Story of my life: Pregnant, hungry, and thwarted

I don't think I shop (or fail to shop) at the same Key Food as Sars does, but the experience is roughly the same.

[L]et's talk about how the Key Food overhaul is lasting months. Let's talk about how store management has elected, instead of just closing the whole store for three days and finishing everything in one mildly inconvenient shot, to use a one-aisle-at-a-time strategy while leaving the store open for business, which is taking forever. The contractors can't really get anything done because the store always full of shoppers, the shoppers can't find anything because the contractors just heap everything up higgledy-piggledy without regard to common sense (salad dressing in the dairy aisle, cheese in the cereal aisle, no frozen-foods aisle at all for two weeks while they moved the cases -- no shit -- a foot and a half to the left, and no coffee filters at all because they just put them away, and nobody else in the neighborhood sells #2 filters, because who has a coffeemaker that small? I DO DAMN YOUUUUUUUUU), they shuffled the aisles like a deck of cards for no reason so everyone is bumbling around…and what that particular Key Food needs is not "more bumbling around." "Fewer customers who will whack a three-gallon container of apple juice down onto your bread," sure. "A better cheese selection than 'cheddar or mozzarella,'" definitely. "Livelier lettuce," you can bet on it. It does not need more bumbling around.

So what's Key Food's problem, anyway (besides the fact that they run out of obscure items I might want, like, say Diet Dr Pepper)? Well, I just looked them up on Hoovers. Lo and behold, there is a listing for Key Foods Stores Co-operative. "Founded in 1937, the co-op helps about 115 independently owned food retailers in the New York City area compete with major supermarket chains by pooling buying power." So I'm starting to feel bad about kicking poor Key Food.

What to do? Surf to their own website. And lo, again, my urge to snark on Key Food is renewed. For they are boasting about their store brand, called - wait for it - KEY FOOD PRODUCT. They claim, "Our store brand, KEY FOOD PRODUCT, is of the highest quality, comparable to the national brands, and is offered at lower prices." I'm sorry, that's just too Repo Man for me. I'm sticking with my snooty online grocer.

Story of my life (post-collegiate version)

From The Onion. Oh well.

The unattached, freewheeling, consequence-free years following Frank Anderton's graduation from college are being spent in "one of the coolest offices in all of Seattle," the 24-year-old reported Tuesday.

"Man, it's the greatest feeling in the world, knowing that I could do anything right now," Anderton said, sitting at his desk at 8:30 p.m. Friday. "I don't have any kids to worry about or a mortgage to pay. If I wanted to pick up and backpack through Europe, I could leave in two weeks, no questions asked. Of course, that would set me back a little, career-wise."

Notes from the corridors of power: 2

And from The Wall Street Journal, this spectacular lede to a story about the management crisis and ensuing lawsuit at Disney:

On a witness stand here Tuesday, Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Michael Eisner summarized a harsh 1996 letter he wrote to then-Disney president Michael Ovitz as meaning: "You were rotten to begin with, you're rotten now, go away."

Notes from the corridors of power: 1

From this morning's New York Times, a story that pictures of Kim Jong-Il have mysteriously been disappearing in North Korea. However, not everyone thinks it's true:

There has been no official reaction from North Korea to the reports. But a North Korean diplomat in Moscow was quoted Tuesday by Itar-Tass as saying: "This is false information, lies. Can the sun be removed from the sky? It is not possible."

Beggin' to diffah

"Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" is the worst song ever? Surely not. In a world that has given us "The Lion Sleeps Tonight?" Or "I've Never Been to Me?" And besides, our understanding of late capitalism has been totally summarized in the phrase, "Happy ever after in the marketplace," right? Oh well.

A view from a broad

My favorite "blogging of the president" so far. Writing from Scotland, American expat Barren Mare notes:

You'd think that the election was taking place in Britain, since the news coverage is so intense, and everybody here is taking such an interest. ... I think the thing is, people recognise that the results of today's election will have a long term and significant impact on Britain. The Americans are not just electing a president, they are choosing Tony Blair's new best friend.

Advertising death wish

The always-horrible Citibank "oh money is not really all the important" ads have struck a new low. I saw this on a billboard this morning:

Live as though your next purchase was going to be the farm.

Halloween in Brownstone Brooklyn

Ben H. explains it all for you.