The Lobster in All of Us

While shopping recently at a new-age-hippie-organic grocery store down the street from the police station, I was overcome by an urge to understand. After perusing the hemp soap and gluten free hand lotion aisle, I found myself at the counter with 3 full spectrum light bulbs that cost $6.95 each and a copy of the Utne Reader.

I had heard of the Utne Reader before. After college and in the grasp of a strange Emersonian attempt to "work with my hands" I became a piano mover for about 2 years. The piano mover boss guy was about 10 years my senior and had a broken back or something very similar. But he still moved pianos...and read the Utne Reader religiously.

He always talked about it. When you're going from job to job as a piano mover there's a lot of time to talk and he'd say things like "I was reading the Utne Reader the other day and in 2 years they'll be injecting microchips into your bloodstream each time you use your credit card" or "The Utne reader says that if we didn't buy potato chips in the United States about 2 million African AIDS victims would be able to get medicine just like Magic Johnson."

So there I was. Three full spectrum light bulbs in my hand and a copy of the Utne Reader staring back at me where the National Inquirer should've been. And I guess in order to justify the light bulbs i picked up a copy and later that night read it.

And I was appalled. Everything was environmentally safe. Everything was anti-globalization. And I finally understood why punks that smell like hippies showed up in droves with paper mache puppets at each G8 conference.

It was because of the lobster divers in central America and others like them who die so we can enjoy Lobsterfest and see tits at NASCAR races...although I guess anti-globalization ain't cheap because it cost $2.95 a story on www.utne.com.

But that's not the point. If there is a point, and i'm not sure there is, its that the things we eat, the things we buy, the clothes we dress ourselves with are not killed, made or sown by us. But by really, really, really poor people who hate us.

And then I saw a Red Lobster commercial on my not-made-by-us TV...and I finally understood that that i was kind of hungry and that the lobster looked good.