We'd picked out a half gallon of ice cream, and I caught up to the others at the check-out, where things seemed to be moving rather slowly. There was the ice cream, and there, right next to it on the counter, lying flat and folded, was a bag about the right size for the ice cream. I thought I would speed things along by putting the ice cream container in the bag. I plunged one hand into the bag to open it up and — ugh! — what was in the bag?!
"That's the compost bag," one of the cashiers said, laughing. Looking in, I saw soggy, garbage-y vegetable matter. Ugh!
Did we want a bag for the ice cream? Yeah, we did. We got the bag and got the hell out of there. I did not look back, but one of my companions did. "The cashiers are still laughing at you."
Ugh!
२५ ऑक्टोबर, २००९
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७५ टिप्पण्या:
They put the compost by the check out?
I'm sure they get lots of flies during the summer.
That sounds exactly like something that would happen to me. You were just trying to be helpful and ended up looking and feeling foolish through no fault of your own. Who leaves a compost bag at the checkout counter? That makes no sense whatsoever.
The appropriate response of the cashier: dismay and apology. "I'm so sorry, that should not have been left there!" The response you got instead would make me think twice about ever going there again.
For laughs, read about this idiotic food co-op in Brooklyn. Reason #5,285 why SWPL's are morons.
Peter
What kind of ice cream was it?
WV: chnkymnky
You people crack me up with how you torture yourselves - and to the laughter of people you're supporting.
NewAge yuppies are wild.
Seppoku - performed right there in the store - is the only answer in cases like that.
Either that, or throw your whole being into supporting Adriane's call to nationalize Whole Foods.
To require your paying customers to bring their own bags is one of the lamest gestures yet devised by liberal wheenies. And for ice cream!! WTF. I wish Meade had been with you. I'd bet he'd have told them off.
Are food co-ops somehow exempt from health inspectors? Imagine compost left lying around a regular super market, or a restaurant. They would likely get shut down on short order. But, somehow, since this is all organically groovy, it is ok.
No good deed shall go unpunished. Rule #1 is quit helping the help. It is not considered co-operative by them.
I like the fact that you can laugh at yourself, Professor.
They put the compost by the check out?
A bag just big enough to hold a half-gallon of ice cream is likely meant for the day's accumulation of tired produce, from the register.
But I would expect customers to bag their own purchases at a food co-op, to keep prices low. Thus there should be a supply of nice, clean, new bags (available for sale, most likely).
For the non-crunchy shopper, isn't there a Cub Foods nearby?
"You people crack me up with how you torture yourselves - and to the laughter of people you're supporting."
The assumption is that we went out of our way to shop at the co-op. That isn't the case. I dislike food co-ops. I want a regular store and a crisp commercial relationship. The reason we went there was that we were walking and it was on our route and only a few blocks from home.
"I wish Meade had been with you."
I didn't say he wasn't.
it was on our route
Ah. Passing the food co-op, her companions want to run in to get some EVOO, buckwheat groats, or perhaps lemons preserved in salt, and while waiting our hostess thought to get some ice cream. They, having crocheted their own bags out of hemp twine, are prepared for the ritual of co-op checkout, while the professor is unfamiliar.
Frankly, I am unfamiliar with the concept of a walk in food co-op that sells ice cream. Is that a city thing?
Around here there are food co-ops that are run out of local farms that people sign long waiting lists to be a part of. The co-ops deliver baskets of fresh fruits and veggies to your door once a week.
Until they can deliver the cow and the pig, I have no interest.
The co-ops deliver baskets of fresh fruits and veggies to your door once a week.
Those are CSA's, not co-ops.
The Brooklyn co-op is for people with more money than time. There are many co-ops which do not require labor on the members' part: for example Recreational Equipment, Inc. I once bought a car battery at a farm co-op in Wisconsin -- I did not have to run the register or dust the stock in exchange.
Call the health department and rat their asses out.
The customer is always right.
Granolas. Sheesh.
Come on, Ann, you know I don't make assumptions. Based on your post saying Whole Foods's "posh" environment was enough to sway you into frequenting them, I know that you will shop at a co-op, giving aid and comfort to the enemy, without much thought to what they do with either. Here's a hint:
They laugh at you.
I, on the other hand, will gladly laugh with you when we finally see those losers crying.
Most of us don't shop politically, Crack. We just go to wherever we think we can get what we want either cheaper or better or more conveniently.
On the other hand, one thing that most of us do is judge our "shopping experience" after the fact. Only the highs and the lows register on our radar, and often drive our future behavior as consumers.
This co-op experience obviously registered with Althouse. Maybe next time she will take a few more minutes to drive to Whole Foods.
Don't fuck around with customer goodwill. You may never get the chance to do it twice.
Unless you are the government. In which case, they make sport out of knowing you MUST come back.
Laughing at a customer for trying to help is inexcusably rude. I hope a certain commenter who is on the board there reads this thread and rolls some heads.
"Most of us don't shop politically, Crack,...Maybe next time she will take a few more minutes to drive to Whole Foods."
I'm sorry. I give up.
