joe's, which is normally something that I don't dread. But in the madcap caucophany that is the week before Thanksgiving, stepping into a market is like an unprotected big toe at a snapping turtle convention.

The aim of the first trip was to pick up salad greens. Simple enough. One little, overpriced, green bag. So I grab your classic spinach salad mix (one of Men's Health's power foods to boost your metabolism) and happily jaunt past the Greenpeace clones with the petitions and head back home.
But apparently Mom wanted Spring Mix. And as much as I demonstrated that they're basically the same thing, the "I gave birth to you" card always ends up on top.
So I braced myself for what would invariably be a horrendous exchange/store credit experience. But thankfully Alan the assistant manager at TJ's actually understood how to handle a return, and I was in and out in under 7 minutes.

This is how my day went from the calm, collected, Black Sabbath Ozzy into the blundering pile of shit that was "The Osbournes" Ozzy.
Whereas getting Spinach over Spring Mix was admittedly my fault, the problem with Bag #2 was entirely on the shoulders of American frailty: apparently this bag of spring mix wasn't marked "organic."

"Organic" is just a fake word invented by Big Agriculture to make money off of America's liberal guilt. It's a word that jacks up the price by 200% with no notable difference in the product. I'm willing to bet that there's no physical difference between Spring Mix #1 and Spring Mix #2. So what are we paying for? It's kind of like shilling out a little more for a blood-free South African diamond or dolphin-free tuna. Only with organic vegetables, you're not helping Leo DiCaprio save Djimon Hounsou's son or posting bail for Hayden Panetierre. Nope, you're just lining the pockets of Big Agriculture and making sure that the pesticide salesman's son can't afford to go to college.

Also, I came home and wanted nothing more than to sit down with my favorite TJ's mixed berry yogurt. So I open up the carton (without plastic lids anymore. Even yogurt has gone green) and take that first bite...and notice that there's no flavor. It's plain yogurt. Or is it? That's right, my droogs, Trader Joe's only sells item #47 on my enemies list: Fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt. There is no benefit at all to mixing your own yogurt. I thought that's what we had machines for. And before you blame me for killing John Henry, automatic-yogurt-mixers are a slightly different animal than the steam engine.
Even worse is that the words "Fruit on the bottom" were printed on the cup in size 4 type. It was the inverse of the surgeon general. Had I seen "WARNING: THIS PRODUCT CAUSES YOU TO STIR THE CONTENTS FOR 30 SECONDS BEFORE CONSUMPTION," I'd be bolting in the other direction like when the fat chick eyed you at a high school dance.

So in the coming weeks, I'm on a quest down the yellow brick road to find the good Trader and let him know what's happened to his products. The man behind the curtain needs to understand that the good people of munchkinland have been oppressed by the Wicked Organic Witch for far too long.

And now if you don't mind, I'm off to go start downloading "About a Boy" so that I can endure the culinary pre-production of Turkey's Day Eve. Or maybe I'll go see "Southland Tales." But in the latter case, baking a three layer pumpkin/walnut cake might be more painful.

Death to the infidels,
MGD

'That's what she said' of the day:
(Re: chugging a glass of milk)
"I can't believe that I swallowed that and kept it down!"