The Supermarket Produce Section: A Monument to Human Cruelty
Could Treebeard and Groot speak to each other? I don't know either. But I do know there are crimes against existence happening in every produce aisle and Rude Chicken has something to say about it!
Disgusting.
If Buddha was still around he’d buddhist palm himself to the Ancient One to pick a new timeline to incarnate in. Walking into the supermarket, you’re immediately assaulted by too bright lights, too happy colors, terrible music piped in to mask the depression of the indentured servants masquerading as employees just trying to pay their bills. Sensory overload of the highest order. However, none knew their C-suite branded folly, no matter how concealed would be undone by yours truly.
Rude Chicken.
Because as a chicken well versed in the ways of the science and alchemy, also fluent in both Entish and Grootianese. I know the evidence of barbaric and fiendish science when I come across it in the wild. I don’t blame you, my beloved audience and peers for missing it. How could you? You were simply trying to figure out what to spend your hard earned coin on for dinner, or a summer treat to keep the kids happy. Possibly make a refreshing non virgin smoothie. How could you possibly know that laid out before you in their grand cardboard pens, sat the most evident evidence?
The seedless watermelon.
A botanical eunuch, cursed to wander creation with no purpose, no function, no.. raison d’etre beyond being delicious! All other living things no matter how humble have more functions. Yet through human intervention we are cursed with witnessing the suffering of seedless grapes, seedless pineapples, seedless oranges and bananas! We’ve driven our thumb in the eye of nature, telling it why don’t you take a seat Grandma, WE are running the show now! No more joy or purposeful frolicking through the forest. I know they don’t have legs, but who needs legs when you had dreams. Have you ever seen the dream of the seedless navel orange?! Beautifully tragic is what it is. To see such longing depicted entirely in tangelo and vermilion.
Reproduction is the last thing that should be taken for granted, and yet here we are! Sex, seed, propagation, fragmentation, budding, whatever nastiness trees do that leaves residue over my windshield every damn spring, without having the decency to offer us a moist towelette. Trees, always thinking they’re so high and mighty. Having the nerve of growing so damn tall and just dropping shit on us all year round. Nuts, leaves, seeds, those weird seed pods, and branches falling randomly crushing stuff below them with impunity. I know they’re the “lungs of the world” and whatever, but they let that moniker go to their tall leafy heads.
What have you done for me lately? Shade? I can get an umbrella. Firewood? I mean a lot of things burn. Oxygen? Pfft! overrated. Air is mostly nitrogen anyway, how hard can it be to replace oxygen?! I’ll just grow more ferns. Humble, green, and not so over dramatic. Unlike the Willow Tree, which if My Bloody Valentine was a tree, it’d be that. With less eyeliner, and way more silent crying, which is the worst kind. But I digress.
Because I am tired of ignoring the cries from the produce aisle. Usually front loaded, immediately visible upon entry into that den of depression aka: The supermarket. But this battle needs to be taken on at the source. Farmers, who once were known as the best of us. Salt of the earth types. Hardworking, hay bale throwing strong, up and down with the sun types. I can only pray that they have not fallen to the vicissitudes of modernity. That among them a resistance is fermenting, ready to emancipate our agricultural allies, and lead them, root and stem into the promised land. Or like Land-o-lakes or somewhere. That place seemed pretty wholesome.
-RC