It's like talking to a fucking bag of rocks,...
"Come on, Ann, you know I don't make assumptions. Based on your post saying Whole Foods's "posh" environment was enough to sway you into frequenting them, I know that you will shop at a co-op, giving aid and comfort to the enemy, without much thought to what they do with either."
Are you equating Whole Foods to the local co-op? That makes no sense. Whole Foods is crisply commercial, and the people who work there are always super-professional -- helpful, friendly. I don't care what they think of me and I don't think about what I think of them. It's a commercial enterprise. The co-op is a hippie throwback. They ask if you are a member and you pay more if you're not. They have a compost bag on the counter. And they laugh at something that is disgusting to the customer. Whole Foods wouldn't do anything like that.
Was the compost for sale? Pint of ice cream, pound of coffee grounds and spinach drippings? Something like that?
You should have wiped your hand on someone's raw cotton shirt.
Ann,
You're not seriously egging me into one of my "it's all part of the whole" speeches, are you?
The co-op is a hippy throwback? They're BOTH hippy throwbacks!!! The only thing "progressive" about Whole Foods is the level of cult marketing they use, because there certainly ain't anything new about hippies blindly worshipping words and ideas like "organic", "homeopathic", or "overpriced". And the money you give to either of them goes to support many of the same causes you and your readers rail against, so WTF?
Is it really so hard to enter a friggin' Safeway or a Piggley-Wiggley or whatever? Are you really that fucking elitist?
I swear, while I really like the shit that you and Glenn Reynolds do, between reading the two of you - and other than for the financial benefits - I can seriously start to question the worth of a university education,...
Crack, there are whole aisles of stuff in Whole Foods you can ignore while enjoying shopping in a store that's clean, spacious, sells consistently fresh, non-rotten produce, provides a great meat selection of make-believe humane meat, as well as good cheese and bread options. Sure you pay for it. So what?
You think the hippies are co-opting the capitalists? Not a chance. The capitalists are co-opting the hippies.
Trader Joes is similar and provides a perfect lesson in hippie co-opting. TJs is not owned and run for the greater good by hippies. It's owned and run for private profit by Aldi's a cut-price German supermarket chain.
The only thing that bugs me is that I can't buy stock in Aldi's since it's not publicly traded.
"You're not seriously egging me into one of my "it's all part of the whole" speeches, are you"
Hey, Crack. "It's all part of the whole" is new-age hippie bullshit.
And the fact is, it's not hippie bullshit to pay more for a posh in-store experience and higher quality products, which is why *I* like Whole Foods. I would never fall for the homeopathic stuff. I don't even care about organic.
Although the same products might be found at both the co-op and Whole Foods, the interface with the customer makes all the difference.
Personally Whole Foods' former adherence to "health food store" brands kept me from shopping there. I do not need ketchup made with honey and rice vinegar. I do not need Seventh Generation recycled toilet paper, or cultic laundry detergent. There are small local chains where I live with that, that along with familiar brands have excellent meat and produce -- I do not have to bend over and spread 'em at Whole Foods to get what I want from them.
It's owned and run for private profit by Aldi's a cut-price German supermarket chain.
Aldi's may be German but they have been naturalized -- they started in the Midwest in 1976. I see there are two in Madison alone.
Aldi's secret in the US was low low costs. Except for a few name brands -- like Campbell's Tomato Soup -- everything was high quality private label -- their orange swirl laundry detergent was Tide, for example. Neither bagging nor bags was provided. In those days Aldi sold nothing that needed refrigeration -- if you wanted cheese you had to settle for the shelf-stable Velveeta.
Henry,
Years ago I had to work at a Trader Joe's and it was a lesson in cultism (and low pay) I'll never forget, pushing alternative medicine and yoga and all the other mind control bullshit I (and others) see as undermining our country.
As far as supermarkets go, I shop at my local and it's just fine: I've never encountered anything ugly, rotten, or wrong there, and guess what? They treat me great. Giving me bargains because I'm a regular customer who appreciates the hard work they do - without the cult manipulation of a TJs or WFs. Also, I like giving back to the industry that raised me as my folks saw fit - not trying to destroy it because I've become too fucking elitist to eat the same food my they raised me on. "Humane meat"? Listen, as long as it's dead, I'm happy.
You guys are the reason life's becoming so hard, pushing food prices through the roof with this nonsense, and all the other pointless obsessions you've been indoctrinated to think is somehow better when you've got no evidence - none - that there's anything different at work other than your implanted beliefs.
Tell me: As the hoax of global warming is finally coming apart, are you guys going to go back to these assholes and ask them why they made you buy all those bags when you were never 'saving the planet" to begin with? That was YOUR MONEY they got from you for that lie, y'know? Or are you going to blame yourselves for being so foolish as to fall for the con? Will you, or Ann, admit you don't know diddley when that particular bubble bursts or will you stay quiet and go about convincing others of the next pointless (and expensive) mass delusion you get caught up into? (And that is the point, isn't it? To keep people listening to you, while someone like me or a Glenn Beck - people who are almost always right about this stuff - keep getting regarded as conservative clowns? Think about it: Beck has been a one-man giant killer and he's still not regarded as someone to be seriously listened to - why?) Will (or can) any of you ever admit when you're wrong about something important or is it all about distracting people so they either A) hopefully won't notice or b) hopefully will either forget or let it go?
