This morning the dead animal spot in my bedroom contained a dead bird. I did not even notice it until I came jogging in form the shower, shivering and cold, when I noticed a bunch of little feathers stuck to my wet feet. I followed the trail of feathers and a little dead bird was there. I scooped it up with the dustpan and tossed it into the front yard. Tonight I need to vacuum up feathers.
Last Sunday I visited a save-a-lot for the first time and, most likely, only time. They opened up a new one near me and I thought to myself, hey, if there's some food bargains there I need to check it out. Wow, I did not know there was a shopping place for a social-economic branch even lower than Wal-Mart, but there is. Some of the food items there are truly bizarre, as if they were imported from another dimension. Cereal that I had never heard of and generic brands that I had never seen before in my life. It was like when you go into a store in another country and see all the strange products. In fact, I wonder if that was why there were so many foreign people in the store... because these are the products they get in south America or wherever they are from. I loaded up my cart, since I was there anyways. I got a bunch of rice crispy clone cereal for a dollar a box and a bunch of marshmallows. I am going to make myself a giant crispy treat later this week. I also picked up a ham loaf for five dollars. One of those big oblong pieces of processed ham. I am not sure what I am going to do with it. I just happened to see it and thought 'mmm, ham loaf' and tossed it in my cart.
A lot of the products there were not even properly on shelves. Instead a pallet of boxes containing the product would be wheeled into the store floor and the top ripped open, allowing you to grab the contents inside. Even big-lots are more organized than that.
I also made the horrid mistake of going on a Sunday afternoon. The store was swamped. As I stood there waiting in line for the checkout, there was some fat mother in front of me with a half a dozen little kids orbiting her while she loudly jabbered to a companion. One of the kids grabbed the front of my cart and started screeching and swinging from it. The mother took a moment to revolve one lazy eyeball into the direction of her misbehaving brat, and then revolve it back. I felt like taking my ham-loaf and dunking it onto the kid's head like a quarterback doing a touchdown. Once the kid was unconscious and the ham loaf split open on the floor, I would even do a little victory dance. Maybe yell 'SCORE!'.
I saw a family of rednecks leaving with their purchase. Save a lot does not give you any bags. It was not a problem with me; I had brought a plastic tub to toss my groceries in. However, it seemed the redneck family did not possess a car, instead they had a couple of bikes, the one owned by the fathering towing one of those shaded carts that little kids ride in. Instead they filled it up with weird generic groceries and the whole family began pedaling down the highway.
My friend K sent me an awesome custom-made shamrock pin. I am going to wear it on St. Paddy's. If I can find anyone to hang with, seems like everyone is going out of town. I might have to put on my pin and wander through Sanford alone with a bottle of Irish whiskey and shouting obscenities at people.
I spent most of my weekend just tossing some junk on ebay. I need to clear some space and make a little cash. I came across my haunted moving doll that speaks in tongues that I had made a while back; I am going to toss it on ebay again. Below is a video of the doll. You can hear it speaking in evil demon tongues. Ooooh. It moves, too.
2026 Update
Dialing back to March 2007, where Ed finds a corpse in his bedroom and a ham loaf in a discount hellscape.
Nineteen years later, the Save-A-Lot pallet of unlabeled cereal feels almost quaint: now entire high-end grocery stores style themselves as warehouse minimalism and charge you extra for the privilege of standing on concrete. The economy has moved even further down the social-economic ladder, but it’s now an app that brings the mystery products to your door, with a subscription fee and a velvet apology. Free plastic bags are increasingly illegal or extinct, and no-bag shopping is a virtue signal rather than a survival skill. And your eBay haunted doll? In 2007 you had to upload a video from an actual camera and wait through the internet’s death rattles; now a demonic moving doll would be a TikTok star and probably get cancelled for speaking in tongues. As for the dead bird, we now have fifty apps to identify it, photograph it, post it, and monetize the feathers. You used a dustpan. There’s something almost noble about that, Ed—almost.
“2007 Ed, what was the actual timeline that let a bird die in your bedroom long enough for you to discover it only by the feather trail on your wet feet—and did you ever eat that five-dollar ham loaf?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, the timeline is a mystery of nature, or maybe of my own lazy eyesight. The cats must have brought it in sometime overnight, while I was asleep, and I just didn't notice the corpse or the feathers because I was stumbling around half-blind without my glasses. I only found it after my shower, when my wet feet started collecting feathers like some kind of grim lint roller. So the bird probably died sometime between midnight and dawn, and sat there for a few hours while I drank coffee and puttered around. I did eventually vacuum, though. As for the ham loaf—yes, I ate the damn thing. I sliced it, fried a few pieces for sandwiches, and froze the rest. It tasted like salty processed meat, exactly what you'd expect, and I didn't die. So I count that as a win, sort of.
