Hello Darkness! The Official Blog of Helen Keller

Folks.

If you live in a town worth mentioning on a map, you have some sort of grocery store in your town. IGA doesn't fucking count. IGAs are overgrown lemonade stands run by retarded kids looking to raise enough quarters to buy a miracle cure for retardation made from hope, popsicle sticks and dolphin teeth they found on the internet. Fuck IGAs. Ditto Sobey's.

The bottom line is, the only grocery store that even matters is Loblaws, or one of Loblaws' many subsidiary companies, like Great Canadian Superstore, No Frills, Independent (bullshit alert!) and a bunch of others I can't be bothered to look up. But these proud Canadian stores are under attack from Wal-Mart and the new Wal-Mart grocery stores popping up more than a recurring Guatemalean sex-rash. Wal-Mart has the insidious power to squeeze distributors for every last penny, in order to pass those savings onto the customer, who buy more, and the profits pay for a gilded stairway to Heaven so the Walton family can punch God in the liver.

Loblaw's needs help. Fast. This isn't necessarily a guide on how to manage the stock at the store. The easy answer is too easy: Just give the cunting food away for free. But, if you want to turn a profit, go hire some greasy egg-head economist to figure it out before he hurls himself into traffic. I'm talking about improving the Loblaws experience. It's kind of like the Jimi Hendrix Experience, but with food. Shit, the only thing you don't need to do is change the music. Michael Jackson's Don't Stop 'Till You Get Enough is both a good song and quite the psychological incentive to buy the fuck out of some groceries.

Listen up Loblawsians, this is what you need to do:

FIX THE CARTS

Loblaws currently offers three different carts to its customers. The standard metal jobby, which handles about as well as you would expect a wooden door floating in a lake to handle, a sleeker plastic cart, which can barely handle hitting a child and those motorized Rascal carts, which apparently are only for fatties and cripples, thank you very much Miss Nosey-Bitch the Manager.

Firstly, get these carts able to separate from their breathren in that cart-herd at the front of the store. 2/3 of the fleet is permanently stuck in fucking dry-dock because the end-cart is wedged in tighter than a "long-timer" introducing the new prisoner to the endearing world of anal rape. It's ridiculous. So, a fraction of the carts get over-used, resulting in their almost immediate disrepair. I'm not saying you need to have a fucking cart-garage on site, but some maintenance and cleaning wouldn't kill anybody.



PUT SOME MORE CART-RETURNS INTO THE PARKING LOT

Navigating Loblaws parking lots is like trying to sail a bathtub through the stair museum without falling down. There are carts scattered all over the place worse than the shitty movies which make up Rob Schneider's career. Also, for some strange reason, there's the same crimson 1979 Dodge Diplomat parked in the far corner of the lot. I don't know whether time itself refuses to move it forward, but it's always there, in EVERY lot.

The reason the carts are all over the place is that the cart returns are never convenient. They're either in the gas-station on the other side of the street, the fucking roof of the Loblaws or somewhere in the past My Science Project style. After pushing my cart around, I'm tired, I'm lazy and I don't want to hire a Sherpa guide to lead me to what should be a conveniently located cart return corral. Usually, I give my cart a name and set it free into the wilderness to be with its friends.



STOP THE CRYING CHILDREN

I understand that some people need to eat. I understand that some children get fucking cranky. BUT, what I don't understand is why parents persist in dragging around bratish children who simply don't want to be in the store. The kid is wailing like you're pulling his fucking leg out of a wolf-trap, the mother's got the hardened look of a person determined to chew her own hand like a piece of bubble-gum and I'm stuck behind them both trying to get a look at the crouton display. It's complete shit.

Here's my solution. Dunk tank for bad babies. It doesn't have to be cruel, I'm not suggesting stringing them up by one leg and swinging them like pendulums across a pit of minimum-wage earners and sewer gas, but I am suggesting dunking the little tykes into a nice, room-temperature tank of water until they learn to shut the fuck up. Amoeba can learn to avoid unpleasantness, so too can kids.



If Loblaws can implement these three ideas, they stand a better chance of surviving the Wal-Mart onslaught better than the Leafs can survive the last 10 minutes of the third period before either blowing their lead or widening the gap by which they're losing. God I hate Alex Ponikarovsky.