Y'all ain't always straight up, whatever the answer is. As someone said, on another thread tonight, it's hard for most people to admit other people are right.
That takes character.
"Is it really so hard to enter a friggin' Safeway or a Piggley-Wiggley or whatever? Are you really that fucking elitist?"
Crack? No. It isn't hard to enter those stores. But it's America, and we get to shop where we feel like shopping, and for whatever reasons. Where we have more competition, we have more choices, and most often, one will "shine" to each of us, for very different reasons, as the better choice...for now.
And so on, and so forth... or until the government decides to take over grocery stores... because someone got fucked over at Safeway, or because someone can't afford to shop at Whole Foods.
I'll never forget, pushing alternative medicine and yoga and all the other mind control bullshit I (and others) see as undermining our country.
I've never had alternative medicine or yoga pushed on me at TJ's. You mean on employees?
Here's a question for you, Crack: What is "mind control"? People throw out terms like "mind control" and "brain control" as if this is something that happens casually.
wv: codcon
What the fish version of Crack Emcee rails about.
The response you got instead would make me think twice about ever going there again.
I agree. I often have to deal with exasperating customers (usually men). You save the rants and laughter for later.
Hey, Crack. "It's all part of the whole" is new-age hippie bullshit.
Bullshit. Hippies have been around long enough, moving into every nook and cranny of society, and are such a huge demographic, that they've made "it's all connected" real. (Who do you think you're fucking with, Ann? I wasn't born yesterday,....)
"And the fact is, it's not hippie bullshit to pay more for a posh in-store experience and higher quality products, which is why *I* like Whole Foods."
Bullshit again: it was hippies who gave us yuppies and this drive to live the "posh" lifestyle you aspire towards. How were those NewAgers who died under James Arthur Ray's cult described? Oh yea - "rich people" - that's "rich people" dying in a fucking indian sweatlodge. Every one of them a Whole Foods and Trader Joe's shopper, as well as a Barack Obama voter. Same as you. Don't deny the overlap because it's there.
"I would never fall for the homeopathic stuff. I don't even care about organic."
No, you'll just keep giving the snake oil salesmen your money, while acting superior about their wares because you don't buy into that particular part of their bullshit. Well so what? You're still helping it flourish with your dollars. Even worse, from where I sit (with my personal experience of this crap) your desire for a "posh" environment allows *you* not to even care about the further ramifications of what you're donating to. Sure, Crack saw this cultural viewpoint wreck his life, but so what? I get a clean environment (like supermarkets have been pig sties all these years - who are you fooling?) You're willing to contribute to the undermining of our country for a feeling of superiority over (and about) the places everyday Americans shop their goods. It's shameful, and sad, that you're incapable at feeling shame about it because (and I'm sure you know this from my posts:) I'm counting on you.
You, Ann Althouse, are my fellow countryman. And the only way I'm going to recover from what's happened to me over the last few years, or feel that my country will, is for someone like you to decide that a "posh" shopping experience just ain't good enough to allow what's happened to me to befall anyone else. You asked me once, what makes me happy? It makes me happy when I see people get some integrity, that's what. We all know there's something wrong in this country, why in the fuck would you pick now to go "posh" on us when we're in a recession and common sense, and lower prices, are what we need? Or is all about you after all?
Wait - don't answer that - like you shopping where you do, I already know the answer,....
I noticed last week when I bought some peppermint candy ice cream (to serve with ginger ale), that Edy's has followed Breyers to 1.5 quarts.
it was hippies who gave us yuppies
Just because it happened in the Big Chill doesn't make it true.
Yuppies are all about status, which hippies shat upon.
Every one of them a Whole Foods and Trader Joe's shopper
Y the H8 for TJ's? They have good prices on good quality breakfast things and lunch meat. Their two buck chuck's are great for cooking -- cheaper than store-bought broths. Once again, they have beer from the brewery in Monroe, WI -- formerly Huber, now owned by Indo-Canadians.
Their meat is crazy expensive though, and they no longer have decent pretzels (used to be Snyders of Hanover).
Y the H8 for TJ's?<
Probably because of their patently bullshit "authentic" marketing nonsense. Those mass-produced "hand drawn" and chalk signs and eccentric tschotchkes are supposed to make me imagine I'm special? It's insulting. If Walmart had Charles Shaw, I'd never go there because the inauthenticity of their image and the gullibility of some of the shoppers is so off-putting. Let me tell you, nobody puts on airs in a Walmart. There's no mystique about it. Both the store and you are completely honest with each other about why you're there. I like that.
Penny,
"No. It isn't hard to enter those stores. But it's America, and we get to shop where we feel like shopping, and for whatever reasons."
