For those of you who don’t know me very well – I wonder why you’re reading my blog – also, you may not know that I am a ranter. That is, I am prone to unload, without notice or provocation, painstakingly-crafted, long-festering rants about things that annoy me and which I feel ought to annoy others (unsolicited rants, naturally being expressly excluded from the aforementioned rant-worthy topics).
Here is the latest.
I have, since moving to Sydney, developed the opinion – whether well-founded or not – that the shopping carts here (known as “trolleys”) are chronically wonky. Every time I go to the grocery store, I have a shopping cart that refuses to roll true. It consistently careens off course and drifts left, always left, of my desired path, so that I continually have to throw my weight to the right to counteract the cart’s inborn drive to go askew. I have to literally fight these carts up and down every aisle of the grocery store, swearing under my breath, unintentionally ramming into the carts of fellow shoppers (sometimes the shoppers themselves) and stacks of dry goods and sundries as I slowly carve a serpentine swath of desperation through my local supermarket. Now, you might be thinking – and Michael would agree with you – that perhaps I have simply had the misfortune of selecting wonky shopping carts on all my shopping excursions, to which I reply -
“Every time?!?! Really?!?! What are the odds of that happening? Whatever they are, they are not good. Unless…that’s right…they are all like that.”
Also, I frequently see other shoppers wrestling with their trolleys or pushing them along with an unnatural cantilevered stride – jaw clenched, elbows locked, eye twitching – that suggests they have simply adapted their behaviour to accommodate the wonkiness. That being the case, I have for some time now wondered why this isn’t an issue of national importance. Why am I not forced to cross picket lines of soccer moms (“football mums?”) with signs protesting the perpetual wonkiness of their trolleys? Well, to that end, I today decided to google “Australia supermarket trolleys fail to go straight” and similar collections of synonyms. To my shock, the results were sparse and largely nonsensical.
So maybe I am crazy. Frankly, if that’s the answer, it’s kind of a relief. If I’m crazy, I guess I can stop worrying about wonky carts and the rest of it.
Phew!
Stay tuned. The next rant is never far off.
March 6, 2008 at 1:02 pm
“I’d like to see that Red Blue Green cocksucker put one of those together, duct-tapin’ it.”
-Bubbles, Trailer Park Boys
Ah, the cart. There’s not been a finer amalgam of simple machinery since the catapult. Only one man can help you, Nicole, and if you get a little liquor in him he’ll even play you a song on his guitar.
In the meantime:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8961822616648183260
March 8, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Glad to know I’m not alone in the random ranting. I just take comfort in knowing that “ranters” are emotionally healthly people.
March 9, 2008 at 6:57 pm
You must shop at Coles. I only ever have problems at Coles…Woolworths usually have better carts. That said, I just asked my husband how the trolley was today (he pushes, I fill!) and he said it wandered…but he is American, too. Maybe they know when Americans are coming?
I don’t know you at ALL, let alone very well, but I read b/c I was interested to see how you’d settle in to Sydney. My husband is settling in to the GC fairly well.
April 21, 2008 at 7:14 am
Hey here’s a conspiracy theory for you: Nicole forgot how to type. What’s the deal? You need a blog ghost writer? I can make shit up about how you feel about things and send you a draft if you want.
I’ll start with how you feel about losing the rooftop garden – here’s a hint: you feel TERRIBLE about it.