Traitor Joes...

Now, I know I have it pretty shitty living in the middle of "The Mitten," when it comes to food/shopping/having a life. But I don't really realize just HOW shitty I have it until I come back to Chicago. No, not even Chicago -- 40 minutes north in the suburbs of Chicago. The old lady and I popped out to pick up a few food items for our stay at my folks' house -- mainly because, apparently, my parents no longer eat food of any kind. Correction, they only eat butter, olives, stale crackers and a variety of bland unwrapped cheeses. There was a day when I'd come home to find their kitchen bursting with chicken salads, loaves of bread, a variety of lunchmeats, briskets, and cakes, but now I'm welcomed with graham crackers in the pantry that are so stale they can be bent into a Mobius strip without breaking.

So, we went to this deli called "Max and Benny's" to get some bagels. We pull into the mall parking lot and what do we see right next to the deli? Trader fucking Joe's. Goddamn. The rich get richer, the fuckers. So we make a stop at Joe's and it's like a goddamn religious experience in there. You've got your racks and racks of fresh loaves of bread, practically spilling onto the floor. We got an asiago/pepper loaf for like $1.99. A DOLLAR NINETY-NINE! If that were a Zingerman's loaf that we were to purchase from the half-assed co-op back home, it would have been 9 bucks.

So we just started throwing shit into the cart. A couple bags of the Thai Lime peanuts here, a shitload of the peanut butter filled pretzels there, a couple bottles of six dollar Barbera, some boxes of exotic teas, licorice Altoids, honey-sesame-coated almonds -- I mean, what the shit are those? I didn't even know honey-sesame almonds were a thing. Fuck, we just loaded up on all kinds of weird didn't-know-they-were-things items. And all the shit's cheap, too. It's not like Whole Foods, where you have to take out a home equity line of credit to purchase three shrimps. And don't get me wrong, I'd take a fucking Whole Foods in Michigan in a second. I'd take a Half Foods, even. It's like a sick fucking joke.

Of course, they've opened up a Trader Joe's in Ann Arbor... right next to the H&M, most likely, and down the street from the area where all the hip, alternative dads live who are looking for a drummer to jam with for their kick-ass band, and near the giant wood shop where they teach people how to make furniture for free. Fucking Ann Arbor. They need a Trader Joe's like I need Radon supplement tablets. Shitheads.

Maybe if I mention the right combination of words often enough in this blog, the folks at Trader Joe's will hear my pleas as they sit on their giant piles of money googling themselves and consider opening up a branch in my nape of the neck. Let's see... TRADER JOE'S... EAST LANSING... FILLING A GIANT FOOD VOID... um... MAKING MONEY HAND OVER FIST... uh... WHO DOES ONE HAVE TO SCHTUP TO FIND A THAI LIME PEANUT IN THIS TOWN... 45,000 HUNGRY COLLEGE STUDENTS... I WISH I HAD SOMEONE TO HAND ALL THIS EXTRA MONEY TO...

Now, I'll just sit back with my bowl of "Savory Thin Mini Rice Crackers" and my mug of Pomegranate Green Tea and wait...