Brain dead is what you are. One thing I like about the Tea Parties is that it's *ordinary Americans* taking back the country - actually *thinking* about what's happening to us - and acting accordingly. That definitely ain't what you're preaching with this "for whatever reasons" bullshit. How about having some *good reasons* for a change? Driving food prices higher, cult marketing, and arrogance, are hardly positives for anybody.
Blake,
"I've never had alternative medicine or yoga pushed on me at TJ's. You mean on employees?"
Yea. Take a look behind the scenes, at all the health shit on the walls and shit - it's all the same Mind/Body cult shit as everywhere else.
"Here's a question for you, Crack: What is "mind control"? People throw out terms like "mind control" and "brain control" as if this is something that happens casually."
Nowadays it does. We've been living under this shit's influence for like 40 years now - it's multi-generational, at this point, with our parents doing est, The Landmark Forum, encounter groups, etc., and instilling those values in their kids - so it doesn't take much effort to get fools solipcistically (sp?) nodding in agreement with nonsense. Believe in "karma"? Well, you're already on your way! How big of a step is it from there to these billion dollar enterprises based on magical thinking? And people wonder why we're going broke? Because they can no longer think clearly is why.
Here's a great video explaining the main outline of the process. Notice you don't need a (single) leader but a "mission" of some kind - like "saving the planet" - to make it work. And isn't it funny how many of what's become common phrases in society are in a video on cultism? How'd that happen? ("Saving the planet" and "making a difference" came to us from est - when Werner Erhard started his "Hunger Project" that fed no one. Suckers.) It's all one big con, that the Boomers can neither let go of - or admit to cultivating - so until more people wise up (or enough Boomers die off to allow another generation to turn the tide) we're stuck with this bullshit and all the arguments and problems it unnecessarily presents us with.
Boomers are the generation that never wanted to grow up and - to the disgrace of our forebears who provided us with the closest thing to perfection on earth, only to watch these ungrateful bastards trash it's very idea - they've succeeded beyond anybody's wildest dreams.
FLS,
You obviously didn't look at the link I provided on cult marketing either - TJs is a standard bearer.
Doesn't it bother any of you to know you're not only being manipulated but are manipulatable? You want it! You practically cry if you can't have it - that's the problem, here. When are you guys going to say "I'm going to turn away from, and fight, anybody and anything that's attempting to fool me and mine into doing something"? All cult marketers - off limits. All cultish thinkers - outta here. Anybody found guilty of fraud - like Deepak Chopra - is hearby done for and will be exposed and driven from the public square, along with their disciples.
That's what's called for - that's the answer to our problems. A cultural Tea Party if you will. Then our politics will start to make sense again.
Attack liberalism and NewAge will still be there. Kill NewAge and liberalism dies, too.
Then we'll get back to being the United States again.
"Brain dead is what you are."
lol Crack.
When I am waxing in my passion, I usually accuse people of not seeing the "bigger picture".
It's a little less harsh, and soon enough, one or two claim to be doing just that.
To please me? Well maybe, but maybe they really do put on different glasses now and then.
I can categorically say that I would never admit to being "brain dead". If I did, you would then need to apologize, and we both know how much you would hate that.
It's a HUGE dilemma. In fact, it would be an excellent example of the horn of the dilemma.
Aw, hell, I cut my teeth on cults, Crack. I know all about them--well, at least the ones from when I was a kid, most of which are gone now.
The term "cult" has gone from its historical meaning, to "any religion I don't like", to "any trend that makes me uncomfortable" or even "any trend I really like!"
Nowadays it does.
No, it doesn't. Actual mind control and brainwashing are violent things.
What you're seeing is called "people who disagree with me". They may be deluded, misinformed, gullible, etc. However, they've not been brainwashed, and their minds are not being controlled.
We've been living under this shit's influence for like 40 years now
Mass media tends to distort things. There have been similar trends in every century. Much more limited in their exposure, since the orthodoxy has traditionally suppressed such things. (See Christianity under the Romans.)
- it's multi-generational, at this point, with our parents doing est, The Landmark Forum, encounter groups, etc., and instilling those values in their kids - so it doesn't take much effort to get fools solipcistically (sp?) nodding in agreement with nonsense.
Yeah, there's your clue: It's called "not agreeing with you". Though, honestly, I haven't seen a lot of people doing what their parents did. EST is gone--the Forum, too, I think?
Believe in "karma"? Well, you're already on your way!
Hundred of millions of Hindus will be thrilled to know they're part of the "New Age".
Most people don't really believe in Karma, by the way. They have some vague and very Western notion of "what comes around, goes around", and a half-hearted belief in a vengeful force.
How big of a step is it from there to these billion dollar enterprises based on magical thinking?
Oh, a billion dollars or so?
And people wonder why we're going broke? Because they can no longer think clearly is why.
Nah. "Can't think clearly" isn't the same as "never tried to think clearly".
But for my devalued dollar, you lose me when you start talking about brainwashing. Brainwashing isn't something that happens from walking around in a society, no matter how steeped it is in New Age philosophies.
At what point do you stop allowing someone to disagree with you, Crack, without deciding they're brainwashed?
