Grocery Store As Surrealism

I'm lucky enough to have received an iPod for Christmas, and I've been enjoying it's powers for supplanting reality. While this can mean on the subway, it's most potent when you have music to transform your trip to the grocery store.

So as I found myself selecting vegetables last night while head bopping to Anubian Lights ('we could have a keggah, from the mecca'), I thought just how totally weird modern grocery stores are.

There are probably 30 types of processed cheese crackers. My store in Northern Illinois, USA sells frozen banana leaves. Big cases with huge chunks of raw meat just sitting on a shelf. The Shotguns News magazine. Plus the scents that are everywhere: flowers, fruit, the music of 'singing in the rain' before water is sprayed on vegetables, a bakery where bad bread smells good.

The iPod is a magical device. Usually the grocery store is just the grocery store. But last night, wandering through Jewel, each aisle was a valley of oddities. And on each trip, I found something newly weird. (Coconut flour? Rosehips tea?)