I'd rather get karate chopped in the throat by a leper than go to Walmart.
Walmart may be one of the most depressing places on the planet, next to a dog pound, or maybe an orphanage that got half burnt down, so some of the kids have to sleep in the kitchen, or in the game room that has actually zero games. Maybe just like one edition of Candy Land, but most of the cards are missing, and 2 of the corners are chewed off.
Every time I go to Walmart, its like a pall of sadness descends upon me. Like I see the guy with the ultra-massive baggy jeans, a mesh top shirt, black fingernails, various hooks and chains connecting straps to other hooks or chains, super long greasy hair, neck tats and eye makeup, and for one second my heart is warmed. Because who the hell else would hire this guy? But then I get immediately depressed again, because how could they hire this guy?
As I find myself glad that goth guy's mesh shirt nipples are ate least barely covered by his blue vest, I am immediately depressed by all of the basically immobile folks hauling way too much ass around on the motorized carts, packing the baskets with frozen corn dogs and hostess cakes. I'm bummed out by the path they have taken (whether pushed onto, or voluntary) that has brought them to the motorized-cart-transfat-processed-food-Walmart-run. And I want to teach kids to avoid that path like maybe they should avoid goth guy. And then the philosophical, multicultural, supposed-to-be-non-biased teacher guy in me feels bad for thinking that.
But then I recall the time when I saw goth guy in line at the self checkout at Smith's, and heard him on the phone telling his friend how interested he was in serial killers and Charles Manson.
Kids should definitely avoid goth guy.
All of that, just for a tube of toothpaste.
This morning I squeezed the very last vestiges of the wintergreen toothpaste from the tube. Not one more iota of paste was left. I'd been putting off this trip for days. On my way to Walmart, I passed by Super Target, and suddenly remembered that Super Target existed, and also remembered that Super Target is at least 100% less depressing and 175% cleaner than Walmart. The risk, however, was whether or not they would have wintergreen toothpaste. I decided to risk it. No leprous drop kick to the chest for me today.
Once I finally navigated myself to the toothpaste aisle, I tried to make sense of the 400 different options available. One thing was immediately clear--no wintergreen. DAMMIT.
This is where it gets hard. HTF am I supposed to know which will be the least nasty mint? There are about 90 different flavors that end in mint, each flavor as arbitrarily nondescript as the next: smooth mint, radiant mint, long lasting mint, clean mint, fresh clean mint, extreme herbal mint, minty fresh mint, cool mint, refreshing mint. What a bullshit marketing strategy. They probably all taste roughly the same, yet pricing is slightly different all around. Plus, they all claim to serve differing functions. One is tartar control, another is cavity control. Why the hell can't tartar control AND cavity control be combined, along with super whitening power, and enamel booster, to create one hell of a super paste? It's all a gimmick.
The only mints with which I am immediately familiar, are ones that actually have names that refer to something specific--spearmint, and wintergreen. EVERYBODY knows what those taste like, but I'll be damned if most people are aware of the subtle differences between radiant and clean mint.
The only other flavor I could recall being somewhat able to stand was "regular paste." I swear they try to make you feel bad for buying the cheapest tube of toothpaste by calling it "regular paste." In fact, they probably add sugar to it as a punishment for not spending the extra 43 cents to get minty fresh mint. Or maybe sand. Maybe they should call it "sucker paste."
1 comment:
LOLing in the library. ppl staring. not even dgp'd about it. wal-mart is capitalism at it's worst. extremely unethical. i avoid that place more than i avoid ex-girlfriends at parties of mutual friends or eating at carl's jr.
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