What do you say to people whose experiences don't fit into your world view? Do you really have it all so taped-out that you're comfortable calling everything outside of that view "delusion"?
Not everything hippie is bullshit. I love the best of what was once hippie, and a lot of what I am is about remembering, evolving, and preserving the best of the hippie.
Penny,
"I can categorically say that I would never admit to being "brain dead". If I did, you would then need to apologize, and we both know how much you would hate that."
How many times must I insist I ain't like most people You're judging me according to other's values: apologizing don't hurt me - happy to do it. It's just the way I am. It's the rest of you who's tripping. I mean, look at this shit: Both you and Ann have made assumptions about me in one thread. How people live like that amazes me.
Blake,
"Actual mind control and brainwashing are violent things."
Dude, I've got more experience with this than most and there's a curve.
"What you're seeing is called "people who disagree with me"."
Bullshit again. For starters, do you know the difference between an "open cult" and a closed one? Tell me: How does Tom Cruise go about his famous life and yet still find himself trapped in "the world's most dangerous cult"? He certainly can't be free and in it, according to you - and nothing "violent" (whether physically or metaphorically) has happened to him - how can that be? According to you, it can't - yet it's a fact that Tom is a babbling idiot in a group notorious for killing people and destroying their lives.
I guess they just "didn't agree with me", right? And those people who didn't leave James Arthur Ray's sweatlodge? Some of them only met the man for the first time - where'd his power come from, Blake?
Face it: you don't know what you're talking about - cultism is a major force in American life, one that people refuse to deal with, as the bodies pile up like cords of wood, probably because (as Penny and another writer, last night, hinted) it's so hard for the average person to admit they're either wrong or too stupid to stop it before it gets to be too late. Listen to Tom McFeeley, the cousin of the New York woman who died at James Ray's Sedona retreat:
"The one thing we don't want, is for this to be represented as some kind of cult."
Why not? Because everybody and their brother already knows what goes on in Sedona, Arizona is a cult. It's not "disagreeing with me" to think that's a NewAge "power spot" - there's no such thing as power spots. It's not "disagreeing with me" to think there's "energy vortexes" that exist there - there's no such thing as energy vortexes, and so on. We are a nation in need of deprogramming for a whole gang of cultish ideas - and I ain't been wrong about one of them since this shit's been opened up to me, so, until that happens, you can keep that simple-minded bullshit for somebody who comes with a light sugar glaze.
"EST is gone--the Forum, too, I think?"
See? I laugh at your ignorance. (Shit, the most fun I get these days is calling people stupid and laughing at their ignorance. Why? because they're too stupid to try and understand anything.) Like most people, Blake, you couldn't spot a modern day cult (or cultist) to save your life. You just want to protect your honor above all else, and that's fucking sad.
Quit talking. Not because I mind you disagreeing with me, but because you're a waste of my time, and people wasting my time depresses me. Having your wife kill three people because she thinks like Oprah can do that to you. Having people take me for a fool, on top of that, can just get to be excruciating. Sorry.
Ann,
"Not everything hippie is bullshit."
Hey, look, I'm that racist Joe Wilson:
"You lie!"
"I love the best of what was once hippie, and a lot of what I am is about remembering, evolving, and preserving the best of the hippie."
Yea, I know. That's tough, Ann, for me anyway. I can't stand hippie shit. The melting of the American mind. Lame as a limp dick is what it is. Bruce Dern shooting John Wayne in the kneecaps in "True Grit" (or whatever) is what it is. The saddest episode in history - not just American history but HISTORY because it brought down the greatest country ever conceived. Where's the good in that? Freeing the slaves only to wreck the world we're free in? That's a fucking rip-off, "man".
It's just dawning on me (again) that, other than in a "Hey, how you doing?" kind of way, I'm never going to have another real human relationship again. You guys are too stuck on bullshit - like being hippie or denying cultism - than to do anything that will ever impress me that you're really actually human. It's been that way since the day I told my ex, "You killed your mother" and she said, "You just don't believe." Nobody else has ever said another word to me that made any sense since that day.
You're all insane - and, I have to admit, I am most profoundly alone amongst you.
I go to Trader Joe's 'cause I can walk there. If I need milk, I can leave the car in the garage, take a nice walk through the neighborhood, chat with neighbors, and get milk. I also like TJ's frozen vegetables. I can do without the checkers engaging me in conversation however. But the ability to walk there trumps just about anything.
I could also walk to the Co-op -- in fact, it's much closer. But a distinctly claustrophobic feel permeates that store. The little store where you can't avoid bumping into your friends.
Whole Foods is a long walk, but doable on a nice day. Sentry Hilldale I usually drive to -- one could walk, but it's a long haul with bags of groceries.
"I can do without the checkers engaging me in conversation however,...The little store where you can't avoid bumping into your friends."
You should all watch this video and, while listening to the (now popular) phrasing used, ask yourselves:
Is this happening to me? Even a little? Why is "saving the planet" so important, now, when there's no evidence the planet is in trouble but will do anything but kill you in return? It's people who need saving. Their minds are gone. Totally incapable of critical thought. People are dying all around us - in the most bizarre ways, including stabbing themselves to death - and you still deny what you're collectively doing. You broadcast it even on T.V.
