October 16, 2004
Raisin' Brand Flakes
Okay, so I have to come out here in favor of the good, old-fashioned name brand product. I promised myself I wouldn't make this corner of my website a tryanny of catharsis but, well, it is what it is a and I think there's some room for real righteous indignation. So the deal is this: never again shall I buy store-brand facial tissue. I've just had the most horrific two weeks with a box of Albertson's tissue-in-a-cube and it's been a hell of nonperforated tissues, flying decorative boxes and ribbons of single-file tissue so long it looked like I'd busted out of Shawshank with a sheet rope.
Yeah, this comes across as really petty. And so be it, but this is a sordid lesson I've learned a thousand times over. On certain items, you just can't skimp. Toiletries is one of 'em. Nothing is more frustrating than toiletries that don't function in the manner in which they are supposed to. My tissues are the obvious example but I think also of that cheap restaurant toilet paper that's closer kin to sandpaper than to Charmin. And when they're in that huge, gristmill -sized industrial roll that never gives you anything but a jagged piece of supermarket grocery bag with which to do yer business, I'd rather hold it the 30 miles drive home.
As usual, my heart was in the right place. I was trying to be frugal. As Alan Greenspan put it to me on the phone the other day, to "decrease my over expenditures with across-the-board cost reduction measures, especially by curtailing "luxury elements" in my non-durable goods budget." As most know, I'm once again rubbing my hands over the burning oil barrel of unemployment, my job outsourced - not someplace exotic like Bagalore - but to Omaha, Nebraska. Turns out job security at the world's online democracy is as about as secure as it is here in ours, which is about as depressing as it gets in these troubled times.
Which brings me back to my point. So often in times like this it's the little things - the minor creature comforts that make all the difference. "A good, small thing" to crib Raymond Carver. Sitting here in my apartment, daily going through the job boards for a hours, working on my site a few more - the hours run long and after a while, even the calm but ernest voices on NPR wax cloying. In times like these I value the new box of Kleenex I bought yesterday that works perfectly every time with such unwavering mechanical precision it nearly brings forth tears just to stand in the presence of the spirit of genius ensconced in folds of paper. When things like the magazine rack, and the thing that holds the plastic bags I save start falling apart, and tissues fail to snap their perforation, that's when things feels like they're getting bad.
Which is why I'm going to enjoy another Diet Pepsi. Ya heard me. Diet Pepsi. Sometimes...It's all I have.
*uncomfortable silence*
Yeah, this comes across as really petty. And so be it, but this is a sordid lesson I've learned a thousand times over. On certain items, you just can't skimp. Toiletries is one of 'em. Nothing is more frustrating than toiletries that don't function in the manner in which they are supposed to. My tissues are the obvious example but I think also of that cheap restaurant toilet paper that's closer kin to sandpaper than to Charmin. And when they're in that huge, gristmill -sized industrial roll that never gives you anything but a jagged piece of supermarket grocery bag with which to do yer business, I'd rather hold it the 30 miles drive home.
As usual, my heart was in the right place. I was trying to be frugal. As Alan Greenspan put it to me on the phone the other day, to "decrease my over expenditures with across-the-board cost reduction measures, especially by curtailing "luxury elements" in my non-durable goods budget." As most know, I'm once again rubbing my hands over the burning oil barrel of unemployment, my job outsourced - not someplace exotic like Bagalore - but to Omaha, Nebraska. Turns out job security at the world's online democracy is as about as secure as it is here in ours, which is about as depressing as it gets in these troubled times.
Which brings me back to my point. So often in times like this it's the little things - the minor creature comforts that make all the difference. "A good, small thing" to crib Raymond Carver. Sitting here in my apartment, daily going through the job boards for a hours, working on my site a few more - the hours run long and after a while, even the calm but ernest voices on NPR wax cloying. In times like these I value the new box of Kleenex I bought yesterday that works perfectly every time with such unwavering mechanical precision it nearly brings forth tears just to stand in the presence of the spirit of genius ensconced in folds of paper. When things like the magazine rack, and the thing that holds the plastic bags I save start falling apart, and tissues fail to snap their perforation, that's when things feels like they're getting bad.
Which is why I'm going to enjoy another Diet Pepsi. Ya heard me. Diet Pepsi. Sometimes...It's all I have.
*uncomfortable silence*
