Because I am poor and lazy I do most of my shopping at Wal-Mart. I could find better deals and fresher produce elsewhere, but I hate driving around town. Especially now that it's in the upper nineties and my car has no air-conditioning. When I go to Wal-Mart I usually bring a pair of headphones so I can tune out the great unwashed. It makes the shopping experience ever more pleasant when do not hear the screeching cries of hundreds of illegitimate children lusting after the latest corn syrup encrusted snack. With my headphones on I glide about with my shopping cart in my own little bubble of bliss.
I needed to pick up some potatoes because I was going to make a batch of Ed's extra-baconated clam chowder. So I grabbed one of the plastic bags of pre-packaged Idaho potatoes and tossed it in my cart and merrily went on my way. It was not until I got home and pulled it out of the white Wal-Mart bag that I saw how disgustingly rotted it was. Not only was a highly rank smell wafting out of it, but also actually within the plastic bag itself a bunch of fruit flies were buzzing around. I do not know how I missed it when I tossed it in the cart, now how the cashier failed to notice it. Perhaps she thought I wanted some rotten potatoes. Who knows? It's not really her job, I suppose. Geeze, that potato bag makes me gag just thinking about it. So I tossed it out.
Yesterday I swung into the Korean farmers market and re-filled on potatoes there. Much better. I also picked up some candied ginger. Wow, I thought my ginger chews were string, this stuff made my eyes water. I whipped up my batch of clam chowder and it was great, even if I did buy the wrong kind of clams. I had accidentally gotten the can that has whole clam stomachs included. That means inside of them is the last bit of shit that clam ate, appearing as a thin green microsausage. I am really not a fan of clamshit, although some people seem to enjoy it. My chowder came out fine.
http://www.ohiofirenews.com/images/icons/clam.gif
On a whim I bought a pallet of Georgia shale. It was 25 bucks and they load it onto my truck with a forklift. Pretty good deal, would have been a couple hundred at pebble junction. I have to go and pick it up tomorrow at lunch time. I am not sure what I am going to do with it just yet. Paving stones? Groundcover? Maybe I'll make a Koi pond and line it with shale. Maybe ill drink a couple of 40 oz beers and ride around town at midnight chucking them at hookers and bums.
Curious about the company I was buying them from, I googled the name. Turned out they were not using these stones for groundcover... they were taking the rocks and sticking a wick in them and selling them for 40 bucks a piece. Wow, if you take these rocks at lamp-value I really did get a deal. Maybe ill stick wicks in them and sell them on the side of the road and park next to the creepy HOT BOILED P-NUTS dude. Which one, you ask? Doesn't matter. All Hot boiled p-nut dudes are creepy.
2026 Update
Twenty years back to Ed's 2006 potato tantrum and his questionable pallet of shale.
I love this entry because it's a perfectly preserved 2006 time capsule. The whole performance—the headphones to block out the 'great unwashed,' the casual aside about chucking shale at random people, the 'hot boiled p-nut dude'—reads like a man in a hermetically sealed bubble of his own poor life choices. So much has curdled since. Walmart produce is still a gamble, but now the cashiers are sometimes robots and the real entertainment is watching the self-checkout machine accuse you of stealing potatoes. Nobody buys a pallet of shale for 25 bucks and decides later; you order it on an app and it shows up in a box with free shipping, which somehow costs more and feels less like a forklift moment. Google is now a verb that runs your entire life, but instead of curiosity about lamp rocks you get targeted ads for 'luxury shale lighting' at a mark-up that would make Ed weep. And your clam chowder can still contain those little green microsausages, but now there's a subscription service delivering them monthly. Ed, you were shopping in the golden age of terrible decisions.
“2006 Ed, when you wrote about drinking 40 oz beers and chucking shale at people, were you really mapping out the logistics, or was that just the sound of a man with too much time and a pallet of rocks?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I'd like to say I had a detailed tactical map and a stopwatch, but the truth is that was just the sound of a man with too much time, a truck full of shale, and a head full of fumes from bad potatoes. I mean, you're talking to the guy who bought twenty-five bucks' worth of rocks without knowing what he'd do with them. Logistics? Hell, I can't even manage a shopping cart without grabbing a bag of rotten spuds. I was just enjoying the fantasy of chucking something that wasn't a dead cat my cats left on the floor. The hookers-and-bums thing was mostly hot air. Or maybe forty-ounce hot air. Also, I should point out: I live in Central Florida. If I started hurling shale at people, I'd be the one to end up with a rock in my own truck window. So no. No logistics. Just droll nonsense and a good chowder recipe. Take that, clamshit.