It's just plain weird.
From the article I linked to above:
"A bad outcome in a field with proven benefits is unfortunate. A bad outcome in a field with little basis for existing in the first place is unforgivable."
Hippies, NewAge - all that:
Fields with little basis for existing in the first place.
Completely unforgivable.
I gotta go to work. See you later.
WV: mathers. A guy named Jerry who reminds me of a better time.
Ann,
You should bloggingheads with me - even I know I ain't no regular writer but merely a (recording) artist - but I can talk up a storm, and discussing this will do one of two things:
Either reveal me to be a cult-obsessed hippie-hating fanatical idiot or Glenn Beck.
I know which one I am,...and, like Beck, I think people (like hippie types) are scared to face me.
Doesn't it bother any of you to know you're not only being manipulated but are manipulatable?
Am I easily manipulable? I always called it my reluctance to pay 50% more for milk, butter, and eggs.
To me, the real cult is Costco. To pay them annually for the privilege of pushing a cart around a warehouse with about 1/16th the items available at Walmart. (The cubic foot package of one-minute Quaker Oats is unavailable. "Members" can buy only five-minute oats.) Having to buy food in packages so large that one of their evergreen products is a vacuum sealer. Having to show ID to enter, to check out, and to leave. Why not just get a barcode tattooed on your forehead?
Heh.
We got a CostCo membership for Christmas last year. It's very exhausting to go there because you have to walk so far, but I will say some things are worth it.
CostCo's avocados are plentiful, cheap, and we've never had a bad one. I like the big packs of string cheese. I bought an enormous amount of Liberty Bell stamps before the price hike -- still haven't used them all. But CostCo seems to be built for people who have extra rooms for storage. That is so not me.
I also bought a ready-to-cook pizza there once. It didn't fit in my oven, the pizza was too big.
wow.
The only thing that would make this thread wilder would be to posit that Sarah Palin shops at Whole Foods.
Crack Emcee is posting links to other people's sites now! The End Times are upon us.
Yo Crack- are you onto firearms and have you served in the armed forces in a combat arms unit? If not, just shut the hell up and go away. You are sounding like all the Glenn Beck cultists and mall ninjas I run into in the gun range. All "conservative" and all that. I bet you wouldnt be able to fight your way out of a wet paper bag.
Daniel,
I've heard so much of that know-nothing defensive bullshit it's sickening:
United States Navy (1979-83) with an honorable discharge and several medals for bravery while rescuing boat people. A paid member of the VFW and all that after I went to the brig for clocking officers who had no leadership skills.
Also, after growing up in South Central, Los Angeles, carrying several stab wounds (back and thigh) from defending others in gang fights - been shot at but never hit.
As a music producer I've had more guns pointed at my head than most people have seen in movies - from rappers demanding I produce their shit - but I'm still here.
I can fight just fine, and (knowing there's always someone bigger and better than me) am more than brave enough to back up my shit, thank you.
I'm on a break now (can't stay) but I was thinking about Ann's comment:
"I love the best of what was once hippie, and a lot of what I am is about remembering, evolving, and preserving the best of the hippie."
Look, I was raised to be Al Sharpton "black" but my life ain't about "remembering, evolving, and preserving" that shit - it's about doing what's right, for me, my people, and my fellow Americans, and if that means saying we've got to wise up and tell the Al Sharpton's of the world to shut-the-fuck-up and get out of the way then that's what it's about.
This blind adherence to what the hippies introduced is bullshit. Hippies gave us Charles Manson and a whole slew of other awful things that hippies today are also too defensive to cop to - and it's got to stop.
I've been saying all along that we've got to grow up and that includes calling shit like "irrational exuberance" what it is: mass-fucking-hysteria. We are a nation beset with hysteria - over global warming, and our health, and race, and gurus and God - you name it. Digging into that cultish hysteria and copping to it - instead of always declaring, "Not me!" - is the important step. Glenn Beck has proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there's news out there whether anybody else sees it or not. I'm saying there's cultism at work here and if there wasn't there wouldn't be so many people, individually, saying otherwise. There wouldn't be that cult restaurant I linked to above, for Blake, and U.S. News and World Report wouldn't recently have done a special "cults in America" issue - and there wouldn't be a place, like Sedona, Arizona, where cultists from all over the entire fucking world goes to talk nonsense about "energy vortexes" and other cockamamy bullshit.
None of you are seriously challenging this cultish hippie bullshit like I'm seriously challenging the black people I was raised with - for all of our sakes. Instead, like Ann, you're trying to preserve something because it makes you (and you alone) feel good. Well, fuck your feelings. Our country's in trouble and I need to know if we're a country or not. If not, then fine - people dying in sweatlodges and killing kids for 'spiritual" reasons is something I'll laugh with friends over when we're drinking. But if we are a country, then dammit, let's do something about this madness - like simply kicking black ass Oprah to the curb for spreading NewAge nonsense - and get ourselves back on track.
