The Decadent Bourgeois Excrescence of a Corrupt and Doomed Economic System

The Angel of the Garden did not protect my tomatoes and habaneros from freezing.

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Meanwhile…

I needed things to train my cucumbers over. Also, cheap reading glasses. That meant a trip to Ocean State Lots.

At the best of times, in the BC (Before Covid) years, Ocean States Lots was my least favorite store in the world because ugly! So ugly. But there’s no denying that as a bottom feeder in the world of retail—a liquidator in other words—Ocean State Lots contains many weird and occasionally useful things, so in pre-covid days, I would make a trip there maybe once every six weeks.

This was my first trip to Ocean State Lots in the AD (After Disease.)

To get myself through the Ocean State Lots shopping experience, I decided to play a game.

You are in a fabulous new theme park, I told myself. USSR-World! Recreating the shopping adventure as a citizen of Azerbaijan might experience it, say in circa 1966! Behold the empty shelves! Behold the endless lines! Behold the crudely made signage! Behold the colorless, shapeless garb of your fellow shoppers, heroic collective farm workers all!



I reject the decadent bourgeois excrescence of a corrupt and doomed economic system!!!!!

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In other news, lengthy conversations with both the boys last night. Robin is so underground, it breaks my heart. But there is nothing, nada, niente, nichego, nenio, I can do about it.

Here’s hoping the new phone brings him a momentary spark of pleasure.

At least he and Max have embarked upon a reading project together: Gravity’s Rainbow. A book that I have never been able to plow through, since I’m wayyyyy too unsophisticated for post-modernism.

“Robin reads so much faster than I do,” Max observed. “So, he’s light years ahead of me.”

I’ve been toying with the idea of making a whirlwind, one-day trip to Ithaca. Leaving at the crack of dawn. Spending a few hours with Robin in DeWitt Park. Driving back down to the quaint and scenic Hudson Valley.

Spending nine hours in a car would be worth it if I could get to see my boo.

Here's my dilemma: I’d have to pee in transit, and I have no idea what the road trip restroom status is in the AD.

There isn’t any straight road connect to Ithaca. It’s all back roads, and even if it weren’t, I’d still take back roads most likely because I actually enjoy driving them whereas I loathe driving on highways.

Upstate New York is kinda like Alabama with snow.

Meaning there is much to like about it but also much to dislike, and one of the things to dislike is the gas station rest rooms.

I will have to give the quandary some serious thought.

Max is being sworn into the State Bar tomorrow by a California Supreme Court Justice in a virtual ceremony. Naturally, I will be in virtual attendance. And I’ll probably cry—unvirtually.