To do anything less is a total betrayal of ourselves.
Crack,
You tip your hand when you talk about being a nation in need of deprogramming.
You're so warped by your hatred of everything you call a cult, you'd use the exact same (violent, evil) techniques you imagine others are using to bring everyone around to your way of thinking.
You have no problem with "brainwashing", it's that people have been brainwashed to think things you don't like.
And you're stuck, because you don't really have any interest in communicating. You just want people to agree with you. Everyone is stupid and ignorant and unreceptive.
But since that's what brings you the most joy in your life, I suppose you should follow your bliss.
Blake,
I heard that same kind of talk around Black Lightning when he was doing his shit - it's just cult psychology:
Anything done to break the grip of cultism is just another form of brainwashing.
Riiight. What part of I know all your tricks don't you get? Here: talk to someone else with real-world experience in this shit because obviously giving you link to a Landmark Forum restaurant (when you thought they were gone!) ain't good enough.
Look, dude, when I start talking about "energy vortexes" and killing people, then talk your shit. Until then, you're defending the indefensible and should really shut up. How you can seriously take me on - against a movement that kills innocents, including children - is amazing to me. That you can do it and no one else here is saying, "Wait a minute - he's right - they ARE killing people" is even more astounding.
Like I said, it's like you guys aren't even human.
Whole Foods is a cult? Costco is a cult? Trader Joe's?
Who knew?
Hey, if Whole Foods and Trader Joes are cults, where do I sign up to get the "cult member" discount?
And Crack, read Rod Dreher's book "Cruncy Cons",and then you will realise where guys like me come from,and why we shop at Krogers, as well as at Whole Foods, TJs and also at the local Farmer's Market. I dont shop at the local Peoples Food Co-op becasue I am not happy with their not so sanitary practises. Some of their employees are in need of an encounter with soap and water.
Choosing to shop where we do dont make us cultists like you seem to think.
You need to lay of on the crack, make you paranoid.
Jeez, Crack,
I said "I think". And on that topic of "I think", I think maybe San Francisco isn't the healthiest place for you.
I've been going to TJ's for decades, and I've never once seen any kind of exercise thing. Not for Yoga. Not for nothin'. Nor anything even vaguely smacking of spirituality.
I don't go to (most) other markets because I hate the whole price-changing/coupon thing: THAT makes me feel like they think I'm stupid.
Anything done to break the grip of cultism is just another form of brainwashing.
No. You're conflating brainwashing with other practices, such as disinformation. You wanna talk to some cult member about something, I say, knock yourself out.
If your argument is "these people do these horrible things to people to change their minds, and so I want to do horrible things to those same people to fix it," well, I'm not on board there.
The allegations fly fast and furious among the anti-cult crowd. Squint your eyes and you can believe you're reading a German newspaper from the '30s. And somehow, they're so powerful as to avoid prosecution.
But, hey, I'll go on the record as being against killing children. I just don't see the line connecting my purchase of peanut butter-filled pretzels with children being killed.
It's clear you guys aren't even looking at the links I provide for you (What's the point of the internet if you guys don't look at the links?):
Trader Joe's is a leader in cult marketing (see the link in my answer to Henry) and Whole Foods engages in it also. I didn't write that article - it's from a marketing group - so what are you saying? (I hate how, in your minds, it becomes just "Crazy Crack" saying this shit when there are others, usually commenting on something else, who also mention this stuff. What do you think? That I just make up the quotes on my site? No, I take them from what others are saying - usually doctors and scientists who have to deal with this shit - and I comment on them as well. Did anybody notice my sister blog is by a doctor? Whatever. Go on: play dumb and keep insisting it's just me.)
"I just don't see the line connecting my purchase of peanut butter-filled pretzels with children being killed."
Well then let me spell it out for you:
Homeopathy is a cockamamy scam based on water. There's a cult built around the belief that Homeopathy is medicine. People using Homeopathy have been found to kill people - my wife killed three people and, more recently, Thomas Sam killed his kid using it. (So many lives are in danger from it, even the World Health Organization has been drawn into this fight.) Whole Foods has an entire Homeopathy section. With you supporting the cultish Whole Foods, you're also supporting the cultism around Homeopathy - which, clearly, Whole Foods supports - and, thus, assisting in the cultish deaths of many others. Which, of course, you don't care about merely because you don't actually see their faces - and you so desperately need Whole Foods's peanut butter-filled pretzels.
Are we clear?
Oh - and not only is killing people a little more than ""these people do these horrible things to people to change their minds", but you insult me (and the idea of all I've lived with through this) by continually suggesting I'm somehow talking about anything less than what I've stated:
It's MURDER, and you dummies are making light of it for fucking pretzels and "posh".
As my buds, Panda Bear, M.D., says:
"No one thinks rationally anymore, not even the well-educated."
pomegranate infused tea.
Trader Joe's is a leader in cult marketing
Yeah, I read it. They're in touch with their customers and they try to satisfy their product and emotional needs so their customers keep coming back.
Whoop-ti-do
Have you ever stopped for a moment to marvel at the phenomenal success of Trader Joe’s? Well, I have. I mean, I know why I like them–they’re cheap, and they specialize in tasty, easily accessible, mostly already prepared foods, and we have one right in our neighborhood. But if you had told me, back in the 1980s, that the place that sells crazy stuff like hummus and tapenade
Jarred hummus and tapenade is crap, and I never buy any. TJ's kalamata olive oil is also crap, by the way.
Blake,
"I've been going to TJ's for decades, and I've never once seen any kind of exercise thing. Not for Yoga. Not for nothin'. Nor anything even vaguely smacking of spirituality."
I said go in the back, where the employees lounge is. i honestly don't think you guys would recognize cultism anywhere anyway - you don't want to see it - just like I spotted The Landmark Forum restaurant immediately but most San Franciscans only discovered it years later. They also missed the Your Black Muslim Bakery cult (that killed a journalist in broad daylight) and all the others I've covered and exposed.
Like I said, y'all don't want to accept what's right in front of your eyes - and, especially, not your own possible roles in supporting it.
FLS,
Man, you guys can be so fucking shallow and flip, regarding serious topics, it's amazing you know anything else:
"Cult marketing" got it's name by utilizing the most subtle techniques established cults use to keep converts.
A big Whoop-ti-do, indeed.
I go to your links, Crack, but they're waaaaay inside baseball.
Preaching to the choir as it were.
You assume so much context, you make it hard for someone jumping in to get you.
Dude, let's try this again:
My wife - who basically appears as normal as the next gal - killed three people and I know why. It's for reasons that many people today endorse. She wanted to "save the planet" and beat "Big Pharma" and all the other Leftist nonsense that most people hear all the time, and bow down to, without giving much thought to where these ideas come from - but almost all of them have cult origins from the '60s and '70s. These cults exist under an umbrella term called "NewAge" which covers a large collection of like-minded spiritual groups who have infiltrated segments of our society with the goal of forcing non-believers into living under (liberal) fascism or being eliminated.
If I assume context, it's because I've been living with this now for 4 years and, knowing it's been all pervasive for 40+ years, it's like trying to tell people the air can kill you. Not only is it tiring to have to repeatedly explain the same shit, over and over again, every time someone new asks what I'm talking about, but I get sick of it and just say "fuck it" and stop explaining and just comment as though you know the lay of the land already - or, at least, as my regular readers do.
Needless to say, most people appear stupid and callous to me now. No, that's not true - they appear more than stupid and callous - because I know, even before I understood this shit, that the way I've always reacted to shit like this is more responsive than I've seen people reacting to cultists and cultism, even after knowing they're openly killing people. It's like nobody gives a shit about anything but making jokes at others expense - and that's been my personal wake-up call:
I've learned that most people alive today aren't worthy of the label "human" anymore. They're just a step above Nazis now, thinking only of themselves and what they can get.
And I'll never be the same again after learning that.
How do you murder someone with homeopathy?
Where's the intent to kill or malice aforethought?
Homeopathy as a murder weapon? Seems pretty ineffectual.
crack emcee - Just because you do not agree does not mean that we have to. I can shop at TJ's or WF's or Smiths (Krogers) or where ever I choose. Calling me out as some kind of ..... whatever..... only belies the nature of your control and down that road..........? Well, we all know where that leads.
So, drop the drivel. I happen to like WF's for some things, TJ's for others, COSTCO for bulk items and Smiths for the small stuff I do not need to buy in bulk. Ain't this a great country or what?
Robosillyperson,
You talk like I don't know what shopping is, and sound like you don't know what thinking is. I don't shop at WF or TJs for the stated reasons - there are more than enough places to buy my food than to give my money to cult marketers. I also don't bother with Oprah, Ellen, or any other member of the television cabal. I don't attend NewAge seminars or anything else. When I hear speakers spouting NewAge ideas I vote with my feet.
This is how NewAge should be confronted. The fact anybody would try to defend NewAge - in any way - is a sign of stupidity and disgusts me.
I told you they were killing people. You now have evidence of three dead in Arizona. Steve Salerno's Wall Street Journal column about it outlines some of the others I've also described on my blog. Barbara Ehrenreich has a new book about they drove her batty after getting cancer.
Diss me all you want - or spend your time charging me with being controlling, or asking stupid questions, while dead bodies lay at your feet - it doesn't change the fact you're openly playing a role in how those dead bodies got there.
Oh - and just because you do not agree does not mean that I have to:
But then, I'm not the one giving my money and vocal support to killers, cultists, and cult marketers - basically selling my soul - for chocolate covered pretzels.
Man, you guys are not just beyond losers but waaay creepy. Somebody says "You're killing people." and your reply is "I can shop where I like and you can't stop me."?
That's sick and crazy.
Actually, now that I think about it, it's a prefect example of the preening arrogance cultists exploit to get the idiots to do what they want.
Congratulations:
You're a bunch of idiots!
Here's an adult conversation for you:
"You're killing people."
"You can't tell me what to do."
Well, it's an adult conversation with a child.
You reported the three murders to the police?
Thats a strange situation actually
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